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Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan eighties, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future--or even the present--who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturing and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives. Lauren changes boyfriends every time she changes majors and still pines for Victor, who split for Europe months ago, and she might or might not be writing anonymous love letters to ambivalent, hard-drinking Sean, a hopeless romantic who only has eyes for Lauren, even if he ends up in bed with half the campus and with Paul, Lauren's ex, who is forthrightly bisexual and whose passion masks a shrewd pragmatism. They waste time getting wasted and race from Thirsty Thursday Happy Hours to Dressed to Get Screwed parties to drinks at the End of the World. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.… (more)
Nowhere near as good as American Psycho but still pretty worthwhile. Like AP, but instead of murders on Wall Street its sex in a liberal arts school. Ellis is a writer who keeps my attention well enough that I’ll probably keep reading his other books even if they don’t wow me like AP did ( )
Después del celebrado debut literario Menos que cero (1985), Bret Easton Ellis continuó explorando la pesadez de la juventud norteamericana de finales de los años ochenta con Las leyes de la atracción, una crónica explícita de la vida universitaria que el mismo Ellis experimentó en su alma mater: Bennington College. Los personajes narran en primera persona sus andanzas entre fiestas, sexo, drogas, infidelidades y depresión, al tiempo que asisten a un campus universitario en el que se hace de todo, menos estudiar. Sean, Lauren y Paul, son los protagonistas que además de formar un peculiar triángulo amoroso, atraviesan toda la narrativa con las detalladas descripciones de entornos y sentimientos que demuestran la poca empatía de una generación que sufre un síndrome vigente todavía: el egoísmo. Se trata de seres que se interesan por pasar periodos cortos de felicidad, gracias al sexo y las estupefacientes que van pescando en su día a día; Sean, Lauren y Paul, se sienten eternos y se debaten entre vivir despreocupadamente por ser privilegiados, o complicarse la existencia de forma innecesaria debido a sus acciones, siempre al límite. Bret Easton Ellis comienza y termina su relato a la mitad de una frase, alegoría de la pesadilla cíclica en la que viven atrapados los personajes, vorágine libertina donde todos se sienten atraídos por todos, lo que lleva al consecuente caos emocional. Adaptada al cine en 2002 por el director Roger Avary, (tremenda adaptación, tremenda secuencia inicial) Las leyes de la atracción es una sátira empapada de cinismo en la que su autor crea un estilo compulsivo cargado de crítica a la falsedad e insatisfacción del estilo de vida estadounidense. Los jóvenes que en esas páginas se drogan, se acuestan y pierden el tiempo entre decepciones amorosas, más tarde tendrán la responsabilidad de dirigir empresas y manejar al país; será entonces, cuando la barbarie emerja como un monstruo despiadado. Influencia definitiva en un sinfín de autores, Las leyes de la atracción y la literatura de Bret Easton Ellis ha tocado incluso a escritores nacionales como Daniel Krauze y su Fallas de origen (2012), el reflejo del malestar humano en la idiosincrasia mexicana privilegiada. ( )
Interested by the fractured technique, and by single events told from different perpectives, and am always impressed by his ability to create creeping paranoia, but in breaking this world into pieces he didn't seem to take the time to put the pieces back together with enough design. ( )
i can't decide between 2 and 2.5 stars. i mean, i didn't like it, but it was readable and wasn't bad. i just don't like the pretentiousness and reading about people like this. i have no interest in ever interacting with people like the ones in this book, or reading about them. the perspective that easton ellis offers isn't generally one that i care about. i don't know - or really care - how realistic this depiction of college is (i mean, it has no bearing whatsoever on my experience, which was at a similar time, if not place) or was for some people. but since it's people i have no interest in knowing, i can't say that it matters. the writing seemed pretentious at first but kind of grew on me a little by the end. i was surprised by the amount of male gay content and don't know if that reflects any kind of reality either, or if he was just trying to shock or something. maybe that was the whole thing. i didn't hate this or anything but i don't see the value or the point, and i definitely don't see the humor that the reviews suggest. ( )
The facts even when beaded on a chain, still did not have real order. Events did not flow. The facts were separate and haphazard and random even as they happened, episodic, broken, no smooth transitions, no sense of events unfolding from prior events--
Tim O'Brien
Going After Cacciato
Dedication
For Phil Holmes
First words
and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or, actually weekend, really a Friday, in September, at Camden, and this was three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin's room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was, she remembers, a Senior or a Junior and usually sometimes at her boyfriend's place off-campus, to who she thought was a Sophomore Ceramics major but who was actually either some guy from N.Y.U., a film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed To Get Screwed party, or a townie.
Quotations
Last words
She started telling me her life story, which wasn't very interesting, and when Rockpile came on singing "Heart" I had to turn it up, drowning out her voice, but still I turned to her, my eyes interested, a serious smile, nodding, my hand squeezing her knee, and she
Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan eighties, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future--or even the present--who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturing and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives. Lauren changes boyfriends every time she changes majors and still pines for Victor, who split for Europe months ago, and she might or might not be writing anonymous love letters to ambivalent, hard-drinking Sean, a hopeless romantic who only has eyes for Lauren, even if he ends up in bed with half the campus and with Paul, Lauren's ex, who is forthrightly bisexual and whose passion masks a shrewd pragmatism. They waste time getting wasted and race from Thirsty Thursday Happy Hours to Dressed to Get Screwed parties to drinks at the End of the World. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.
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