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Glamorama (Vintage Contemporaries) by Bret…
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Glamorama (Vintage Contemporaries) (original 1998; edition 2000)

by Bret Easton Ellis

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3,248304,039 (3.32)70
The author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero continues to shock and haunt us with his incisive and brilliant dissection of the modern world.  In his most ambitious and gripping book yet, Bret Easton Ellis takes our celebrity obsessed culture and increases the volume exponentially. Set in 90s Manhattan, Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere, even in places he hasn't been and with people he doesn't know.  He's living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another onthe eve of opening the trendiest nightclub in New York City history. And now it's time to move to the next stage.  But the future he gets is not the one he had in mind. With the same deft satire and savage wit he has brought to his other fiction, Bret Ellis gets beyond the facade and introduces us, unsparingly, to what we always feared was behind it.  Glamorama shows us a shadowy looking-glass reality, the juncture where fame and fashion and terror and mayhem meet and then begin to resemble the familiar surface of our lives.… (more)
Member:scumdogsteev
Title:Glamorama (Vintage Contemporaries)
Authors:Bret Easton Ellis
Info:Vintage (2000), Paperback, 560 pages
Collections:Your library, To read
Rating:
Tags:own, unread, trade paperback, fiction, gift, christmas gift, novels

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Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis (1998)

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English (26)  French (2)  Swedish (1)  Spanish (1)  All languages (30)
Showing 1-5 of 26 (next | show all)
It's not my favorite from Bret Easton Ellis but still worth reading. My biggest complaint is the length. It seems be repetitive at times and takes too long to get to the actual terrorism part. ( )
  ElektraBurgos | Oct 23, 2023 |
It took me longer than I care to admit to actually read this book, considering how much I loved American Psycho. Sadly, this was not the case with this book.
First of all, I was very confused about what this book was actually about? I see certain similar trends between this and American Psycho – the obsession with materialistic details, the way of talking about celebrities and pop culture. I also loved how Patrick Bateman and his little brother Sean both feature briefly in this novel. But for most of the first 250 pages or so of the novel I was very confused about what was actually happening.
And then it really kicked off.
Glamorama is about a young model named Victor Ward (his real name is Victor Johnson) who is trying to make it big in the world using his good looks and acting skills. Most of the first part of the novel is Victor having multiple affairs while trying to keep a relationship afloat, and opening a swanky new club in New York while avoiding the tabloid press and a certain story that could get him into a lot of trouble. It’s during this first part of the novel that we learn about F Palakon, a man who has reached out to Victor and wants to hire him to find someone; this someone happens to be an ex-classmate of Victor when he attended university, and has last been spotted in London. Victor obliges, happy to get away from the drama that his life is headed towards, only for his life to go all kinds of pear-shaped when he actually goes on this mission.
From the beginning of the novel there are hints that what Victor is experiencing is weird, or that he might not actually be the real Victor. Remember how in American Psycho there was this theme about how none of the characters remember what any of the other characters look like or who they are coz they’re too self-absorbed to care? There’s a hint of that in this novel, only here people keep telling victor that they last spoke to him in a certain city or at a certain club, but he insists that he was never at those events, even though nobody believes him. As the novel progresses, this part becomes more and more prominent.
Victor ends up embroiled in a terrorist cell that are planting bombs across many major European cities and landmarks and just causing chaos. There doesn’t seem to be an actual aim to the whole thing beyond just causing chaos – on trains, near museums, on airplanes, threatening major government officials from all over the world by killing their offspring. The whole thing is incredibly violent and Victor ends up in the middle of it, being constantly fed with drugs to keep him quiet and compliant and being coerced into situations he has no idea how to get out of. And try as he might, it seems that his tormentors and roommates (as they are one and the same) seem to be always one step ahead of him.
The last few hundred pages of the book speed by and are a really interesting character study as we see Victor slowly start to lose his grip on reality but also become more aware of the situation around him. He tries so hard to get out of it and to have a normal life, to right the wrongs that his new companions have done and to try and save as many people as possible, but deep down there’s not a lot that he can do and he knows it. It’s only towards the end of the novel that you start to truly question everything – was Victor Ward actually Victor Johnson? Are they one and the same person, or was this Victor Ward a different person made to believe he was Victor Johnson?
I loved the confusion of it, but only as the book came to a conclusion and I started to piece things together for myself. This book isn’t for the light hearted or those looking for something easy to read; you need to go into it with a mind that is ready to be confused and ready to have to piece things together and do some actual work while you’re reading. There are no answers or easily given solutions at the end, but Bret Easton Ellis gives you ample opportunity to theorize and speculate for yourself what was really happening all along.
I give this book a solid 3.5/5 as a final rating. Once I’ve digested it a bit more and figured out more of what it’s about, I’ll probably appreciate it a bit more. But for now, all I can say is that American Psycho was better. ( )
  viiemzee | Feb 20, 2023 |
It was good but I have no idea what I just read. ( )
  autumnesf | Jan 22, 2023 |
That was disturbing in a hilarious, horrible, insane way. ( )
  rabbit-stew | Mar 29, 2019 |
I've heard people complain about how difficult it is to read 'Vanity Fair' with its numerous references to the culture and politics of the early 19th century, but Thackeray has nothing on Ellis. 'Glamorama' threatens to be impenetrable in five years.

The book is saturated with the names of the famous and pseudo-famous, song lyrics and artists, name brands and soft drinks; so much so that it puts 'American Psycho's Patrick Bateman to shame. Ellis appeared to be ahead of the curve here again and producing a novel that might just trap unwary readers into hours of wiki-surfing in order to refresh themselves on just who Skeet Ulrich is. But, fear not, Bijou Phillips and Antony Sabato jr. can be exchanged for Kat Dennings and Channing Tatum; Marky Mark, Matthew Fox (!) and Tyra Banks can be re-contextualized; Snapples can become Vitamin Waters. It may not be as cool to open Victor Ward's club with Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" as Matthew Sweet's "Sick of Myself", but you must remember that it's all window dressing.

The idea that our celebrity consumer culture is vapid and soul-killing is not most original idea perhaps but I thought Ellis' use of the perfectly stupid Victor Ward as the centerpiece of this conspiracy thriller Operation Runway (or should I say House of Style?) mash-up is inspired. Bateman focused on the trappings of material success as a method of blending in. 'Glamorama's Victor Ward does so in order to stand out. He doesn't seem to be in on the joke of how interchangeable and replaceable it all is.

Ward communicates via song lyrics and a proto-bro jargon that is pretty spot-on. He seems a little too homophobic for a bisexual individual in the fashion industry, but he's probably just that thick. It's hard to tell because we are rarely allowed inside that pretty little head of his. The other characters, Jaime Fields, Bobby Hughes, Lauren Hynde and the borrowed-from-Jay-McInerney-but-essentially-Ellis' Alison Poole, while more intelligent (not a hard feat), are just as emotionally and motivation-ally ambiguous.

I've enjoyed all of Ellis' novels, and this one is no exception, but definitely be prepared to sift through all of the aforementioned pop culture name drops and numbingly pornographic sex scenes and brutal terrorist acts. It does all come together nicely by the end, though Ellis could learn a thing or two about plotting from the espionage thriller giants he's riffing off of here. ( )
  ManWithAnAgenda | Feb 18, 2019 |
Showing 1-5 of 26 (next | show all)
interview naar aanleiding van Wit (non-fictie)
added by nagel175 | editVolkskrant Boeken, Hans Bouman (pay site) (May 11, 2015)
 
Bret Easton Ellis, geboren 1964, unerbittlicher Satiriker der globalen High Society und enfant terrible der amerikanischen Literaturszene seit seinem skandalösen Meisterwerk "American Psycho", hat sich nach neun Jahren Abstinenz zurückgemeldet: Mit einem Moloch von einem Roman. Von unverminderter Rasiermesserschärfe sind seine Erkundungs- und Folterinstrumente: Alles wird aus der hypernaturalistischen Optik eines involvierten Ich-Erzählers erzählt, alles im verstörenden Präsens geschildert. Hier findet sich auch nicht die Spur eines den Leser beruhigenden erhobenen Zeigefingers. Die Figuren führen sich selbst vor. In Echtzeit.
 

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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Bret Easton Ellisprimary authorall editionscalculated
Bagnoli, KatiaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
There was no time when you nor I nor these kings did not exist.

--Krishna
You make a mistake if you see what we do as merely political.

--Hitler
Dedication
for Jim Severt
First words
"Specks--specks all over the third panel, see?--no, that one--the second one up from the floor and I wanted to point this out to someone yesterday but a photo shoot intervened and Yaki Nakamari or whatever the hell the designer's name is--a master craftsman not--mistook me for someone else so I couldn't register the complaint, but, gentlemen--and ladies--there they are: specks, annoying, tiny specks, and they don't look accidental but like they were somehow done by a machine--so I don't want a lot of description, just the story, streamlined, no frills, the lowdown: who, what, where, when and don't leave out why, though I'm getting the distinct impression by the looks on your sorry faces that why won't get answered--now, come on, goddamnit, what's the story?"
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The author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero continues to shock and haunt us with his incisive and brilliant dissection of the modern world.  In his most ambitious and gripping book yet, Bret Easton Ellis takes our celebrity obsessed culture and increases the volume exponentially. Set in 90s Manhattan, Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere, even in places he hasn't been and with people he doesn't know.  He's living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another onthe eve of opening the trendiest nightclub in New York City history. And now it's time to move to the next stage.  But the future he gets is not the one he had in mind. With the same deft satire and savage wit he has brought to his other fiction, Bret Ellis gets beyond the facade and introduces us, unsparingly, to what we always feared was behind it.  Glamorama shows us a shadowy looking-glass reality, the juncture where fame and fashion and terror and mayhem meet and then begin to resemble the familiar surface of our lives.

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