pileofgreybooks: a book ring

I thought it was about time I read something by Brett Easton Ellis, and I happened to pick up a free copy of this at the Void Magazine reading in which our own Jessica presented her work last month. So... I loved it, which totally surprised me. It starts off as very broad social satire and you think that you will never be able to stand 400 pages of 1980s yuppies, full of inredibly detailed descriptions of the designer-label clothing that everyone is wearing. You almost want to say, "All right already, I get it." But Ellis carefully calibrates the revelation of the narrator's psychosis. Certain of the brief chapters are absolutely pitch-perfect and laugh-out-loud funny. Ellis uses the same elements again and again, tropes references, the same types of vacuous conversation between the characters, but rather than boring you they play like variations in a satirical fugue. There's a Balzacian quality to this cynical world of finance and sex.

And as for the gore: I like to think of myself as de-sensitized to descriptions of violence, but there are certain chapters of this book that made me feel immoral just for reading them. Gut-wrenchingly, unimaginably horrible. The book has a real power to it and, despite the incredible humor, it does "have something to say." That "something" boiled down to a platitude ("Capitalist excess destroys the soul"?) sounds trite but as presented through the hideous, freaky prism of Ellis's narrator that simple commonplace idea somehow becomes infinitely rich and readable. This book is certainly NOT for everyone; I would hesitate to recommend it to most women I know, for example. But for those who love writing, and especially crystal-sharp deadpan satire, this is an important and masterful piece of work.