by John Bear
Daily Lobo
The author of the classic gore fest American Psycho has inserted a fictional version of himself into his latest offering.
Reagan-era literary poster child Bret Easton Ellis returns with Lunar Park, a novel about, well, Bret Easton Ellis. The book opens with 50-some pages of Ellis recounting his rapid rise to fame after the publication of his first novel Less Than Zero and his subsequent dizzying plunge into drug addiction and insanity. His privileged upbringing and strained relationship with his father also serve as prominent topics of discussion.
The novel switches to Ellis' life as a husband and father. He has married an old flame and mother of his estranged son, movie star Jayne Dennis, and is trying to refrain from all the drinking, whoring and crack smoking that consumed his past. He seems to be fading, albeit grudgingly, into the anonymous ranks of American suburbia.
But old habits die hard. The second chapter of the book details a Halloween party where Ellis doesn't just fall, but nosedives off the wagon. Within five minutes he is drinking cocktails and sneaking off to his office to snort gargantuan lines of coke. He also attempts a bathroom tryst with a graduate student who just happens to be doing her dissertation on none other than Bret Easton Ellis.
The story is filled to the brim with the strange and unexplainable. His father's ashes appear to be e-mailing him. The furniture keeps rearranging itself. And someone dressed like Patrick Bateman, the protagonist from American Psycho, is running around town killing people.
It is unclear whether these things are actually happening or if they are just some kind of paranoid drug reaction.
Lunar Park ends up being a mixed bag. Ellis' choice of inserting himself into the novel may be a stroke of genius. Of course, it may be construed as self-indulgent ego stroking. That remains to be decided.
The opening autobiographical passage is simultaneously hilarious and irritating. The drug-addled adventures of the protagonist - like the angry Doberman who refuses to perform lewd acts on a passed-out groupie - make for some lively writing.
On the other hand, it is difficult to arouse any amount of sympathy for affluent literary stars who overdo partying and end up smoking rocks in alleys - cry me a river.
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The remainder of the novel has its highs and lows. The moments of Ellis' alcoholic deception toward his family are particularly well written and chillingly realistic. But all the supernatural goings on stray a little too far into Chuck Palahniuk territory.
Fans of American Psycho looking for tips on how to cook one's ex-girlfriend will be disappointed. However, the constant mentioning of brand names of various articles of clothing that pervades American Psycho has been toned down somewhat, thankfully.
Overall, this is a mature work from a mature writer. It trades in the graphic imagery from its predecessor in favor of a more sympathetic character who is struggling with his own anxieties.
