Less Than Zero (1985-05-16) [Hardcover] - By Bret Easton Ellis

I originally read Ellis' American Psycho, which had a rambling, repetitive style and, aside from the main character, largely uninteresting personalities with largely uninteresting problems. These literary quirks, though, were effective tools in telling the story, and I really enjoyed the book.

So I picked up Less Than Zero next. Unfortunately, it is almost the same as AP, with nothing new to say and almost no discernible plot. It's jammed with run-on sentences, characters that are nearly impossible to care about and literally word-for-word repetition of conversations found in American Psycho.

To be fair, I may simply have picked up the exact wrong book to follow AP, but I can't help but suspect that the author has only one mind-numbingly self-absorbed story to tell.

I personally guarantee that you will regret wasting your time reading these 200 pages of pointless drivel. I'm well aware of Ellis' other work, but this "novel" reads like it was written by someone who dropped out of community college after one semester. There is zero plot development throughout and the characters are as bland and one-dimensional as one can possibly imagine.

I wish the store had not packaged this book in with American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction (two fine pieces of work). I would've paid more just to save myself the time I wasted drudging through this. By the end of the book you'll be ashamed you stuck it out as long as you did.

People - this book was an absolute mistake! It's nothing like the movie, which was terrific: great casts and story, not to mention photography. But the book: it was stupid. I didn't get it. I'm sorry I read it. I got nothing out of it.

And finally: this book, the story, sucked! If you haven't read it, trust me: don't bother, particularly if you're looking for something additional to having seen and liked the movie.

Having really enjoyed "American Psycho" both in the theater and on paper I figured I'd give Easton another shot. Obviously I had certain expectations going in with AP top of mind and I was a bit disappointed with some of parts of the whole. That being said it was still written well and the emotions believable and tactile. The truth behind whitewashed persona we try to hold up in front us is exposed in this particular "protagonist(?)" albeit a lot less violent than Patrick Bateman. Worth flipping though if you haven't.

Bret Easton Ellis’ roman a clef felt like an honest piece of literature. If the late ‘80s or early ‘90s needed a Holden Caulfield, a Jake Barnes or a Sal Paradise, Bret Easton Ellis created him in Clay (or the fictionalized version of himself). The story invoked that certain coming-of-age feeling when you must make a couple of small decisions that have life-changing capabilities. Choose to float with the tide or pick a direction to swim in. This book certainly isn’t for everyone, and some might find it to be just a bunch of rich kids doing drugs, but for the reader who pays attention there is obviously much more. It’s a young kid who sees where he could go, where he’s going and where he might end up. In a way, all of his friends, family and the entire city of LA represented Clay. Back East represents the new Clay, the future, endless possibility beyond cheating spouses, cocaine, champagne and too many aspiring models and actresses. I really enjoyed this book. It was honest and dirty and had a bite to it.

I come to this book after reading American Psycho in 2013. I can see clearly the same punctuated descriptive style that I love. While reading, I wasn’t sure if it compared, but by the end, I was enraptured, unable to set the book down for a minute. The sentences are raw and stunning. The angst palpable. It is a clear and vivid portrait of the excess of the 80’s and the lost young souls of that time. The setting of Hollywood was perfect (as New York is in American Psycho). The comparison to Catcher in Rye is apt, but I think this far exceeds Salinger.

Less Than Zero is my favorite Bret Easton Ellis book, and my #2 favorite book of all time. (My #1 book is Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahnuik)
This IS Catcher in the Rye for the MTV generation. In fact, I think that was BEE's intention since I find Clay similar to Holden Caulfield except now it's the 1980s. I just love this book. I read it once a year.
The movie was sterilized and reeks of "After School Special" and Just Say No of the 80s. But that being said, I kinda like the movie. They get the Julian parts right. But book Clay is very very different than squeaky moral Andrew McCarthy.

As other reviewers have commented, you either love or hate this book. If I had to choose between the two, I love it. Anyone who gives a two-star review or lower just doesn't get it. There isn't supposed to be any particular plot line here. The author is painting a rather stark and realistic portrait of L.A. teenage life in the 1980s, no more and no less, and he does a very fine job of it. In fact, he goes beyond dealing with the nihilism of young adulthood in L.A. He provides fictionally realistic commentary on the film industry along with the mentality of kids (and their parents) coming from rich backgrounds. Keep in mind that there isn't supposed to be any logical storyline to the novel at all. That fact parallels the lack of depth consistent with the L.A. populace.

Although I was only a toddler in the 80s, I have no doubt that the lifestyle(s) depicted in "Less Than Zero" is/are highly accurate for that decade. In fact, after having been to L.A. a few times in the past, I encountered subtle hints that this type of lifestyle was (and is) still rampant in that city. If I had a dime for every "Clay the Cokehead" characters that are currently in L.A., I would be a billionaire.

I just finished Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. Most people are familiar with his more popular work: American Psycho. Less Than Zero is my first exposure to his writing and I have to say I instantly fell in love with his writing style.

That being said, I'm not really sure why I care about any of the characters in this book. They're the most vacuous and empty characters I've ever been introduced to via the page. The book is filled with young blonde-haired fair skinned surfer boys. Wealthy good looking teenagers, large mansions, a seemingly endless supply of money for coke, booze, and sex make up the landscape for this novel. It's a short 200 something page read. And I powered through it in two days.

A part of me wants this story to be true because it will legitimize all of my preconceptions on how the wealthy wasted yuppied generation lived in the 1980s. References to 80s bands, fashion, hollywood sights & sounds, & atari make up so much of this book.

My only complaint is that this book is very much a slice of life (time). It is a particular look at a very particular sub-section of society (the wealthy/wasted). The book lacks a conventional plot. Clay is a wealthy teenager returning for the Christmas Holidays from his New Hampshire university. Having grown up in L.A. the booze, the drugs, the sex, the empty life is all that Clay is familiar with and the story follows Clay and his other waster-friends as they move from party to party. Clay searches for something/anything that will stimulate him. And that's it. That is the book. It shouldn't be this good a novel but I cannot get it out of my head. The landscape of Hollywood and L.A. come alive often more so than Clay and his friends do.

If you're looking for a short and enjoyable read, then find a copy of this book and give it a chance. As I say, it shouldn't work as a novel and yet it somehow does.

This old piece of 80s pop culture, focusing on the lives of rich, apathetic college-age kids in LA in the 80s, will no doubt get some attention again with the recent release of Ellis' latest, "Imperial Bedrooms," which follows the characters into middle age. So, let's get straight what "Less than Zero" is and what it is not. It is NOT great literature or even particularly good writing. Stringing together long namechecks of 80s tunes, fashions, stores and the like reads more like extended product placement than writing. None of the characters are what one would call "developed." Indeed, if all the authors who wrote about disaffected 80's youth (Mcinerney, Coupland, Chabon and a boatload of others - so many that they had their own satirical "Cliffs Notes" volume at that time) Ellis's sparse, deadpan style was the most lacking in writerly devices. The result is sort of like seeing "The Stranger" badly acted out by a bunch of hungover and cracked-out 19-year-olds who can't even feel the sensations inherent in their everyday actions of smoking, scoring, drugging, screwing, driving expensive cars fast, dressing up, having abortions, prostituting themselves, watching uber-realistic snuff films, passing out, et cetera. This book is populated by zombies and unlike other "teenage wasteland" type books, none of the characters, not even Clay the protagonist, have any sorts of talents, feelings, poetic hopes or dreams that indicate that they might escape this emotional desert any time soon. Clay and his girlfriend Blair seem to be dimly aware that something is really haywire with themselves and their circle of friends, but have no idea how to fix it or even define it.

Also, "Less than Zero" does NOT have a plot. Clay & company just go about their daily business, which normally involves some form of sex and getting high followed by the kind of Deep Thoughts about life you'd expect from a rich kid in rehab, a la Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer." The movie ruined the concept, in my opinion, by trying to graft a plot onto it about the fall from grace of Clay's childhood friend Julian. In the book, sure, Julian is a mess, but he doesn't seem particularly any more messed up than his peers. It's more a question of what kind of mess do you want to be, than whether you will be one.

It's important to note that Ellis's device, at least for this initial book, worked well to portray a vapid, apathetic cultural and emotional wasteland. The characters are for the most part emotionally dead, drugged, traumatized; they've taken the graffitied advice to "Disappear Here". The result is sort of a "Welcome to LA" for very young people on drugs. Everybody has a little hustle to play, no one is particularly happy about it. Whether you get all the way to the end of the book after grokking the concept in the first 50 pages or so depends on how interested you are in reading endless streams of 80s trivia.

While I can't give this more than three stars given the lack of real writing or real plot, it still can be a "guilty pleasure" read for those who like the 80s or grew up during them. The characters often say and do things that sound so stupid as to be vaguely entertaining. The theme of the corrupt Hollywood rich can also make for a fun beach-blanket afternoon, especially for those of us who are most definitely not rich and wouldn't think of hopping in our Porsche and speeding down to the mall to buy 10 pairs of designer shoes on Daddy's credit card. One might end up chuckling a bit too much at a part that Ellis may have intended to come off serious, but then again, it's hard to tell whether Ellis really meant this book seriously or if he exaggerated everything into glamour and excess in hopes of making a sale.

Less Than Zero confused me. That is my simple review. I just didn't get it. I felt like the author was making some brilliant point and that I should have picked up on it but all I got from it was that the main character did cocaine on nearly ever damn page. This was like an even more confusing Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. I enjoyed the Thompson book but mainly because it was wild and different and I hadn't read anything else like it. This one almost seemed to scream classic literature and ooz famousness because it was different. It sure takes you into the dark places of LA if I remember right and the whole book felt basically plotless and dreamy. Honestly, it sort of felt like a good Chuck Palahniuk novel and that is not a compliment to either author. I am afraid to try anything else by Ellis, even American Psycho which is supposed to be an excellent piece of horror fiction. I usually don't get scared of an author with only one read but this book just angered me because of its strangeness and laziness in my opinion. I recommend to someone who likes Palahniuk. Enjoy it yee readers of mysteriously popular tree abortions.

"Disappear Here..."

Written when Ellis was a mere nineteen years of age and set among the beautiful people of the privileged elite in Los Angeles circa 1984, Less Than Zero is a novel about drugs, anguish and depravity, viewed by the main character, Clay, from the wisdom of a changed perspective gained by a few months away from this scene courtesy of his trip east to attend college.

What scared me about this book was in it there was no safe haven for any of these people. Not only were their lives usually a mess but everyone around them, even their parents, were as lost as they were. Where do you go when any friend or relative you might turn to for help is suffering too and has nothing to offer you in terms of a way out? These poor souls had youth, beauty, glamour and even money, and yet they were all confused, miserable and shallow, and unlike most of us, they did not even have the dream that maybe their lives would be better if they only had more money to make things right. No, they, with one very glaring exception, had all the money anyone could ask for, and yet it wasn't their ticket to happiness anymore than it was their stairway to personal salvation.

Naive I know, but reading Less Than Zero for the first time as a high school sophomore in the mid-nineties made me wonder if the eighties in southern California were really like that. When I re-read this short, fast-paced novel in one evening about a month ago, I had no doubt whatsoever that for many late-teens and early-twenty-somethings this story was no fantasy but a report from the front lines of lost youth.

In my opinion, this book will become a classic (moreso than it already has) and will be a work of literature turned to in fifty years when someone wants to read about the 1980's. With its many pop cultural references already seeming confusingly dated to those of us too young to have firm memories of those times, I think this work is right now in that transition period between "dated" and "historically nostalgic". Someday it will come out in annotated edition and enrich the experience of this book for a new generation of readers.

Not my favorite Ellis novel, but a good place to begin.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS) I was past page 100 when I started thinking this novel was the same as every other novel by Bret Easton Ellis: repetitious dialogue that seems to just take up space; self-absorbed characters that talk that dialogue like they're infected with tumors from radiation fallout; and LOTS of drug consumption.
Well, I must say I was surprised when, at around page 130 or so, "Less Than Zero" became a startlingly emotional and even tragic novel. The plot (such as it is) has Clay, an 18-year old college student, returning to his L.A. home for Christmas break only to discover his friends are lost in a world of drugs and partying.
At first, Clay's interaction with these characters is redundant and dull, like a hangover after a drug warp. The first hundred pages are typically anticlimactic of Ellis, but when Clay begins to show concern for what's going on around him, "Less Than Zero" becomes frighteningly real. Some examples of great, tragic scenes are: the motel room where Clay watches the businessman have sex with his friend, Julian; the discovery of the dead body in the alley; and the rape of the 12-year old girl. Ellis lavishes such attention to these segments that they burn themselves onto your memory and embody the dead soul of his version of Los Angeles.
But what I think won me over was the italicized sections that chronicled the decline of Clay's grandmother, who was dying of pancreatic cancer. I was shocked at how Ellis made these sections heartfelt, considering most of his novels since this one have just emphasized emotionless, heartless characters. Also surprisingly Un-Ellis were the scenes when Clay goes out alone into the desert or to a movie or to his old elementary school--this brings back the cold air of teenage alienation and is handled subtly, without exaggeration.
Some may argue over Ellis's writing ability, but it's hard not to argue with the nihilism and emptiness of this debut. It's justified, and the characters assimilate to that emptiness because that's all they know how to do. Probably the most "moral" novel Ellis has written.

Ellis' initial literary offering is a foray into the absurdity and pointlessness of life. Although most would completely disagree with Ellis' philosphy, he nonetheless paints an interesting picture with lifelessness and general mailaise of his primary characters. His characters have nothing to live for, no ambitions and thus their experiences are entertaining exactly because we don't identify with them.

Clay is back from college and visiting his family in LA. The book takes us through various that involve either Sex, drugs or disfuntional relationships and often all three. These characters have no soul and thus basically feel no remorse about anything.

Ellis' ability to invoke this souless atmosphere combined with his use of clever literary devices are what make this book worth reading. You certainly (or at least hopefully) won't personally like his characters but you will feel like you are with them in early 80's culture while reading this. It's entertaining even though I couldn't really relate to the charcaters at all. Perhaps that is the appeal as you can live through these charcters vicariously without really suffering the consequeces......

For those thinking of getting in Brett Easton Ellis, this is a great place to start. Not as good as Rules of Attraction, and not as hard to swallow as American Psycho or Glamorama, this falls somewhere in between. This is basically a companion piece to the Informers but overall a better book. Ellis really is a stroke of genuis but not for everyone by any means.

Bottom Line: fans of Ellis should obviously read this. If intense drug use and explicit sexual situations bother you then this probably isn't for you.

"American Psycho" was the first Bret Easton Ellis book I ever read (back in 94), and only years later did I turn back the clock and read this, his first and best novel.
Chronicaling the exploits of Clay, a freshman college student who comes back to hometown L.A. for the Summer, as he bounces around clubs, parties and beach homes, "Less Than Zero" portrays the rich kids of society as amazingly cold, uncaring and unscrupulous and while they have it all, they couldn't care and in the end both them and the reader are left with a major dose of melancholy.
I love the way the book is written. It sort of bombards you with more and more information (mostly incidental) and then just suddenly stops cold, jarring you as your read it. It also has a pseudo stream of consciousness feel that kinda matches the drug use of the characters. I cannot say that I relate to the attitudes of many people in this book, yet in a way it all seems pretty familiar, particularly the whole summer flashed by feeling, and the scattered memories that remain.
This book is a bit like a "Catcher in the Rye" for the 80s, although doesn't rate quite as highly as that particular book as it doesn't really have any kind of message attached to it.
After reading this, I read "Rules of Attraction" the next progression for the kind of characters found here,as they go on to college for more meaningless relationships and cold and easy living. Then having read that I reread "American Psycho" and it was ten times better than the first time, as it really seemed like the logical next step as these same kind of cold and indulgent characters get into the workforce.
I retirate "Less Than Zero" is the BEST thing that Ellis has done, but read this, then "Rules of Attraction" and then "American Psycho" and you really see the flow in his work.

There are two ways of perceiving "Less Than Zero". On one hand, it's a roughly written book that completely lacks developement and detail, aimlessly following a character who makes shallow observations about the corruption of young L.A. in the early 80's. Situations may seem exaggerated and only written for shock value, and the characters remain static throughout the entire story. There is no solid theme, and there is hardly a point. BUT, on the other hand, you can look at "Less Than Zero" is a disguised masterpiece. As raw as the writing is, it still brilliantly portrays the quiet nihilism that runs through a generation completely lost in the dark side of L.A., and illustrating with painful clarity the lives of people who have no sense of moral, whose only aim in the life is to gain physical pleasure through sex and narcotics. The relationships between the narrator and the people around him may at first seem vague, but the emotions of fear, anger and despair that start to emerge make sense, and by the end, it feels like a generation of lost souls has been completely exposed. I was saddened by the undercurrent of tragedy in this book, it's difficult to believe that society was at one time so degenerated, where kids didn't know about their paren't where-abouts until they read it in a magazine, and when a corpse in the alley becomes a fun thing to see. There are also a lot of creepy scenes, dealing with violence and death, it's pretty safe to say you'll be up all night with some of the images in your head. "Less Than Zero" is not for all tastes, but for those who are interested in a look at the darkest side of life, this is a must-read.

Having read 'American Psycho' and 'Rules of Attraction' and being very familiar with Ellis' writing, the controversy or rather haunting elements in 'Less Than Zero', really came as no surprise to me. You have the usual closet case sex, the abusive drugs(this time even heroin), and the one liners that most people would love to say, but only in a parallel universe. Honestly, this book is lukewarm to say, a few pages in American Psycho? But, there's something else, something different, that's disturbing about this book, and it may not have been so apparent upon it's release...

We watch as Clay is taken back to his hometown, a very familiar hometown, the town of L.A. Everything, to him, is the same, the people are the same, the areas, and everything seems bland. In a world mixed with chaos, Clay seems so bland and bored by it. He's used to the macabre and the if only illusions of sexual deviances. It's a disgusting world, really, and yet love remains...if only to be used as a term to describe cheap, softcore pornography sex. The story is about Clay and in this story, amidst all we read about, while we stand in horror, he stands in pity and boredom.

I think what's so odd about this, is that this is the real root of social commentary by Ellis and it's only really seen today. As more and more kids today are exposed to so many things, we really face everything by the age of 18 to 20. Where sex was a major, pivotal point in a relationship, in the book, running along with today's views, sex is a thing...it's a fling. I think as you read the book in which characters are put in unbelieveable situations, one including a male whore, you really are taken back. This is disturbing, visually(moreso to those who haven't read Ellis) and theoretically, as you see how close it is to today. People and young adults primarily grow tired today of the same old, same old. Since when did growing up age so young?

While much weaker in retrospect than Ellis' previous endeavours, this is a fine novel with subtle social commentary and interesting advances into personal narrative. I suggest this, but be forewarned, you may not appreciate this and even disagree, but then again, what isn't an argument without the knowledge. Go find out for yourself, maybe you'll even read more from Ellis.

To those who have read, both this and Ellis, I hope you find this informative, to say the least.

Written in clear, simple, matter-of-fact prose, Less Than Zero, is a chillingly disturbing and hair-raising novel that hones in specifically on L.A.'s edgy, filthy and unrepentant subculture, where booze, drugs, hustling, casual, empty sex, shallow values as well as violence-both physically and visually-are the norm. It is a subculture of pills, plastic surgery, 'laboratory' or 'Frankenstein' created perfection, spiritual vacuousness, fatalistic/lobotomized acceptance or indifference of anything and everything are neatly meshed together with a wad of cash acting as a decorative bow. The novel revolves around Clay, a young man on summer break from college in New Hampshire. Visiting his financially well-to-do family, he decides to 'reconnect' with some of his school friends and girlfriend, Blair-the very latter a brainwashed drone to the excessive frivolities that only L.A. can offer. After getting into the inner sanctum of his friend's lives, Clay gets acclimatized (with the aid of drugs, among other things) to their jaded perceptions and their uppish, arrogant world view of, "This is how it is, man. What planet are you from?" attitude. As time progresses, Clay unwittingly begins to mirror the very people-with all their dangeriously luxuriant excesses-whom he fears and despises. What is even worse is that his family and home life is no refuge either from the dizzying despair that is slowly enveloping him, for his home life is as equally terrible as what he's trying to flee from; his only form of escapism is marijuana, cocaine, sex, partying and booze, all of which temporarily act as a kind of fake portal to the untouched nether reaches (so he believes) of his mind or his soul. But bit by bit, that too slowly gets chipped away at, and what is beyond that is too terrifying to imagine. Clay's only saving grace is a quiet moment of introspection at Topanga Canyon, where, "...I could hear the wind moving through the canyons...A coyote howled...I had been home a long time." (P. 207). Silence was his saving grace, for it forever imprinted upon his mind all that he experienced; it was the catalyst that set him free: "There was a song I heard when I was in Los Angeles by a local group. The song was called "Los Angeles" and the words and images were so harsh and bitter that the song would reverberate in my mind for days. The images, I later found out, were personal and no one I knew shared them. The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. Images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. These images stayed with me even after I left the city. Images so violent and malicious that they seemed to be my only point of reference for a long time afterwards..." (P.208). They say that the globe has many, many war zones. Los Angeles would definitely be included.

Clay returns home from his eastern college(symbolizing maturity) to his California home and past(symbolizing adolesence). That's the crux of the novel...now the more interesting points and examination of the 1980's and California lifestyle.
Clay is seen as a detached observer while back at home, despite being apart of the peer group the novel follows around from club to party, to restaurant. Look at Clay as an example of Shakespeare's Hamlet(ailed by Hesitstion). We ceratinly see Clay's shortcoming when he fails to react/save the 12 year-old girl who is tied to the bed at the party. In this very same scene we see Ellis' theme of the novel: "If you want something...you have the right to do it."
Throughout the novel we see the destruction of LA, a city that is prone to excess and decadence. Also revealed in the following scenes: Clay's sisters are permittd to watch pornographic films, the dog eats a cigarette but(showing that even animals behave in unnatural ways), we can even look at the hot weather as a symbol of the apocalypic decline of the city. One scene that really stands out of the fall of LA and it's citizens is when Clay's friends are watching a "snuff" movie-clearly showing that murder and rape are condoned as entertainment.
At the end of the novel we see Clay leaving LA...we assume to return to school and never return...Wondering if Ellis ever returned to LA...and wondering when the catharsis happened?
If you enjoy this novel, from contemporary fiction's "bad-boy", try _Bright Lights, Big City_ by McInerney, Ellis' _American Psycho_, and _Mysteries of Pittsburgh_ by Chabon...all three deal with the seedy life of the american city in the 1980's.

Bret Easton Ellis' first novel tells the story of Clay, an extremely rich eighteen year old college kid home for the holidays in L.A.
Through the first person, we follow Clay over two weeks into parties, bedrooms and crack houses. This is a story of how the young and rich live their lives and it is disgusting. The words in this book disturbed me, making me realize what some people are like in this world when they have to much power at a young age. In one scene Clay goes to a friends house to find a party and the teen age kids have a twelve year old girl tied to the bed. The are shooting heroin into her and take turns raping her, nobody seems to care other than Clay. When he asks why they are doing this to the poor girl, the answer he gets is "Because I can".
But this novel isn't just about the wreckless lives of rich teens, but how Clay comes home from a normal college live and slowly realized that he doesnt want to be like this anymore.
This novel is extremely gripping and not for the squimish. It grabs you, and shakes you, showing you the lives some live when they have to much money and nothing to do.
To make a quote from the movie box that hits this story on the spot: "A compelling story of kids that started out with everything and are about to wind up with Less than Zero."

Ellis' first and arguably best book. Like that other great eighties novel, Bright Lights, Big City, Less than Zero is probably remembered more for the terrible movie that followed (though Robert Downey Jr.--surprise, surprise--was quite good as the coke addict Julian) than for the quality of the novel itself. But this novel is an undeniable masterpiece, spare and haunting. I think the other reviewers have missed an important element to the novel: the narrator, Clay, is emotionally dead, an empty observer of his friends' depravity. Like Ellis' later character, Patrick Bateman, Clay is equipped with an elaborate code of etiquette and manners rather than any sense of morality or outrage. It is a mistake to view him as "better" than any of his high school friends; he is not a white knight or film noir hero disgusted by the violence and vice around him. Instead, Ellis suggests that the supreme hollowness and detachment of Clay from his surroundings is the ultimate horror (a theme further developed in American Psycho and Glamorama). All in all, a brilliant debut novel and a book that has long outlived the decade and culture that produced it.

Imagine being less than 21, a college student, and a bestselling author all at the same time. It's a position that's gonna earn you a fair share of detractors. This is a problem Easton Ellis has dealt with his whole career. Often accused of being nihilistic, misogynistic and focusing exclusively on young, beautiful, wealthy people who have everything in the world yet engage in the most horrific and destructive behaviors imaginable. Of course those are all valid claims since each one is true in nearly everything Bret has written. He's an author who knows his subjects well, too well perhaps, since you shudder to think how much of this Bret witnessed or participated in growing up in L.A. in the 80's. 'Less Than Zero' is the story of Clay, an 18 year old college freshman, who returns home for a four week vacation during winter break. Unfulfilled at college, Clay is eager to see if anything has changed among his hard partying friends. With ex-girlfriend Blair as his guide Clay reconnects with old friends like Trent and Julian, a strung out heroin addict and prostitute, and his dealer Rip who offers him free drugs and advises Clay to go back to school and make something of himself. Over the course of his four weeks Clay attends numerous house parties and concerts in new clubs all over L.A. He quickly gets caught up in the lifestyle and takes copious amounts of pills, coke, booze and other stimulants like one night stands with both men and women. Clay has a paralyzing fear of caring about anyone or getting attached so he just uses these people for easy sex. The routine for everyone is the same : Wake up in the late afternoon, go to a party at someone's house, do drugs, go to a club, do more drugs, find that night's hookup and go back to their place, screw, wake up in the early morning hours and sneak out the door unobserved by anyone but a maid who has seen it so many times before to even care. The book is full of disturbing incidents and four in particular shake Clay out of his complacency. Among those are being forced to accompany Julian to a trick's motel and watching for over five hours as Julian whores himself for a fix. The two most notorious incidents are the graphic depictions of girls as young as 12 being tied to four bedposts and being repeatedly raped by Clay's friends or friends of friends. One such scene is so frightening and graphic in detail (involving a chainsaw, an ice pick and wire hanger) that one can't help but be reminded of the carnage that was to come in 'American Psycho'. When a disbelieving Clay asks his friends why the hell they are doing this their answer cuts to the heart of the book. If you're young, rich , pretty and get everything you want what else is there? Easton Ellis describes a life of obscene wealth and privilige that many people dream of and shows the living nightmare it can turn into. The book is far from perfect, the writing towards the end isn't as strong or focused as the earlier stuff, but as far as first novels go it's undeniably impressive.

This novel, while quite disturbing, is definitely worth a read. Perhaps it's better understood if the reader has actually experienced depression... that state-of-mind where nothing matters, everything feels empty, and the world is spinning out of control yet it feels like its not moving at all. Clay is depressed, home from Camden for the winter break, and nothing seems to shock him anymore. All there is left for him is a girlfriend who he cannot relate to, drugs, a best friend who has become more like a ghost than a teenager in L.A. (trying to avoid Clay throughout the book for reasons later told...). The book is haunting. At times, I'd put the book down and try to cry. I found that I couldn't cry. I would read page after page, and after I closed it, walked around feeling like a zombie, like I too was living in L.A. in the 80s, like I saw those things that Clay saw and was not at all suprised.

The book is beautiful in a dark sort of way. It's empty like the characters, like real life depression... and if you can relate to this in any way, you will enjoy the book.

I love Bret Easton Ellis. I have read 3 of his books, and I cannot wait to read the other two. Clay is also featured in The Rules of Attraction- and it amuses me how Ellis's books could all blend together to form one (Patrick is Sean's brother, Clay attends Sean's college....and I don't know about Lunar Park or Glamorama, but it wouldn't suprise me if they played into this too). Ahh. Read this book seriously!

I picked this up because it was recommended to me more than once for people who also liked Chuck Palahniuk, my current favorite author...

It follows a young man named Clay who is home in Los Angeles from college in another state, and the whole book takes place in the period of only 4 weeks. It moves from one scene to another with little connection, and is basically about Clay (who has an incredibly apathetic view on life) hanging with his group of filthy rich L.A. friends (who are all children of Hollywood producers, actors, directors, etc.), going from party to party, sleeping with each other (often homosexually), constantly drinking and buying drugs, and just living completely self-indulgently. Strangely, not all of these things, as graphic sounding as they are, are explicitly detailed, only suggested or alluded to.

It is narrated by Clay, who is constantly unsatisfied despite having basically everything he wants in life, and he often has strange little moments in his head (that the reader is let into) that border on psychotic obsession. He thinks much, but leads a very shallow life. It does move in a very stream-of-consciousness manner, each scene is just Clay suddenly `there,' and he talks about what's going on around him.

I kept waiting for the book to go somewhere specific or come to a conclusion for Clay (and it's not very long, only about 230 pages). The end of the book has Clay in basically the exact same position, no real change or transition has taken place in him nor his surroundings, except that he has seen and experienced some really terrible things while at home, mostly because of spending time with his drug dealer, Rip. The writing is decent, and it does have a quality that reels you in and keeps you interested, although always with the hope that something crazy or exciting is coming, and it doesn't.

I do not know what the author's intent was in writing such a story (or how it became a national bestseller), whether to give a `snapshot' or commentary on an exaggerated group of youth, or if there is some deeper message or wake-up call in the book's edginess. Overall, it was worth a read, but I would not recommend it. Mostly because there's a lot of inappropriate material to wade through that I'm not sure why anyone would write about so pointlessly, and ultimately, even for myself, I don't think it was a `healthy' book to read, content-wise. I like dark and I like satirical, but this one pushed the envelope in some disturbing ways.

Whenever I read this book, I find my facial expression atrophying after the first few dozen pages, and usually end up finishing the whole thing in one sitting. Then I have to stare, numb and silent, for at least an hour before I can move on.

Even though "Less Than Zero" compulsively readable, it's definitely not trash... Bret Easton Ellis is mind-numbing, but not trash. He is a very, very disturbing author and his stories are deceptively simple. The stench of death and corruption that permeates off the pages is as delicate and cloying as a poisonous perfume... you notice it at every moment, but it is not oppressive enough to drive you away, so you keep devouring the words at a gum-chewing pace. Quite impossible to resist. It has the same steadily nihilistic tone as Camus' "The Stranger", but the imagery of the story is much more cinematic, and unmistakably modern (i.e. digital, mass-consumerist). Actually, speaking of "The Stranger", this is probably my favorite novel to read on the beach.

Effortless to read, very hard to shake off.

This novel is often compared to Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, but for my part, I think it's infinitely more related to Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway's minimalism and Iceberg Theory are obvious influences on this novel, and this isn't a bad thing. Not only does the style remind one of TSAR, but even the theme has something in common with it: a lost generation of rich kids with not much of a quest for a life.

Less Than Zero is narrated by Clay, back to Los Angeles for the holidays. Passivity, emptiness, casual sex, drugs. Nothing very cheerful, and it gets much worse.

Most of the novel is written in present tense, except for flashbacks, which are also written in italics.

In a typical Hemingway way, the book doesn't tell you what to think: you just get the facts, as in a movie without a voice, and what you do with that is up to you. This is one of those books that count on you to fill it with yourself; it doesn't chew in your stead.

Overall, I liked Less Than Zero. The style keeps things concise, and even when nothing much happens, it's never boring. And by "nothing much happens", I mean on the surface. Again, this is like a Hemingway short story, in which there doesn't seem to be much going on, but in reality there is.

This is not a Catcher in the Rye updated for the MTV generation, as often said (1980's MTV, though), this is The Sun Also Rises in California. You will not find Salinger in this novel as much as you will find Hemingway. Clay is 18 in the book, so you might be tempted to think it's a "coming of age" novel, but for his young age, Clay is not Holden Caulfield. Not by a long shot. While Holden can't get laid, even with a prostitute, Clay has sex with men and women without attachment, does cocaine, and is generally passive, a ghost in LA. If this is an updated Holden, he has been severely sedated (and perhaps this is apropos).

Recommended!

To say that I became completely, totally obsessed with Bret Easton Ellis and his writing after I read "Less than Zero" in 1986 to to put it mildly. To this day I still make references to it, quote lines from it, and just generally insist to everyone that I meet that they MUST read it. It is brilliant. It is masterful. It is quite simply, perfect. I love many other authors, but Ellis has such a flowing prose style that it makes you want to read his words again and again, which is what I have done with "Les Than Zero" an inordinate number of times. When "Vanity Fair" published an article on Ellis a few years back, I just had to write a letter to them to express my devotion to Ellis. They printed it in their October '94 (I'm desperately trying to remember the correct date here) issue. When it comes to Bret Easton Ellis, I am the Queen Mother of his fan club. EVERYONE SHOULD READ HIM!!

I read American Psycho a couple years ago after I'd fallen in love with the film adaptation. I really loved the writing style, the wit, and the satire it contained. It was one of the most horrifying stories I've ever read (as the movie cuts out a lot of the more disgusting details), yet it's also one of the funniest and most important.

I decided to buy Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction last week at Barnes & Noble and give 'em a read as I have a lot of free time, which is ironic since I'm on active duty in the USMC.

I finished Less Than Zero just today and I have to say it was a fantastic read. It's sort of The Catcher in the Rye as many people say, but it's got a touch of Napolean Dynamite where the lack of plot comes in as well. It probably contains more cocaine than Scarface and more 80's pop culture references than the whole of the MTV "I Love the 80's" series.

The story concerns a young man coming home for a month long Christmas vacation to his L.A. home where he hangs out with his fellow rich friends and travels from party to club to home to get high, drunk, and laid. The story is almost non-existent, but what really is there is a statement about youth being affected by sex, drugs, and other vices at too young of an age. It's one of the most disturbing stories I've read, probably second only to Ellis's own American Psycho. There is a lot of humor throughout, but it's often making a dark statement about 80's society, which is more interesting to look at in retrospect I think.

If you are a reader and not easily offended by any number of things, this is a good book to read in general. It's interesting to read something written by a 20 year old and also because of it's fascinating study.

After his first semester at a New England university, Clay comes home to California for a few weeks of rest, relaxation, and obscene decadence. That's the plot of this pretty obviously autobiographical first novel by 20-year-old Bret Easton Ellis. It stands as a powerful evocation of the time (early 80's) and the place (and we wonder why the rest of the world hates America) and an equally powerful indictment of the emptiness of immoral living. Clay and his friends have grown up attractive, affluent, and privileged, but ignored by their self-involved parents, and totally lacking any moral compass. They drift from one social gathering to the next, continually drinking and drugging (or recovering from same) and caring about no one - not even themselves. When one of Clay's acquaintances is asked why he has committed a particularly heinous act, he merely replies, "Why not?" Clearly Clay finds this argument convincing, since the notion of reporting such to the authorities never even comes up, perhaps because there are no authorities in Clay's world. Absent parental guidance, these young people live like animals, endlessly trying to sate their primitive appetites. They know nothing about loyalty or compassion, let alone love - other human beings are merely toys to exact pleasure from. Yet they wonder why none of them are very happy. A stunning indictment (in abstentia) of the Me generation and how miserably it failed Generation X.

The diary-like style of the prose is very effective at revealing Clay's state of mind throughout the story: a foggy daze, colored by a faint sense of disgust. There are plenty of moments when we wonder at characters' motivations - they often seem to be just adrift in a sea of filth. But none of them are much given to self-analysis; perhaps they don't believe it's worth the effort. The characters don't develop so much as descend into the Pit. It will take a pretty jaded reader to not be shocked by some of the horrors these young people find themselves engaging in. Definitely for mature audiences only.

Lets get this straight - less than Zero is not good literature. It is pretty formless, characters are barely developed at all, adjectives of people run to things like 'tan' or 'very tan'. It reads like a series of MTV style set pieces of young, wealthy teenagers in Los Angeles around the early 1980s, then ends. The shock impact that the novel engendered when it was launched has largely faded - no one is surprised nowadays that wealthy American teenagers are into drugs, Less than Zero seems almost tame in comparison with contemporary perceptions of the scene.

It is pretty forgettable as a novel, but it is noteworthy for Ellis's powerful voice, later matured into the powerful American Psycho, but still prevalent in this early novella, written at an age way before most writers even attempt their first novel. It is a curious style of bleak, pared down prose and choice popular culture references (especially music - from Ellis' days as a keyboard player in a new wave band) to illuminate a particlar mood. Ellis found his voice early, and for this, Less than Zero is a noteworthy achievement.

Bret Easton Ellis is my favorite author for a reason. He is able to capture your mind and make you become the very person you loathe. You read his novels and you just HATE the people he writes, the portrait he paints, but for those moments that you are engrossed in his book you have become those very demons. He's is a mastermind...A freaking genius. In his first novel, writen at 20 (which is so cool because I'm almost finished with my first novel, well my thinrd but my first to try and publish, an I'm only 20!) anyways, his first novel which is by far his best is written about Clay, a college student who visits home on Christmas break. The plot is somewhat moot and it really leaves you hanging at the end, where you just kind of stare at the page and go "what the @#$% just happened here" but believe me, you'll thank him for that later. Anyways, the life that Clay leads, the debatchury that his friends live is so engrossing, especially for someone like me who has never even smoked a cigerette and who married his high school sweetheart and has never slept with anyone but her its somowhat thrilling to live someone elses life for a while. The things that take place in this novel, while not nessisary to the story are quite disturbing in themselves. There is a very graphic rape scene that is unexpected and may leave a real bitter taste in your mouth. The subjects this book covers, everything from drugs, porn and prostitution and NOT for younger kids, and the attitudes expressed are not good. What I HATED about the movie adaptation was that they tried to sugar coat the novel, making Clay and Blare REFORMED and they were trying to help Julian get over his drug habit as well as the prostitution. THAT IS NOT HOW THIS BOOK GOES...EVERYONE DOES COKE AND NO ONE CARES THAT JULIAN GETS PIMPED OUT and that is what makes this book so amazing...it's real and gritty, true to itself and as contriversal as it can be. Ellis was determined not to conform to society, he told us his story just how he wanted to tell it and for that he should be praised.

I've never read Ellis before, and since he published this when he was just 21, I'm not sure if or how to really come to grips with it. The style is obviously super flat, though whether this is because Ellis simply wasn't able to write otherwise at such a young age or if he was just smart enough to realize he's probably too young to try, I can't say. But I found Clay's cool, detached narration to be, if nothing else, fairly engaging. Not revelatory, not brilliant, but interesting enough to keep me reading.

This book is, knowingly or not, basically like throwing acid in the face of Reagan's America. Trust fund brats in the San Fernando Valley with too much money, too much cocaine, too much apathetic sex. They go to cool parties and eat at 3 star restaurants the way other people have to wake up to work the early shift and cut coupons.

The self-rightous midwesterner in me thinks they just need some "structure." The bitter nihilist in me wants to either cheer them on or shoot them in the face. The slacker millenial in me shrugs and suspects that this is probably how it's always been for louche rich kids. Kind of like Public Enemy or early Prince, the transgressive punch this once had is kind of diluted with time, I can imagine a modern middle aged housewife reading this in 2013 and being disgusted, but I can't imagine her being totally caught off guard and utterly horrified like she might have been in the mid 80's. The simple fact is that the rarified world of nihilistic anxiety that Clay occupies is much more widespread in our day and age (come on, who doesn't have HBO, a DVD player and ample access to booze and drugs in 2013?) than it was in 1985, even if the wealth that powers it remains as exclusive as it ever did.

Maybe that means that Bret Easton Ellis, at only 21 years old, basically got it right the first time around and has only become more right about the way we live in the decades since. Maybe this book where people move zombie like from one empty pleasure on to another to another just can't be shocking because what's really shocking, or unrelatable in this book aside from a few moments of casual sexual slavery (and even those, sadly, aren't a huge imaginative stretch)? Whether you "like" Less than Zero or not, it's kind of impossible to deny that it's view of our reality is more widespread and more comprehensible now than it was almost 30 years ago. Highly recommended.

Really enjoyed this novel, I read it fairly quickly. It was a very easy read. It started out really good, than it just continuously got darker and darker. There were some bits and pieces of dark humor that I rather enjoyed mainly with Clay's 2 younger sisters. However there were 2 very disturbing scenes in this novel that made me feel almost physically ill. It was not what I was expecting, and they really caught me off guard. However, overall this was a pretty interesting novel. Makes me happy for what I have.

This is the only book I have ever purchased, read, then returned to the bookstore because it was so terrible. I read this book years ago and to this day it still pisses me off that I spent a day reading it because nothing interesting happens. Maybe I should have realized that going into it based on the title but damn, seriously, the main character goes to a party, does some drugs, wonders where his friend is, and considers dumping his girlfriend and it's only those same boring-ass things that happen on a loop throughout the book. That's it, that's the whole book. Don't waste your time.

Bret Easton Ellis is a master of depicting the vast emptiness that can come with too much privilege and not enough soul. I've also read "American Psycho" and "Glamorama", and there is definitely a common thread running through all three novels. People are searching for fulfillment in all the wrong places, and are digging themselves into deeper holes of despair. One of the darkest satirists out there, Ellis injects humor here and there, but his stories are mostly about people you really wouldn't want to know. His female characters are cardboard cut-outs, and the guys are emotionally unreachable. This early work doesn't contain much of Ellis' trademark over-the-top violence and sex, so if you are looking for an early version of "American Psycho", you'll be disappointed. A very interesting read, it is, as Ellis creates a cold, gray, empty world filled with characters who have lost their spiritual selves as well as their souls.

at its heart, this is a novel about depression; the depression of the central character, the depression that is present in wealthy, aimless young America. the symptoms of the depression appear to be twofold; a desire for non-existence, reminiscent of Larkin's 'beneath it all desire of oblivion runs', and represented most forcefully by the street sign that invites the character to 'disappear here'; and the idea that people don't merge, an idea the novel opens with - we begin in a car on a freeway that doesn't merge, and are later shown an act of sex where the central character isn't allowed to touch the girl, but both masturbate independently instead. Christian TV drones in the background, which the central character doesn't connect with. girls and boys are screwed randomly and without feeling. though the author attempts to draw some kind of moral at the end of the book, the attempt is half-hearted, and what we are really left with is an intense sense of desiderium morti. this is a very powerful piece of writing that weighs on the soul.