Less Than Zero (novel)

Less Than Zero
American 1st Edition Cover
Author(s)	Bret Easton Ellis
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	1985
Media type	Print
Pages	208 (First Edition)
ISBN	9780140088946
OCLC Number	13746073
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Classification	PS3555.L5937 L4 1986
Followed by	Imperial Bedrooms

Less Than Zero is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1985. It was his first published effort, released while he was 21 and still in college.

Plot summary

Titled after the Elvis Costello song of the same name, the novel follows the life of Clay, a rich young college student who has returned to his hometown of Los Angeles, California for winter break during the early 1980s. Through stream of consciousness, first person narration, Clay describes his progressive alienation from the youth party scene, loss of faith in his friends, and his meditations on important events in his recent past.

After reuniting with his friend Trent, now a successful model, Clay embarks on a series of drug-fueled nights of partying, where he picks up various men and women for one-night-stands. Clay additionally uses the parties as a means to try and reconnect with two high school acquaintances: His ex-girlfriend, Blair, with whom he spent a disastrous week-long vacation before going to college; and his best friend, Julian, with whom he hasn't spoken for months. In between parties, Clay looks back on a vacation spent with his parents and grandparents, during which he seemed to be the only person concerned that his grandmother was dying of cancer.

Over time, Clay becomes progressively disillusioned with the party scene as he witnesses the apathy of his friends towards the suffering of one another and those around them: At one party, he watches as the revelers joke and take Polaroids of his friend, Muriel, while she shoots heroin; at another, he and Blair are the only two who exhibit revulsion when Trent shows a snuff film, which sexually excites several partygoers.

Clay ultimately tracks down Julian, whom he learns has become a heroin addict and turned to prostitution in order to pay off a debt to his drug dealer. Not believing what he has been told, Clay insists on accompanying Julian on a job, where he is forced by a john to watch he and Julian have sex for several hours.

After attending a concert with his friends, Clay accompanies them to a derelict alley where they stare at the corpse of a murder victim who they have left there to decompose. Afterward, Clay follows the group back to the home of his drug dealer, Rip, who wants to show off his latest acquisition: A twelve-year-old sex slave whom Rip has been keeping drugged in his bedroom. After Clay admonishes Rip that he has no reason to risk losing everything he has, Rip chides him that he "has nothing to lose" before encouraging everyone to abuse the girl. Clay leaves, but Trent decides to stay so that he can rape the girl.

Now feeling completely isolated and with Winter break coming to an end, Clay returns to college in New England.

Literary significance and criticism

Less Than Zero was Ellis' first attempt at a proper novel, following much roman à clef juvenilia. Its first draft was, reportedly, incredibly emotional and over-wrought, and in the third-person. Ellis' creative writing teacher, novelist Joe McGinniss, advised that he return to the first person style of roman à clef (which Ellis was hesitant to do) and Ellis stripped it back, from there evoking the minimalist style for which it became famous.

The author on his own novel:

"I read it for the first time in about 20 years this year—recently. It wasn't so bad. I get it. I get fan mail now from people who weren't really born yet when the book came out. I don't think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where it comes from. I get what it is. I know that sounds so ambiguous. It's sort of out of my hands and it has its reputation, so what can you do about it? There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty good writing for someone who was 19. I was pretty surprised by the level of writing."

In the former child actor Danny Bonaduce's 2002 autobiography, Random Acts of Badness, Bonaduce notes the striking similarity between the fictional high school in Less Than Zero and the now-closed California Prep High School in Encino, California, where Bonaduce, recording artist Michael Jackson, film actor Christian Brando, and other children of wealth and celebrity went to school together. In commenting on the novel, Bonaduce notes, "When the book Less Than Zero came out, all my classmates were pissed. Not because it was an exact portrayal of our school - but because we failed to get any royalties."

Characters

Less Than Zero has an extensive cast of characters. Listed below are the main ones who are prominent throughout the novel.

Clay

The 18-year-old protagonist, student at Camden College in New Hampshire, who comes home to Los Angeles for Christmas and meets his old friends. He revives his old life: parties, concerts, drugs, sex, the city. Clay has affairs with both men and women, but he goes through periods of apathy and longing about his girlfriend Blair.

Blair

Clay’s girlfriend. She’s a student at USC. Clay is unsure how he feels about her and neither has been faithful. They vacation together, and it's good at first, but then it becomes tedious and ends sourly.

Julian

Clay’s friend from grade school and high school. Julian is often described as "thin" and many of Clay's friends declare him "completely fucked up". Julian has become a heroin addict and a gigolo.

Trent

Another of Clay’s friends, a model who attends UCLA. He’ll say things that Clay doesn’t understand, and Clay gradually becomes disheartened with him. Trent is shown as increasingly unethical and immoral, and in his last scene he rapes a twelve-year-old girl.

Rip

Clay’s dealer. Sporting a fedora and a penthouse on Wilshire Boulevard, Rip is also a DJ, but feels his trust fund “might never run out.” At the end of the story, he shows Clay and other boys a 12-year-old girl naked, drugged and tied to his bed to be a sex slave. When a distressed Clay questions Rip as to why he has done this, Rip replies "(because) I don't have anything to lose."

Daniel

Daniel is another student who attends Camden and is from Los Angeles. Many of the characters think he's gay. In his earlier appearances, he was worried he had gotten a girl from Camden, Vanden, pregnant, but then doesn’t seem to care. In his final appearance, he tells Clay he won’t return to Camden, opting instead to stay in LA and write a screenplay. (Vanden, who isn't seen in the book, later appears in American Psycho as well as The Rules of Attraction, in which she and Clay are briefly "involved".)

The Handsome Dunce

A minor character who has a cameo speaking to Clay at Blair's Christmas party. "They're playing the Eagles' he says and then 'Huh?' as Clay asks him questions, then he laughs at the 'U.C.R.A' comment by Trent when he imitates a Japanese man. He goes on to appear in The Rules of Attraction, where it is revealed that he goes to Camden College and that his name is Steve.

Kim

One of Blair’s friends. During the course of the book she’s never sure where her mother (a film producer) is, and only knows based on what she reads in trade papers. At one point in the novel, she and Clay both agitate each other notably when they repeatedly question each other "What do you do?" "What do you do?" this ending with Kim finally replying "Don't ask me because...I don't know."

Alana

Another one of Blair’s friends. She has an abortion and comes to Clay afterwards. Clay lets her stay in his room for the night while he lies by the pool till dawn. When he goes back up, she informs him she has bled a lot and feels weak before thanking him. When he asks "What for?" she says "I don't know" and leaves. When Clay flushes his toilet, it becomes clogged up with tissue and blood clouds the water. Clay puts the lid down as "there's nothing else for me to do"

Muriel

An anorexic girl, whom Clay visits at a rehabilitation centre where she asks him for a cigarette. She appears a few times in the novel, most notably at a New Year's party where she is seen by Clay, Blair, a character named Spit and a photographer injecting heroin, whilst laughing and crying.

Finn

Julian's pimp, "helping" him pay off his drug debt. In public, he acts kindly towards Julian, calling him "Julie" and "his best boy”, often showing him off to all his clients, but in private he abuses Julian emotionally and sexually, and forces him to shoot up heroin.

Clay’s family

Clay has two sisters, who are 13 and 15, although his narration suggests he cannot distinguish between them and is unsure of their age. His parents are separated; his mother occupies their house while his father lives in an apartment. His mom has no job but nonetheless lives a life of luxury off of her ex-husband's large alimony payments, and his dad is “in the film business”, with an office in Century City. In flashbacks, Clay talks about his grandfather, proprietor of several hotels, and his grandmother, now deceased.

In addition to these characters, there are also many others who only make one appearance in the story, and there are also several who are only mentioned and don’t even appear.

Film adaptation

Main article: Less Than Zero (film)

Less Than Zero was very loosely adapted into a movie in 1987 by 20th Century Fox. It starred Andrew McCarthy as Clay, Robert Downey Jr. as Julian, Jami Gertz as Blair, and James Spader as Rip. A then-unknown Brad Pitt also appeared as an extra. In the film, Clay is an anti-drug crusader who returns home from college to try to rescue his friends from their various narcotics addictions.

Due to all the liberties taken, Ellis refused to see the movie. In a recent interview with Amazon.com, Ellis stated that he has warmed up to the movie, and appreciates it visually as a snapshot of a particular time.^{[citation needed]} Ellis claimed that there was no connection between the book and the movie, except for the title and the names of the characters.

Sequel

Main article: Imperial Bedrooms

Ellis announced (in a Danish television interview available at the network homepage) after the release of his most recent novel Lunar Park that he would be writing a sequel to Less Than Zero: a story following the same characters, set in the present day, that focuses on their lives as they approach middle age. The book appeared in 2010.

In January 2008, Ellis announced that his forthcoming novel would be a sequel to "Less Than Zero" and would be titled Imperial Bedrooms, which, in keeping with the original, is taken from the title of an Elvis Costello record (both a 1982 album and song).

Reception

25 years later, upon the release of the sequel, Details commented on Less Than Zero and its original reviews, stating: "Years ago people could have read some of your books and said, "Oh, this is just nihilism. These people don't exist! There's nobody that rich and stupid and narcissistic!"". (The article details, "When Michiko Kakutani first reviewed Less Than Zero in The New York Times in June of 1985, she began the review this way: "This is one of the most disturbing novels I've read in a long time."") Ellis remarks "surprise!". They also credit him with "In a way, [inventing] Paris Hilton and Spencer Pratt and the Kardashians."

Cultural references

• The opening track of the Bloc Party album A Weekend in the City, named "Song For Clay (Disappear Here)", is inspired by this book.
• Norwegian industrial/rock band Zeromancer cited the novel as the origin of their name.
• Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers namecheck Less Than Zero in their 1993 song "Patrick Bateman"—a song inspired by the antihero of Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho.
• Douglas E. Winter's story "Less Than Zombie" is written as a horror-fiction tribute and send-up of Less Than Zero. It is essentially a re-telling of the snuff film scene in the story, except the narrator is just as excited by it as his friends are. After viewing the film, the group resolves to film themselves killing one of their friends in order to try to "outdo" the film they saw.
• "Less Than Hero" is the title of an episode of the cartoon Futurama.
• Portuguese metal band Moonspell named a track in their 1999 album The Butterfly Effect "Disappear Here", having its lyrics inspired by the novel.
• In the 2009 movie 17 Again, the novel is referenced during the courtroom scene, where Mike says his high school sweetheart was reading Less Than Zero when he first saw her.
• Andrew Weatherhead's short story Bret Easton Ellis' First Novel references in its title and in the story Less Than Zero.
• In NYC-author Tao Lin's novella Shoplifting from American Apparel a character is said to be "reading a Bret Easton Ellis novel" while on a bus to Atlantic City. In interviews Lin has said the character was reading Less Than Zero.
• Yes Then Zero is the title of an episode of the show Gossip Girl.

External links

• Less Than Zero at the Internet Movie Database