Less than Zero (novel)
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| Author | Bret Easton Ellis |
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| Language | English |
Publication date | 1985 |
| Publication place | United States |
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 the winter break. He spends much of the novel going to parties and doing drugs with his friends. During this time, he must decide whether or not he wants to restart a relationship with Blair, for whom he is uncertain about his feelings. Meanwhile, Clay has one night stands with a few men and women on the side while his relationship with Blair goes downhill. At the same time, he attempts to renew his relationship with his best friend, Julian, who has become a prostitute and drug addict. Throughout his descent into the netherworld of the L.A. drug scene, he loses his faith in his friends, and grows alienated with the amoral party culture he once embraced. He is greatly disturbed by three events: first, his friend Trent shows a snuff film at a party and only he and Blair seem to be bothered by it; later, he is forced to sit in a chair for five hours to watch Julian sell himself to a businessman from Muncie, Indiana, in order to get money to support his heroin habit; finally, he meets friends at a concert, only to leave and not only find a dead body that everyone wants to see, but a 12-year-old girl who is naked and tied to the posts of a friend's bed, and once again his friends are attracted to it. Eventually, these events lead him to leave Los Angeles, possibly (as the ending seems to suggest) never to return. There are certain remarks about Elvis Costello in the novel that strengthen the theme of "Less Than Zero."
Literary significance and criticism
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."[1]
Characters
Less Than Zero has an extensive cast of characters. Listed below are the main ones who are prominent throughout the novel.
- Clay - Protagonist, student at Camden College in New Hampshire, who comes home to Los Angeles for Christmas, and meets many of his old friends while going to parties, concerts, and just navigating the city. In the novel, Clay is bisexual, he has at least one affair with a man during the course of the book, but he still longs to be with Blair. These events, which span four weeks, disillusion Clay with the people and the city, and he leaves for New Hampshire at the end, possibly never to return.
- Blair - Clay’s girlfriend, Clay is unsure of his feelings for her throughout the novel, and it’s made apparent through the story that neither has been very faithful to the other. By the end of the book, it appears she still wants to be with Clay and pleads with him not to go, though it’s uncertain whether or not Clay feels the same way. She’s a student at USC. She is also described as being Jewish.
- Julian - Clay’s friend from grade school and high school, who Clay spends much of the book looking for and finding out what he’s doing. He turns out to be both a prostitute and a drug addict. The character is made more tragic through Clay's recurring memories of Julian and himself as small children.
- Trent - Another one of Clay’s friends, he’s a male model who attends UCLA. He’ll say things to Clay that Clay doesn’t understand, and Clay gradually becomes disheartened with him as the story progresses. Trent is made increasingly more unethical throughout the book until, in the last scene with him, 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 fund from selling coke “might never run out.” At the end of the story, he shows Clay a 12-year-old girl naked and tied to his bed to be a sex slave.
- 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".)
- 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.
- Alana - Another one of Blair’s friends.
- Finn - A pimp who helps Julian when he has a debt to pay. In public, he acts kindly towards Julian, calling him “his best boy” and often showing him to all his clients, but in private he can act very mean, forcibly giving him heroin shots and calling him ungrateful and would even abuse him sexually.
- Clay’s family - Clay has two sisters, who are 13 and 15, although his narration suggests he cannot distinguish between them. 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, 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, TV or theatrical adaptations
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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.[2] In the film, Clay is an anti-drug crusader who returns home from college to try and 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. Ellis claimed that there was no connection between the book and the movie, except for the title and the names of the characters.
Director Quentin Tarantino has expressed interest in filming a much more faithful adaptation of the book.[citation needed]
Sequel
Ellis announced (in a Danish television interview available at the network homepage[3]) after the release of his most recent novel Lunar Park that he may write a sequel to Less Than Zero: a story about the same characters set in the present day and focus on their lives as they appoach middle age.
In January 2008, Ellis participated in an interview discussing The Delivery Man (Novel), a debut novel by the author Joe McGinniss Jr., (Ellis was reportedly an early champion of "The Delivery Man" as noted in this New York Times article[4]). During the| McGinniss Jr. interview, 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 a Elvis Costello record (both an 1982 album and song).
Trivia
The opening track of the Bloc Party album A Weekend in the City, named Song For Clay (Disappear Here), is inspired by this book.[5]
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 and "outdo" the film they saw.
"Less Than Hero" is the title of an episode of the cartoon Futurama.