{"id":626,"date":"2013-03-18T10:00:08","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T18:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=626"},"modified":"2013-03-12T10:28:04","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T18:28:04","slug":"less-than-zero-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/18\/less-than-zero-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Less Than Zero– review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Less<\/a>Less Than Zero<\/a> by Bret Easton Ellis<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

I first read this about 20 years ago, or so, and I remember, at the time, I was rather impressed. This time, however, not so much. Then again I\u2019m older now, more jaded and cynical, and not even the kind of jaded and cynical I thought I was when I was a fresh-faced post-teen. I\u2019ve read a few thousand novels since then, and in as much as we can recognize these things when we\u2019re in the midst of them, \u201ccontemporary literature\u201d has changed.<\/p>\n

(But I still like it more than Franzen).<\/p>\n

(FWIW, I only re-read this one because a friend of mine was comparing his Girl Scout cookie addiction to the movie version of the book, and I decided to write a short story about it . You can read A Hazy Shade of Thin Mint<\/a> if you want).<\/p>\n

When a 19 year-old kid writes a roman a clef that winds up being a tour de force, one can\u2019t help but read other things by him and make comparisons. So I read Rules of Attraction<\/em> and American Psycho<\/em> and found them to be pretty good; Years later, Glamorama<\/em> and Lunar Park<\/em>, not so good. The clef<\/em> had gone flat, to abuse the phrase. The tour<\/em> had lost its force.<\/p>\n

Now, on re-reading, I\u2019m thinking it\u2019s just me that\u2019s changed. Ellis himself, in an interview with Amazon<\/a>, says that he, after 20 years, finally sees why the book is so awesome. So it\u2019s definitely just me.<\/p>\n

And now I\u2019ve discovered that Ellis finally wrote a sequel, Imperial Bedrooms<\/a> with all the main characters grown up and facing middle-age. So maybe there\u2019s a chance for me to go, if not full circle, at least back in step with Ellis. I guess I\u2019ll read this sequel. If it\u2019s mediocre, perhaps that\u2019s a sign of brilliance, that Ellis addresses his audience the way they address their reading. Youth is too enthusiastic, middle-agers are too mediocre, and mixing them for together, mediocrity always wins.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis My rating: 3 of 5 stars I first read this about 20 years ago, or so, and I remember, at the time, I was rather impressed. This time, however, not so much. Then again I\u2019m older now, more jaded and cynical, and not even the kind of jaded … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Less Than Zero– review on Goodreads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-a6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}