{"id":637,"date":"2013-04-01T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T18:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=637"},"modified":"2013-03-20T10:10:07","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T18:10:07","slug":"imperial-bedrooms-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/01\/imperial-bedrooms-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Imperial Bedrooms– review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Imperial<\/a>Imperial Bedrooms<\/a> by Bret Easton Ellis<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Read this having recently reread Less Than Zero<\/em>, the prequel. (And what a prequel it was!) Ellis launches the sequel by invoking the prequel and the movie based on it, explaining that the writer has changed but the narrator has not. A tidy little link, there. A good way to stitch together tomes otherwise severed by 25 years.<\/p>\n

In my review of Less Than Zero<\/em> I mentioned that when I had originally read it I was impressed, and when I read it again recently I was not so impressed. What I didn\u2019t mention was that after reading Less than Zero<\/em> the first time I read American Psycho<\/em> and was impressed, but promised myself I would never read it again. After my second reading of Less Than Zero<\/em> I was beginning to think maybe my promise was silly and I should reread American Psycho<\/em> after all and see if my attitude towards it would change as well. But now that I\u2019ve read Imperial Bedrooms<\/em>, I don\u2019t need to re-read American Psycho<\/em>, since Ellis has done so for me.<\/p>\n

Yeah. I\u2019m calling Imperial Bedrooms<\/em> \u201cLess Than Zero<\/em> plus American Psycho<\/em>.\u201d Also, Glamorama<\/em>. Also a bit of Lunar Park<\/em>, but only a bit. Also, some Mulholland Drive<\/em>, but without any of David Lynch\u2019s style (which should not be taken as praise or insult). Also, Fight Club<\/em>, but not really.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly, the cast of Less Than Zero<\/em> are middle-aged now\u2026 but if alienation is a theme, there\u2019s no way for those of us who are middle aged will in the least identify with anything going on in this book. Not at all. Aside from a few comments a few people make, there\u2019s little or no use to which this middle-agedness is used. So why bring it up? I guess because the ennui of the 80s elite is the same as the ennui of the over-the-hill elite. Young people have energy now, but old people, well, they\u2019ve always been and always will be self-indulgent pricks.<\/p>\n

Imperial Bedrooms<\/em> ends up being about sadism, and nothing more. And we learn that sadism is not merely cruelty. A sadist does not merely enjoy causing pain, but enjoys the pain caused to someone who asks for it. But the person asking for it cannot enjoy it\u2014or it\u2019s not pain. The sadist thrives on the contradiction of a person\u2019s wanting something he or she doesn\u2019t want. Yeah, I\u2019m going to call Ellis a sadist. I\u2019m going to say he wants us to want the bruises this book causes, bruises we don\u2019t enjoy.<\/p>\n

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

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis My rating: 3 of 5 stars Read this having recently reread Less Than Zero, the prequel. (And what a prequel it was!) Ellis launches the sequel by invoking the prequel and the movie based on it, explaining that the writer has changed but the narrator has not. A tidy … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Imperial Bedrooms– 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-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-ah","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","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=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":638,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}