Growing up with Bret Easton Ellis

Tuesday 6th Jul 2010
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Bret Easton Ellis holds a unique place in American literature. Whilst his contemporaries have mellowed, Bret, I am delighted to say, refuses to.

Read the reviews today and there are still those who get him and those who don't. Thanks, Hari; sorry, Lionel.

So it was 25 years ago when Picador published Less Than Zero. It bemused, delighted and confused in equal measure. I read it at the till of the bookshop I was working in and loved it. He too was 21 years old, but he had written a book that was like nothing else I had ever read (and he'd experienced much more in his first 21 years than I would in a lifetime).


The first readers who were asked to report on Less Than Zero for Picador couldn't really place it and only brave and passionate advocacy managed to ensure it was published.

I was recently shown from our archive a couple of (sadly anonymous) reader's reports on that very first manuscript.

One didn't get it at all, concluding: "Clay and his wired, tanned friends have barely a personality between them, less than zero indeed. I'd pass"

Another report was more pragmatic: "Will it sell? It has all the ingredients of sex and violence and rock and drugs and glamour. But it has no real story. It's good as far as it goes. But it's not particularly intelligent or demanding. I don't think it measures up in the long term. But on cheap paper and a good display at the railway stations, the title could turn a quick profit."

25 years on Less Than Zero has sold god knows how many copies and has become a modern classic. And Bret Easton Ellis has retained his impeccable ability to divide readers and his unique power to shock.

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John Self
John Self posted a comment
Tuesday 6th Jul 2010 03:37
Nice to see the early readers' reactions to Ellis. But I think it's unfair to say there are "those who get him and those who don't". I "get" him, and rate most of his books highly - even The Informers and Glamorama - but I side more with Lionel Shriver on Imperial Bedrooms than with Hari Kunzru. (Even so, I think her review unfair as, having decided she is going to come down against the book, she seeks to emphasise this by pretending there is nothing worthwhile in it, a patently false claim.) The review which most closely matches my own views is J Robert Lennon's in the LRB.

Interesting, too, to see that that second readers' rhetorical question in their report was not "Is it good?" but "Will it sell?" That's the pragmatism of publishing which we demanding members of the reading public often forget.
 
Marion Clarke
Marion Clarke posted a comment
Friday 30th Jul 2010 03:43
I was a 20 when I bought this book (think I still have it someone, or perhaps it's knocking about in my parents' house) and I remember being shocked by it but also totally enthralled. I had to read American Psycho of course when it was published. I am looking forward to reading 'Imperial Bedrooms' which I only recently became aware of through a magazine interview.
 

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