Wednesday, December 19, 2018

2018 Reading: Less Than Zero

#36 A book set in the decade you were born


Oh Brett, I love how your books leave no happiness whatsoever at the end of them. It's all just drugs, angst, and 80's music. Love it. (Plus, I saw this movie a while ago and you cannot go wrong with Robert Downey, Jr. being forced to "entertain" male clients for his drug dealer James Spader and Andrew McCarthy full-on Winnie-the-Poohs it in his apartment.)

Dear God, the amount of cocaine in the first few pages alone would keep me buzzing for the rest of my life.

There seems to always be a foreboding sense of ennui in Ellis's characters. Describing these fabulous places, food, restaurants, towering expensive buildings, cars, and clothes, but then ignoring them. Material things only represent an outside that must be maintained for society's sake while the inside is dark and hollow, desperately using things like drugs and sex to find meaning when really there is none. It's clear to see these characters have been put into this world, but find no comfort in it nor do they work to maintain it so their entire existence comes off as meaningless.

"Where are we going?" I asked
"I don't know," he said. "Just driving."
"But this road doesn't go anywhere, " I told him.
"That doesn't matter."
"What does?" I asked, after a little while.
"Just that we're on it, dude," he said.
(pg. 195)

That conversation stuck with me for some reason.

Side note: I think the title refers to the amount of fucks given by the main character.

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