Book Review: Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO MERGE IN LA.

About the Book

Title: Less Than Zero

Author: Bret Easton Ellis

Published: 1985

Genre: fiction

My Rating: 4/5 stars

The Premise

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay’s holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs, and into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.

My Thoughts

PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO MERGE IN LA.

Picture a bunch of rich people with too much time on their hands, too many drugs at their disposal and a severe lack of empathy. Infuse that with an unhealthy dose of nihilism and melancholy and you have this book. It reminded me both of American Psycho , of course by the same author, and also of The Catcher in the Rye a bit. As for the Catcher comparison, both books feature a young male main character who feels disaffected and disconnected from the world.

“You’re a beautiful boy, Clay, but that’s about it”

Clay has rich parents and too much freedom. Home from college, he spends the entirety of the book hanging around his other rich friends, getting high and hooking up. He has no real relationships. The side characters come and go are and relatively forgettable, mostly due to Clay’s lack of consideration or real connection to him. The closest friend he has is possibly Blair, but he distances himself from her at the slightest indication that she wants their relationship to be more than surface level sexual. “Surface-level” is how I’d describe most of Clay’s thoughts and interactions with the world. He’s so disconnected that it almost seems dissociative. In this regard the book kind of reminded me of The Stranger by Camus.

Less Than Zero occasionally drifts away from its mundane recollections and displays of detachment to scenes of startling brutality. Trafficking, rape and snuff films still do not break through Clay’s nihilism. We get only glimpses of his reactions to these events. He reacts usually by leaving the scene, as if by removing it from his sight he absolves himself of responsibility. It felt almost like watching the slow decay of someone who has given up on being a good person.

If I had to describe what Less Than Zero is about, I’d say that it’s a slice-of-life depiction of someone who has willfully separated themselves from their emotions and the world around them, living only for hedonism and in denial of its consequences. It is a portrait of someone so totally lost, they have no idea they are lost.

“What do you do?’ she asks, holding out the vest.
‘What do you do?’
‘What do you do?’ she asks, her voice shaking. ‘Don’t ask me, please. Okay, Clay?’
‘Why not?’
She sits on the mattress after I get up. Muriel screams.
‘Because… I don’t know,’ she sighs.
I look at her and don’t feel anything and walk out with my vest.”

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