E is for Ellis

I feel like I miss the point with Bret Easton Ellis. I’ve read half of American Psycho, all of Rules of Attraction and now all of Less than Zero, and it feels like a joke I don’t get. I couldn’t read American Psycho as all of the identikit businessmen were getting me down. We get it, everyone’s the same, we’re not individual etc etc. I enjoyed Rules of Attraction because it had more actual plot and better characters. Less Than Zero unfortunately falls into the first bracket of Ellis books.

Clay is a thin, blond, tan college student who’s come home for the holidays. All of his friends are thin, blond and tan. Most of them are college students, some of them are drug dealers but the majority of them combine the two lifestyles, while remaining thin, blond and tan. You get the idea – Clay’s rich parents don’t pay him enough attention, but neither do the parents of his thin, blond, tan friends, so it’s all okay.

There really isn’t a lot more to tell about story. I like the verbal motifs that crop up throughout the novel – Clay picks up on a phrase his friend says about driving (people are afraid to merge) which he builds on until it becomes a chorus of mis-matched, out of context and meaningful words on how shit life is.

Ellis reminds me of Douglas Coupland, but he lacks any of the wry humour and downright humanity present in JPod, for example.

Some things I learned from Wikipedia and imdb: Less Than Zero was Ellis’ first book. There’s a film of it too, released in 1987 and starring John Hughes muse Andrew McCarthy as the aforementioned Clay. Robert Downey Jr and James Spader also appear in the cast list, as fairly prominent characters. Interestingly, none of them are blond, thin and tan.

Seriously, if anyone can explain to me why I should like Ellis’ writing, please do. I don’t dislike it, and I can appreciate that his style may be loved by many, but for me he just doesn’t press the right buttons. There are only so many business cards, lines of coke or blond, tan people I can stomach without reading something else.

B is for Bennett, Alan

I feel like I cheated a bit this week. The Uncommon Reader is definitely not one of Bennett’s longest novels, clocking in at barely one hundred and thirty pages. In this case, the old ‘good things come in small packages’ adage rings true, and I thoroughly enjoyed the foray into Our Majesty’s psyche.

So, the story begins with a travelling library in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. The Queen stumbles across it after chasing a wayward corgi into the bins. Feeling obliged to borrow a book owing to the etiquette instilled in her all her life, she does so. This opens the floodgates on her creativity and she begins to devour books at an alarming rate, alarming, at least, to the rest of her household. She employs one of the kitchen boys who she met in the library van to be her adviser, pointing her towards books and authors which she may be interested in. The Queen discovers a world she never knew before, where her status does not immediately command deference from the words itself. For the first time in her life, she’s treated like a normal human, the same as everyone else.

This new found interest causes discomfort for her public appearances – she’s late for appointments, disinterested in previous hobbies (shooting, walking etc), wears the same clothes day after day and is so passionate that she deviates from the ‘script’ when talking to her subjects. This last set of behaviour appears mortifying to her staff, who find themselves having to contend with a trolley full of books given to HRH by the public, once they’d caught on, as well as embarrassing, stilted conversations which would have lasted forty five seconds previously.

Eventually her reading leads to other things, and she begins to write instead. It’s oddly heart-warming – the Queen finally finds her own voice among the bloodline and is inspired to write. Not just a memoir but a fiction novel, much to her household’s horror. Bennett writes superbly as in a few short paragraphs he conveys the claustrophobia that she feels in everyday life – she is the freest woman in the kingdom but at the same time, she cannot do anything alone or without itinerary. Books help her escape, as anyone who reads can agree with. Her only sorrow is that she started too late to read everything.

I found her encounters with authors interesting, and the accounts of that were darkly comic, such as the one with TS Eliot. She reveals that she wishes she made more of her connections while the authors were still alive, as then she would have found something more to say than: “Good journey?”.

It’s a strange blend of real and fantasy, as Tony Blair (unnamed, but pretty obvious), the UEA Creative Writing department and even the Queen herself spring from the page, fully formed and human. At times it seemed real, as if Alan Bennett had squashed into a corner behind the curtain to write about the events at the palace.

I would recommend this book to anyone with a couple of hours to spare, who can identify with how consuming reading can be, especially in the face of a really good read.