Bret Easton Ellis's novel 'Imperial Bedrooms' re-casts the protagonist's from his debut novel 'Less Than Zero', now in their 40's, still in LA, still genuflecting to a Consumer culture that imprisons them whilst simultaneously selling them notions of escape. Yet, despite some critics suggesting such a revisit to his own literary past signifies that Ellis has run out of ideas, the truth is far from it. 'Imperial Bedrooms' is a taut, hallucinogenic novel - part Fitzgerald's 'Last Tycoon', part Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive', part Chandler's LA Noir - a Cocaine-addled stream of consciousness characterised by envy and desire. More pertinently it is very much of the moment. As with Ellis's pseudo-autobiography 'Lunar Park' the novel is haunted by ghosts, and not just via the resurrection of the 'Less Than Zero' characters - Clay, Julian, Blair - whose vampiric narcissism kick started Ellis's writing career with such velocity in 1986, when he was just 19 years old. No, there are freakier echoes here, geographic and cultural revisitations that Ellis expertly twists to lend new meaning (e.g "the billboard that read "DISAPPEAR HERE" in 'Less Than Zero' reappears as a bloody threat on the mirror in Clay's Condo). FM radio permeates the novel, no longer as a feel-good soundtrack but as fragmented Pop that drifts in and out of ear shot ("U2 Christmas songs drowning everything out" / "Bat For Lashes singing "What's A Girl To Do?" as "lightening illuminates a turquoise mural on a freeway underpass"). The temporary nature of this music heightens the eerie and pervasive silence that lingers in the lifeless apartments and on the lonely night drives Clay takes around LA (Ellis evoking the same deathly quiet of 'ice cubes rattling in the cocktails' that begin Bugolisi's Manson bio 'Helter Skelter'). Technology hasn't liberated interpersonal communication in 'Imperial Bedrooms', it simply means sentences now have to battle static, that images can pixelate and ghost. Clay receives numerous stalker's texts and incriminating CD Movies - but they only confuse him further, exacerbate his isolation, render him numb.
In this sense, Ellis's novel is very much 'Hypnagogic'. According to Simon Reynold's, Hypnagogic Pop (or Chillwave to give it its other, less formal name) - "is a term for a new generation of American lo-fi musicians who channel the 1980s sounds of mainstream radio rock, New Wave MTV pop, sedative New Age and the peppy synth-driven soundtracks of Hollywood blockbusters." 'Imperial Bedrooms' is conceived along the same lines, the pre-history of 'Less Than Zero' re-imagined to be both the same yet somehow different. 'Imperial Bedrooms' is a novel about how supposedly disposable Pop culture manages to linger and define, how consumerism enables our most anti-human instincts, about how isolated we remain in a world of Social Network chatter. Ellis filters his own literary past, ransacks his character's earlier lives and blurs them with the dull throb of mainstream Pop Culture. He regurgitates the same 80's DNA that fascinates Ariel Pink, Washed Out, James Ferraro et al and like them appropriates it to give new meaning to the present. Far from 'running out of ideas' then 'Imperial Bedrooms's' 'retromania' operates as a stark, astute vision on the very times we are all now living through. It is the past again yes, but it is utterly rooted in the present.
2 comments:
Do you think it would be worth rereading Less than Zero before trying this? It's been two decades and I'm not sure I'd remember it enough to spot the links you mention.
Does he still have the vampires? I was never persuaded those worked as well as he seemed to think.
Less than Zero reminds me of some Huxley in its portrait of bright young things racing to
It's probably worth re-reading Less Than Zero anyway, seeing how it stands up all these years later. I only read it for the first time about 2 years ago. I found it a bit catatonic and dead, yet it hasn't left me since largely because this mood was so intense. It's very easy with Ellis to confuse a dislike of the characters and themes with a dislike of his writing. Yet his themes and style are entirely his own and linger in a way few contemporary writers can claim (in this way, he's a bit like Ballard. Martin Amis once said 'Ballard's novels go to work once you've put them down', and I think the same is true of Ellis's). There is genus at work here. I can see the Huxley link ('Chrome Yellow' most obviously). Fitzgerald is the other obvious connection (albeit Fitzgerald on Lithium. Both obsess about a social milieu, explore coming of age themes, a sense of transience, Hollywood even. Ellis isn't as great as prose writer as Fitzgerald (who is?) but there's definitely a link. Ellis's prose reads like a Coke heads stream of consciousness, rambling, yet precise.
No Vampires in Imperial Bedrooms (not that I recall any in LTZ. Only Vampires I can recall are in The Informers, though they were left out of the film.) Enhancing the Chillwave connection, the band LA Vampires name was inspired by Ellis's work.
Imperial Bedrooms can be read on it's own, and is less catatonic than LTZ - yet probably would benefit from familiarity with LTZ. Be great to read your thoughts comparing the two texts at Pechorin's Journal. No pressure!
Post a Comment