I'm going to use Tumblr the way it should be used - a way of documenting thoughts and ideas that aren't fully fledged enough for a traditional blog post.
So I read Less Than Zero, the #1985 debut novel from Bret Easton Ellis, known mainly for writing American Psycho.
Yes, I should have read it when I was 18. Such immature reading tastes etc. But you do things when you do them, don't you. I am fine with it. Plus, I'm not sure what a 40-something bloke should be reading.
I love California, especially the dark side. And this novel infamously embodies that. If you don't know the book, it's about Clay, who returns home to LA for Christmas on a break from university. He sees people - friends and non-friends - in a story awash with drugs, parties, ennui, nihilism (or is it really just apathy) and MTV.
What happens? Well,I assumed there was a murder, but there isn't. He just has an increasingly bleak time until he decides it's time to go back to school.
So there's no massive event. At least not that Clay is directly involved in. He sees the odd (very odd) VHS tape. Sees some people shooting up, and the results of people shooting up. He's involved in the hit and run of a hyena. But nothing earth shattering.
It's despite that, or perhaps because of it, that this book was a hit in the 80s. Seems just the documentation of wealthy Californian teens' existence was enough to shake the fiction loving audience of the time.
I loved it even now. Both as a document of a place and a time, and as a portent of what was to come: the public's fascination with aimless but beautiful LA youth. Hilton, the Kardashians, the Hills etc. And as those archetypes get older, both reflected in the likes of the Selling Sunset cast and I assume the people who now write and produce today's shows about aimlessly wealthy teens.
In 2010, Easton Ellis published Imperial Bedrooms, the sequel to Less Than Zero, the characters all growed up. I want to read it. But, given BEE's love of intertextuality, I need to read his other books first. And maybe those of Jay McInerney, Donna Tartt et al, Bret's peers and alleged partners in crime. I've a lot of reading ahead of me...