Glamorama

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, brilliant, shattering
Review: I don't honestly know if I would have understood this book quite as well if it weren't for the fact that I actually followed pop culture at the time that this book is set. I'm assuming it is from about 1996 -- I don't remember whether he said or not -- and I was fourteen that year. That background knowledge of who people like Sophie B. Hawkins (one-hit wonders from that year?) are certainly helped. I'm not saying that this book will be totally outdated in around ten years, but it's a consideration.

That said, I very much liked it. It was, quite simply, one of the strangest things I have ever read and well worth every minute I spent on it. Bret Easton Ellis's style is vivid, jarring, cinematic (hence the attempts to film his other novels); and yet it is is some of the most beautiful, fluid language I have ever read.

I wish I could describe the plot with any accuracy, but as it goes, we have Victor Ward, the model, his business associates, his 'friends', his lovers, etc. We also have parties, clubs, photography sessions, organizational sessions, trysts, ATMs, a cruise to England, a search, violence, murder, movies, a missing ex-girlfriend . . . Superimpose all this on top of each other and you get something resembling Glamorama.

As it compares to his other novels -- I liked American Psycho better; I felt it had more overall coherency and more cohesion. (Although I must admit that I prefer Victor overall as a narrator to Patrick Bateman.) The characters, as someone else pointed out, tend to recur: Victor Ward (Johnson) we've seen before, and Lauren Hynde, and some other minor characters. I'm still waiting to see what he does next with his world -- but I do NOT anticipate a movie of this book. It would be too much.

Rating:
Summary: The worst book I ever finished!
Review: My God this book is bad!
It actually made me wonder if Bret Easton Ellis thinks being a good writer is all about thinking up schocking scenes - but after the first 100 -200 pages even they become boring and routine like. The plot is badly constructed, the main character isn't even remotely interesting, and it seems to me that the author is trying to writer "over his ability". He'll never be an Auster, and should just stick to writing college novels about sad teenagers with nothing to live for or horror stories about mass murderes, not this "wanna be hip" trash! (And yes, it upsets me that i wasted time on this book!)

Rating:
Summary: The better you look, the more you see
Review: Besides American Psycho, Ellis' best work. The book follows model/actor Victor Ward. Victor's life consists of getting laid, doing drugs, partying at the hippest clubs with the biggest stars of the 90s. He's trying to land a role in a movie and open a nightclub. This is the first half of the book. The second half consists of torturing/killing, bombing buildings, and crashing 747s. This book will confuse...you. By the end of the book, Victor is stripped of his identity and sees a clone of himself back in New York from a hotel room in Milan.

Rating:
Summary: Ellis is genius
Review: In Glamorama, Ellis dives into the NYC model world with force. For the first third of the book, he shows his audience the surface level of beautiful people: they are dumber than doorknobs. [uneducated people]. People who make their money off of the glamor of their bodies with not much upstairs. Just when you start saying to yourself, okay, I get the picture, he begins to dig deeper, and like the back of the book says, he strips these characters of their facades and shows us what is really happening in the depths of the human condition. The protagonist Victor ends up in the hands of the wrong people, and it forces him to get smart and take matters into his own hands. Victor really wants to be in movies, and once he leaves NYC and gets involved with the wrong people he slowy lives his existence as if it were a movie, and he the star (probably because he can't deal with reality as he knows it). Suddenly the reader finds himself not knowing what is fact (basic plot) and what is fantasy (the movie Victor has created), until the reader meets the end of the book, and finds that Victor in saving himself has "saved the world" in the process, and more importantly, found himself (inner being) instead of the dumb model he always knew himself to be (surface being). And the fanatasy disappears. Not all questions are answered, in fact, the ones that are are rare; this has little to do with the fact that Ellis didn't do his homework and more to do with the fact that Ellis did all of it. In the end there is no right or true answer. The reader can tell that in doing the research for the book Ellis learned a lot about pop NYC glamor and only revealed what was necessary to make the book a gem.
My only major concern about this book is that there is graphic domestic terrorism in the book, and for me reading it around the anniversary of 9/11 tended to make me more uncomfortable than I would have preferred. But I am also the only one I know who started reading American Psycho and also finished it (many didn't due to its graphic content), and Glamorama pales in comparison to American Psycho's graphic content.

Rating:
Summary: Ellis = Genius
Review: In Glamorama, Ellis dives into the NYC model world with force. For the first third of the book, he shows his audience the surface level of beautiful people: they are dumber than doorknobs. ... People who make their money off of the glamor of their bodies with not much upstairs. Just when you start saying to yourself, okay, I get the picture, he begins to dig deeper, and like the back of the book says, he strips these characters of their facades and shows us what is really happening in the depths of the human condition. The protagonist Victor ends up in the hands of the wrong people, and it forces him to get smart and take matters into his own hands. Victor really wants to be in movies, and once he leaves NYC and gets involved with the wrong people he slowy lives his existence as if it were a movie, and he the star (probably because he can't deal with reality as he knows it). Suddenly the reader finds himself not knowing what is fact (basic plot) and what is fantasy (the movie Victor has created), until the reader meets the end of the book, and finds that Victor in saving himself has "saved the world" in the process, and more importantly, found himself instead of the dumb model he always knew himself to be. And the fanatasy disappears. Not all questions are answered, in fact, the ones that are are rare; this has little to do with the fact that Ellis didn't do his homework and more to do with the fact that Ellis did all of it. In the end there is no right or true answer. The reader can tell that in doing the research for the book Ellis learned a lot about pop NYC glamor and only revealed what was necessary to make the book a gem.

My only major concern about this book is that there is graphic domestic terrorism in the book, and for me reading it around the anniversary of 9/11 tended to make me more uncomfortable than I would have preferred. But I am also the only one I know who started reading American Psycho and also finished it (many didn't due to its graphic content), and Glamorama pales in comparison to American Psycho's graphic content.

Rating:
Summary: Okay, but what happened?
Review: American Pyscho was Ellis' masterpiece so this one haven't taken him eight years to write, I thought was just going to be the best. It wasn't. The first hundred pages I was totaly into it. Somewhere after that the story had me lost. While American Pyscho had me on the edge of my chair while reading, I really couldn't put it down, my reaction to Glamorama was the exact opposite. It took me months to even finish it. Having said that I'd recomend reading American Psycho a second time instead of reading Glamorama. Still though, it was better than Less than Zero.

Rating:
Summary: Who am I?
Review: And what am I doing in this nightmare?

Glamorama is the story of the Holden Caulfield for Generation X: lost, amused, forlorn, suave and so hip baby.

Glamorama, the latest literary jab by American Psycho Ellis, begins in the delightfully absurd glitz of Manhattan. The world is original and stylish. Devil-may-care is so hip that we are all insane. There are names dropping, cool people everywhere and their lives are so crowded that it feels downright empty.

Confetti, infidelity, Christian Bale, nouveau, niveau, art, amnesia, baby, fluke, flake, Prada, Christian Bale, hip, Camden, what's-her-name, Christian Bale, model, super-model, sex, man or woman, U2, Christian Bale and impossibly impossible lines, baby.

Then the world falls apart in the second half of Glamorama and protagonist Victor Ward (neé Johnson) sails head-first into terrorism under the watchful eyes of a French film crew and we suddenly have double-vision. There is two of everyone. Is that a mirror? It's American Psycho territory traversing the world of reality and fantasy. Confused? Maybe.

We live in a world where beauty is considered an accomplishment and no one has the sense to glorify and disdain the nuances of modern society like Bret Easton Ellis.

Rating:
Summary: The better you look, baby, the more you see.
Review: Victor Ward's motto embodied verbatim. Glamorama is chock-full of cool soundbites from Victor Ward, the not so humble narrator, "I'm a bad boy. I'm a legend. But in reality everything's a big world party and there are no VIP rooms." Glamorama is Bret Easton Ellis's longest novel, but it flows so effortlessly due to the lucid and outrageous dialogue that I didn't mind. We follow Victor Ward, a spoiled 26 year old "victim" of upper class society on his quest of nihilism as he gets laid early and often by beautiful model/actresses such as Chloe, Allison, and Jamie and as he works out with Reed, his personal trainer, in search of perfect abs, as he pops Xanex after Xanex incessantly, and as he binge drinks Cosmopolitans and snorts coke until wasted into oblivion. As a t-shirt he wears back at Camden states, "If you're not wasted, the day is." As Victor would retort, "Spare me."

I thought the first four tiers of Glamorama were superb, witty, and pure original prose as only Bret Easton Ellis can deliver. Having said that, when the terrorist theme took over when in Paris, the book somewhat took a turn for the worse.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad but...
Review: Don't expect to "understand" what is going on all time. Many of the book's motifs and "clues" never add up no matter how it tries (or does not?). Other than that if you are a fan of Ellis' past efforts you will get a kick out of his stock & trade nihilistic humor and pop culture observations.

That said, I'd recc "Less Than Zero" "American Psycho" and "Rules of Attraction" before this novel.

Rating:
Summary: So, baby, what's the story?
Review: Glamorama is a terrific read. There are plenty of scenes that are just dying to be made into a movie. Bret Easton Ellis lays out these scenes with clever prose and hilarous dialogue. They somehow made Ellis's American Psycho into a play, but the back-and-forth between the glitterati at the fah-bulous soirees and in Victor Ward's private affairs makes this a much better theater production.

Ellis would make an outstanding Page Six contributor, based on his skills at painting the backdrop of A-list events, which give structue to Victor Ward's life. The way that Patrick Bateman finds meaning to 80's pop hits, Victor Ward occasionally speaks in verse, inserting familiar nuggets of 90's pop verses into his dialogue. But they fit in just perfectly at the cafes and soirees where Victor and his A-list crowd hang out. Joints and xanax keep Victor and his friends moving at an even keel, and Victor's mood kind of dictates which A-list models and celeb he runs into at the parties.

Victor thinks he's always part of a movie, loosely following some script in a production that never really stops stops or ends -- the people around him are supporting actors, actresses, and extras. You realize very early on that he's vain to the nth degree, but he sort of grows on you for no good reason, other than you can't wait to hear what comes out of his mouth and see what kind of mess he'll get into next. Real funny stuff.