It was a good idea to read this immediately after Less Than Zero. It helps make what works about the earlier novel come into focus, while at the same time letting you laugh about how this one is way too "cutesy". Yes, not a word that one would normally associate with such a nasty bit of writing, but everything from the voice, to the characters, to the plot, to the scenes, is watered down and derivative. Yet, for all that, it is still not a terrible book. Of course we wonder what happened to Clay, Blair, Rip, and Julian, and we should be primed enough to see through Clay's unreliability, though we could have done so without every other page someone telling him to "just do as I ask" and "you don't understand."

And, for the audiobook listeners, don't expect the magnificent performance of the Less Than Zero narrator. I really missed him in this one.

The Basics

 

In this sequel to Less Than Zero, we catch up with Clay and his old friends, all of whom are now middle-aged and much the same as we left them. In this universe, Less Than Zero was a successful book and a movie that missed the point, much as it is in ours. Clay isn’t satisfied with the way he was portrayed, so the question becomes, “can he show his audience that he’s a different man than that?”

 

My Thoughts

 

I’m about to say the most controversial thing I could possibly say: Imperial Bedrooms is better than Less Than Zero. I’m gonna let that hit you while I don my armor.

 

As I attempted to explain in “The Basics”, Clay and Julian and everyone we encountered in the previous book are officially over-the-hill. In this universe, the previous book exists in universe, and Clay acts somewhat insulted by the way he’s written, as this kid who can’t feel because he’s so detached and disassociated. This is something the book does incredibly well. Clay genuinely believes he’s a good, giving, kind person. He sees nothing of Less Than Zero Clay in himself. He wants us to believe that was all a lie. He’s not that person; he’s better than that.

 

And then proceeds to reveal himself as being even worse. Here’s where I think the book loses people. For a lot of folks, I think Clay seemed like an anti-hero. Imperial Bedrooms paints him a lot differently. It seems to be saying that if someone really were that detached from everyone around them, that sociopathic, they would be a pretty terrible person. No one wants to hear that. They want Clay to be a symbol for something rather than a character. Personally, I believe I took Less Than Zero a lot differently than most, because his behavior in Imperial Bedrooms didn’t seem so off-the-wall to me. It felt like an extension of what the years between that we didn’t see could’ve turned Clay into. That he was predisposed to being uncaring and cruel, and it only got more pronounced as he got older. It makes sense to me.

 

I also thought that Clay trying to solve a mystery that simply wasn’t solvable because he didn’t have all the information was clever. Not only did it feel realistic, like “mysteries” don’t wrap up neatly in reality, but it also felt like another example of Clay’s monstrous ego. He wants to believe so badly he can change things, when really it’s all a selfish move on his part anyway.

 

What I’m trying to say is that this book was a brilliant character study. I believe if all of Ellis’ books could be taken that way, they’d be more widely enjoyed.

 

Final Rating

 

5/5

I don't know what I was thinking, reading this book. I knew, knew that it was the sequel to Less than Zero and I read it anyway. Because clearly there is something wrong with my head.Twenty years later, the boring, drug-addled narcissist kids of Less than Zero have turned into boring, gin-soaked, narcissist adults. At least some shit happened this time, but it's mostly a result of them doing fucked up things to each other, and since there isn't a single decent human being in the bunch I couldn't see my way to caring. (But that's okay, because none of the characters care either.)I suspect I'll go on to read American Psycho anyway. (I'm probably not the sharpest pencil in the box.)

I wasn't sure what to expect from 'Imperial Bedrooms'. Bret Easton Ellis' previous novel 'Lunar Park' had exploded all of his past work in extraordinary fashion. And before 'Lunar Park' each of his books had been more stylistically complex, bigger and grander somehow - 'The Informers' is not an exception as it had been written about the same time as 'Less Than Zero'. It would seem that the slate had been wiped clean.

Ellis seems to have had other ideas and unfinished business with his first literary alter ego, Clay.

I love 'Less Than Zero', even though I had nothing on the surface in common with these bored spoiled monsters, I recognized them and felt a kinship in the feeling underlying the admittedly thin story. Finishing 'Zero' I had the same feeling of awe I had when I finished 'The Great Gatsby'. Stop your judging--I'm serious. When I heard that 'Imperial Bedrooms' was going to be a sequel I was skeptical.

Soon after my brows came down on that fact, my sister brought home an issue of Interview Magazine that had an interview with Ellis. In it he was so abruptly dismissive of nostalgic sentiment towards Zero or its characters (such as when the interviewer wondered if Clay would ever find happiness) that I became hopeful. His talk about it coming from a "dark" period in his life after a recent relocation to L.A. and other factors won me over, as was the point I suppose. But, maybe, I thought, there was something left to say after all.

Well, there is and there isn't. 'Imperial Bedrooms' starts with "They made a movie about us." Clay reveals that the movie Less Than Zero and the novel were both lightly fictionalized events written up by a member of their group. The events did happen, but tensions over Blair led the spiteful author to make Clay the "handsome and dazed narrator, incapable of love or kindness." Clay might not be deserving of our sympathy, though. From the moment he arrives back in L.A. at the start of the novel, again around Christmastime, we see immediate discrepancies between the picture he gave us and how he acts. With that meta/postmodern conceit in place this book evokes the flat style of 'Zero' and updates the ennui of his characters, much how Douglas Coupland does, by showing how modern technology isolates people as much as it brings them together.

The problems with 'Bedrooms' are really with the story itself. Ellis has had some mixed success by using genre-writing techniques (the creepy 'Lunar Park' and the conspiracy-filled 'Glamorama'), but while the thriller (thrillesque?, thrillisms?) dialogue like "This is bigger than you" are somehow more ridiculous coming out of Trent or Rip or Blair than out of the mouths of the supermodels of 'Glamorama'. I just never felt any of the tension, even as Clay got more and more paranoid. Also, what I'll call the "Palm Springs Interlude" went right over my head. Was it there to show the state of Clay's descent or to reveal how he was all along? The use of a copy of 'Less Than Zero' intrigued me, but ultimately it seemed like a dead-end.

There is something to like here. The book isn't a total wash, but there doesn't seem to be enough. Other than Clay, the other characters are less dimensional then they were in 'Zero', and even he seems to be just treading water. I have no issue with books "about nothing", or unlikable characters, but they should have some overarching point to them. That nothingness should signify something. The book tries to explore Clay as a character, but he has the depth of a puddle. I don't know, when I read 'Less Than Zero' sometime in the future, I'll reread this and maybe come off with a better opinion. Most of Ellis' work has an "echo" effect on me, with each thought about it increasing my appreciation for what he's done. It's worked in reverse this time so far. In any case, it's a quick read and passes time.

Catching up with Clay, the protagonist from 'Less Than Zero', was an attractive prospect, not to mention Julian, so this was a 'must read' for me. Ellis uses a very engaging postmodern structural device here: making 'Less Than Zero' - both novel and film - exist in the narrative universe of the sequel. The scene where Clay, Julian and Blair are attending a screening of the film and Clay is dealing with the differing realities - and Julian with his filmic death - is classic. Ellis's typical mastery of place and character is on show, and his ability to really emulate his theme - drench everything in narrative focus - make you confront a disturbing urban bleakness. I had a great time with the build up of tension as Clay begins to meltdown, and the 'mystery' element of the plot is played with. But, eventually, there is a bizarre turn or shift (I don't quite know what word to use here...), which I think is meant to be clever and unexpected, and to show you that life is not like a film script, as Julian has said, but comes off as silly, almost Monty Python-esque, when I believe it's meant to be chilling and confronting.