You Actually Can Go Back Again
So, it’s 1984ish. I’m somewhere in the junior/senior year of high school range (I was young for my grade - no, I swear that’s true) and Bret Easton Ellis’ book Less Than Zero comes out. For a girl raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a story about privileged teens in Los Angeles is just about the coolest thing ever. Then somewhere during my college years, a movie version showcasing various members of the Brat Pack hits the screen.
Fast forward 20 years - I’m feeling older by the second - and Ellis is about to usher in another new release, Lunar Park. Sure, there were 4 or 5 books in between. Really, who could forget American Psycho. I know I can’t no matter how much I try. This new release is a bit different. The hero is, well, Ellis. Elle magazine, a surprisingly helpful place to find new reads, describes it like this:
Ellis goes all po-mo on us in his latest novel, Lunar Park - his first novel in more than six years - making himself the protagonist in a suburban horror story that borrows heavily from Hamlet and Poltergeist. The fictional Ellis is struggling to wean himself from drink and drugs while playing husband to his actress wife and her two children - one of whom, a boy, he fathered 11 years ago. But the house he’s retreated to is no haven. Its furniture and decor increasingly resemble his childhood home, a toy turns malevolent, his dead father is trying to tell him something, and a series of local murders mirrors those in American Psycho.
Wonder if Judd Nelson and Andrew McCarthy are available for the movie version. It would be good to see them working again.











July 11th, 2005 at 7:38 pm
He lost me at the toy. :-/
July 11th, 2005 at 8:30 pm
Me too. And, yet, I’ll probably read this.
July 11th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Oh man… I’ve forgotten about that movie, “Less than Zero.” The female band, The Bangles, sang Simon & Garthfunkel’s “Hazy Shade of Winter” as the theme song. Wow… that sure brings memories…