Bret Easton Ellis’ characters have all, always, subsisted on a feedback loop of youthful disaffectedness and alienation, so it’s inevitable that he’d reanimate the teenage protagonists of his 1985 debut, “Less Than Zero.” That novel, published when Ellis was 20 years old, became a generational totem, as did the movie adaptation (aptly starring Robert Downey Jr.). Ellis, along with compatriot Jay McInerney, became the literary analogue of the Brat Pack: young and cool, slung about New York City’s most exclusive clubs and restaurants, glamorously, unapologetically smashed. They were the last of their kind.
McInerney, in his middle age, wound up marrying a Hearst and writing a wine column. Ellis has continued to write novels that, tonally and thematically, are reminiscent of “Zero”’s moral drift and voracious materialism, so it’s fitting that he’s finally written a proper sequel. “Imperial Bedrooms” begins with the now-middle-aged Clay — who narrated “Zero” — returning to LA from exile in New York. He’s looking for screenwriting work, producer credits and good coke. He becomes obsessed with a talentless actress, who is actually in love with Clay’s best friend Julian, who is now married to Clay’s ex-girlfriend Blair, who remains obsessed with Clay.
Despite what sounds like an episode of “Gossip Girl” on steroids, “Imperial Bedrooms” attempts a plot involving a stalker and a mysterious cabal that Julian may or may not have ties to but which definitely murdered a friend of theirs. Here’s the description of the crime scene, related with Ellis’ typical wintry flair: “Kelly’s naked body was smeared across a highway in Juarez and then propped against a tree. Two other men were found nearby entombed in blocks of cement. Kelly’s face was peeled off, and his hands were missing.”
Ellis has often said that Joan Didion is his hero, that he’s always sought to emulate her stark elegance. Didion, though, has warmth, and she doesn’t take intellectual shortcuts; reading “Imperial Bedrooms” can be as frustrating an exercise as reading “Zero,” or Ellis’ infamous “American Psycho” (which was also made into a far more entertaining movie).
Like his characters, Ellis mistakes platitudes for profundity — either that, or he’s lazy, and thinks his readers will. A typical passage begins with a character waking up hungover, avoiding text messages, eventually hooking up with a friend or a cheap date, getting wrecked all over again, then having a minor epiphany while looking at an American Apparel ad or something as mundane — which is supposed to be a metaphor but is really sleight-of-hand, and it’s hard to tell among all the unseemly juvenalia and obvious symbolism and run-on sentences if the writer is as sad and stuck as his characters or if it’s all one big put-on.
Imperial Bedrooms
by Bret Easton Ellis
Knopf