Less than Zero (novel)  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Redirected from Less Than Zero (novel))
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Less Than Zero is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1985. It was his first published effort, released while he was 21 and still in college. Ellis cites his major influences as Joan Didion and Los Angeles noir, but he was also inspired by the moral ambiguity of American Gigolo.

Plot summary

Titled after the Elvis Costello song of the same name, the novel follows the life of Clay, a rich young college student who has returned to his hometown of Los Angeles, California for the winter break during the early 1980s. He spends much of the novel going to parties and doing drugs with his friends. During this time, he must decide whether or not he wants to restart a relationship with Blair, for whom he is uncertain about his feelings. Meanwhile, Clay has one night stands with a few men and women on the side while his relationship with Blair goes downhill. At the same time, he attempts to renew his relationship with his best friend, Julian, who has become a prostitute and drug addict. Throughout his descent into the netherworld of the L.A. drug scene, he loses his faith in his friends, and grows alienated with the amoral party culture he once embraced. He is greatly disturbed by four events: first, his anorexic friend Muriel intravenously takes heroin whilst people watch and take photos; his friend Trent shows a snuff film at a party and only he and Blair seem to be disturbed by it; later, he is forced to sit in a chair for five hours to watch Julian sell himself to a businessman from Muncie, Indiana, in order to get money to support his heroin habit; finally, he meets friends at a concert, only to leave and not only find a dead body that everyone wants to see, but a naked 12-year-old girl who is tied to the posts of a friend's bed, and once again his friends are attracted to it. Eventually, these events lead him to leave Los Angeles, possibly intending never to return. It was first published in 1985 by Simon & Schuster.





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Less than Zero (novel)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools