Rating: - Ennui.
"Less Than Zero" is a semi-autobiographical novel of youthful disaffection and depravity among wealthy Los Angelinos, written when author Bret Easton Ellis was 19 years old. Clay is a college freshman who has returned to his native L.A. for Christmas break after his first semester in New Hampshire. He has vague plans to see his old friends and a half-hearted intention of rekindling a relationship with his high school girlfriend Blaire. Clay recounts, in a droning first person narration, the month he spends in limbo, snorting cocaine, club-hopping, seeing friends, sleeping around, and being an aimless sybarite, as his friends' moral indifference gradually pierces his own.

I think that's Ellis' intention, anyway. I found Clay's experiences mildly amusing. They reminded me of my own winter break during freshman year of college 20 years ago, spent trying to hook up with high school friends, always with an awkward feeling of being half in and half out of my old lifestyle, as we all were. And the repetition is funny. Clay does the same things over and over again, going from one house/club/person to the another to another and then back again. His friends are interchangeable. Everyone asks what everyone else has been doing, but no one ever gives or gets an answer. Clay is always asking after his friend Julian, who never seems to be where he's supposed to be. In a longer novel, this would be tedious, but this is a quick read, so it's farcical.

It isn't immediately clear whether we are supposed to be outraged or amused. It may be true that wealthy young people should have better things to do than take the same drugs, have sex with the same people, and go to the same trendy clubs that they have always done. But it's all pretty meaningless, and I wouldn't expect a bunch of 18-year-olds to have more lofty ambitions for their Christmas break. Nothing unusual happens until late in the novel. Then Ellis throws some pretty unbelievable scenarios at us in a desperate attempt to give Clay's lifestyle moral implications that it doesn't have. The over-the-top depravity isn't credible: a snuff film and a 12-year-old tied to some dealer's bed. Snuff films are urban legends. They don't exist.

Critics have used some weighty words to describe "Less Than Zero": disturbing, unnerving, startling, frightening, remarkable. The word I would use is: ennui. Clay and his friends are a bunch of bored teenagers with a month to kill. And they are rich, so they do ennui in a grand fashion. It's not a big deal. But I can understand why a 19-year-old Bret Easton Ellis wanted to believe it was. He was looking for profundity and intensity in his experiences, like Clay is when he watches Julian prostitute himself for 5 hours so that he can "see the worst". Now, to me, Julian is just that requisite guy who has managed to screw his life up in a few short months since high school. No one tries to dissuade him, because, heck, no one can even find him. Yes, these people drink and drug too much for their own good, but I don't think a Bacchic lifestyle has moral implications, and I don't buy the ghastly violence in this context.