In Ellis’s LA the bonds of money, drugs and sex have primacy over friendship, family and genuine intimacy.Ĭonsider the paucity of true communication in this interchange between Blair and Clay: There’s Kim, who learns her parents’ whereabouts from Variety and Ronnette, convinced that the world will melt if she doesn’t dye her hair. They are so self-involved that they never show genuine interest in others, never remember details unless they pertain to themselves and don’t form any genuine connections. Every character Ellis introduces is obsessed with status and perception: lazy, rich, bored, self-interested to the point of obliviousness. Throughout the novel the protagonist moves from one club to another, one penthouse to another, one party to another – all the time gathering a terrible momentum which takes him to worse places, worse situations, worse people….Īt first the people we meet are merely reprehensible. Rather than a merging, the movement which propels Less Than Zero is a downward spiral. With those ten words Ellis sends a message about the setting for his story, and about the people that inhabit it, as well as deftly setting the tone of his prose and introducing a concept central to the book: fear.
People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. To my mind the opening line of Bret Easton Ellis’s debut novel ranks alongside all of the famous examples you care to think of:
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