Classic Book Review : Bret Easton Ellis - Less Than Zero (1985)
One of the reasons why being a teenager is difficult is because everything happens to you for the first time. Whether it's a breakup or a transgression of some kind you committed while intoxicated, everything feels like the end of the world. Some of us eventually figure out how life works, but not everyone and that's a whole different kind of heartbreak. Seeing your childhood friends grow into fuck ups. That particular heartbreak is what Bret Easton Ellis' iconic debut novel Less Than Zero is about.
Less Than Zero tells the story of Clay, a young Californian socialite coming back home for Christmas break after a lone college semester in New Hampshire. Unmoored from the structure of high school, he finds his friends exactly where left them: partying, fucking one another, taking an astronomical quantity of drugs, etc. Some of them are borderline catatonic with dread. In a landscape that should’ve been familiar and comforting, Clay will get acquainted with the ruthlessness of adult life.
The obvious parallel with Euphoria
If you know Bret Easton Ellis for the American Psycho movie adaptation or his provocative media character, leave your opinions at the door before going into Less Than Zero because it's a different animal. It was published when he was around his narrator's age and doesn’t indict contemporary culture in the same way his old novels are. It's a lot more diffuse and intuitive. It is the first person story of a kid living through these experience and not necessarily satirizing them like in other novels.
I thought of HBO's most excellent Euphoria while reading Less Than Zero for the first time in fifteen years. Ellis perhaps emphasizes his characters privilege more than Sam Levinson does (although Levinson doesn’t deny it), but the narrative principle remains the same : kids rather get high than grow up because they have nothing to look up to. I would argue that Ellis’ use of rich California kids perhaps makes his novel more alienating, but it explains better why they are the way they are.
Less Than Zero is a novel about the failure of post-war America. The American Dream and whatnot. Kids born in opulence have nothing to look forward to because they already have everything. They’ve been taught that they should pursue a situation for themselves, but they have nothing to contribute. Nothing to earn. At least not materialistically. The monolithic ease robs them of their sense of meaning. It doesn't change anything if they show ambition and go to college or get wasted every single day.
This is a very provocative statement to make even today, because of the greater ideological nature of the divide between the rich and the poor. But the point Less Than Zero makes almost inadvertently is that buying property, starting a family and securing the future of your children was a measurable unit of success, but it also robs your offspring of this existential validation. The kids in Less Than Zero are destroying themselves because it's the only form of agency they found.
But is it good?
Here's the cool part. You know that ridiculous criticism some novels get online that "there's no story" or "nothing happens in it?" Well, it's kind of true for Less Than Zero. This is not a novel you read to be entertained. It's a novel you read to be confronted to uncomfortable ideas and be moved by the plight of young people. If you think about it, it's crazy that a twenty-one years old came up with such a mature idea. A lot of us have this idea of Bret Easton Ellis as a monolithic public intellectual, but he was kid in 1985.
Any good story requires only one thing to work out: good characters. Less Than Zero got plenty of that. Not all the kids are interesting. Some are interchangeable by design, but Clay's growing heartbreak, Blair's melancholia, Julian's despair and Muriel's struggle with addiction (even if only briefly shown) were all heart-wrenching to me. There's no mystery in Less Than Zero and the only suspense concerns the characters' mental health, but it doesn't feel any less real.
Does it feel dated? Perhaps a little bit. Any cultural output that predates the internet is bound to feel a little old and Less Than Zero is very much a cocaine era eighties novel, but its point of view is so original, vibrant and unchallenged up to this day that is feels like something we still should put attention too. Wealthy kids have turned to ideological pursuits to fill their existential void in their hearts, but the underlying principle is the same. Your live will suck if it's written before you can live it.
*
I've given Less Than Zero another run in anticipation for the release of Bret Easton Ellis' new novel The Shards and, like every time bother giving Ellis the time of day, I was surprised by his nuance and sensitivity. His prose is the opposite of weepy and emotional, but it's by no means devoid of heart or soul. I am getting tired of giving scores about 8 (the line of excellence), but I've just been reading great stuff all year. Less Than Zero is very much a classic and should be considered as such.
