Bret Easton Ellis
Meno Di Zero

People are afraid to take the plunge.

Like mannequins, the inhabitants of Los Angeles spend their days inert, in idleness, lying in the sun in their gardens with pools. Their skin darkens, their blond hair lightens. Their lives flatten. Clay, a rich and bored teenager, returns to Los Angeles for the Christmas holidays. He returns to his father, an absent and detached businessman just out of a session with the plastic surgeon. He returns to his sisters, spoiled and not yet women. He returns to his ex-girlfriend Blair, still in love with him, who listens to X and Elvis Costello. He returns to his best friend Julian, lost in a whirlwind of drugs and sex.

There are no limits in these eighties kids' lives. There is no future for them. They live day by day, living without realizing the passing of time, the evil that surrounds them, and the drift that corrodes them from within. The falseness of the little Hollywood actresses, the apathy of handsome blond kids, victims of a life that gave them everything, but that in the end will leave them nothing but despair. Clay sees everything, hears everything. He is a detached spectator of alienation and general bewilderment. He just observes, observes and understands that the only thing to do is to run away, go far away and try to forget.

Los Angeles fascinates with its neon lights, its immense villas and blue pools, its ever-warm climate, its beaches, and its streets. Los Angeles destroys with its decadent movie stars, its unbridled nightlife parties, its empty and desolate gas stations, its young people who sell their bodies, strip them and infect them.

I first read "Less Than Zero", debut novel by Bret Easton Ellis, at sixteen. I was struck by the sharp phrases, the clear images the writer splattered across his pages. I reread it these days, eleven years after the first time, and just like then, I received a punch in the stomach. Ellis was in his twenties when he wrote this novel. He spat out words of detached anger, inner malaise, and defeat. He spat out words that hurt, crush you and throw you to the mat.

Two scenes shocked me the most in this novel, and they summarize Ellis's entire debut work. Clay who, attracted by latent curiosity, witnesses the silent humiliation of his friend Julian, forced to sell his body to disgusting old men to pay off a drug debt. Clay who, now tired of all the horror he has experienced, stands still watching his sisters play dead on the surface of the pool, face down.

Ellis takes a direct shot at his reality, the glossy and plastic Hollywood reality. Ellis makes us spectators of the ruthless and unscrupulous rich society, without passion, without the ability to live life. Ellis makes us feel there with Clay, Blair, and Julian, brings us into their lives as adolescents unable to react, or perhaps simply and painfully reluctant to react. 

The images running through my head were of people going crazy because they lived in L.A. Images of parents so dissatisfied and hungry they ate their children. Images of kids my age raising their eyes from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. Images so violent and wicked that they became my only point of reference for a very, very long time. After the departure.