Bret Easton Ellis - Glamorama (Vintage Contemporaries)

Acclaim for Bret Easton Elliss
Glamorama

One of the passing delights of Glamorama is to imagine how scholars of postmodern fiction will explain it a century hence . The book seems to go insane while youre reading it, but Ellis doesnt fear the appearance of chaos. He invents a fresh hell on every page. [And] through all this mayhem, the style remains mysteriously elegant.

The New Yorker

Ellis has become one of the finest literary satirists in America.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

The book succeeds in delivering a creepy sense of dread about our culture. Glamoramas contribution to the world may be the motto of its main character, a male model: The better you look, the more you see. As a sum-up of our decade, its downright Tom Wolfean.

Time

Gets under the skin of our celebrity culture in a way that is both illuminating and frightening.

Daily Telegraph, London

A tour de force simply his best work to date . Ellis remains a laser-precise satirist, but the wit now dominates.

Esquire

Elliss achievement is pristine . Whats fresh and arresting in Glamorama is its uncompromising triviality, its rigorous transience . Ellis has written this way before, of course, but never with such crazy focus. His run-on sentences only seem lazy, his strings of references only feel ad-hoc; in fact theyre as calculated as Victors guest lists. This premeditation shows most clearly in the dialogue, which manages to be pointed and hilarious just when it seems most casual and screwy.

New York

What Ellis does with cunning and brilliance and style is to dress his models in language that is terminally hip yet vitally comprehensible.

Los Angeles Times

Glamorama boasts memorable if despicable characters and downright hysterical dialogue . An important stepping stone in [Elliss] career.

San Francisco Chronicle & Examiner

An accomplished send-up that reflects Elliss considerable talent as a writer, a novel loaded with entertainment and ambition.

The Oregonian

Elliss hypnotically perfect prose is able to incorporate just about any convention he puts his mind to . His greatest strength is that he not only refuses to state the obviousthat his characters behavior is inexcusablebut also finds comedy where none would seem to exist.

Spin

Nearly alone among his contemporaries, [Ellis has] had the courage, and the genius, never to leave the literary playing field as he found it.

Salon

Brutally funny . Glamorama courses with energy and intelligence.

Bookforum

His most ambitious book yet.

Rolling Stone

The perfect fin de sicle novel . Sick, twisted, and possibly brilliant.

The Advocate

A wonderful lampooning of people badly needing a good lampooning . Elliss dialogue is fresh and energetic. His narration is deliciously decadent.

The Plain Dealer

Pure Ellisbrimming with unsettling details, ironic dialogue, and black humor . [He] moves Victor through a series of implausible situations so masterfully that the reader is willing to suspend disbelief.

Vogue

An American masterpiece . This is writing of extraordinary wit and precision.

Scotland on Sunday

A comic and frightening story . The pleasures of a celebrity-worshipping narrative overlaying a violent, chilling and, in the style of Ballard, instructive plot are too great to ignore.

Newsday

An affirmation inside a horror story . [Ellis is] a master stylist with hideously interesting new-fangled manners and the heart of an old-fashioned moralist.

The Observer, London

Also by Bret Easton Ellis

The Informers

American Psycho

The Rules of Attraction

Less Than Zero

Bret Easton Ellis

Glamorama

Bret Easton Ellis is the author of Less ThanZero; The Rules of Attraction; The Informers, a collection of stories; and American Psycho. He lives in New York City

for
Jim Severt

my thanks
Gary Fisketjon
Amanda Urban
Julie Grau
Heather Schroder
Sonny Mehta

There was no time when you nor I nor these kings did not exist.

Krishna

You make a mistake if you see what we do as merely political.

Hitler

Specksspecks all over the third panel, see?no, that onethe second one up from the floor and I wanted to point this out to someone yesterday but a photo shoot intervened and Yaki Nakamari or whatever the hell the designers name isa master craftsman notmistook me for someone else so I couldnt register the complaint, but, gentlemenand ladiesthere they are: specks, annoying, tiny specks, and they dont look accidental but like they were somehow done by a machineso I dont want a lot of description, just the story, streamlined, no frills, the lowdown: who, what, where, when and dont leave out why, though Im getting the distinct impression by the looks on your sorry faces that why wont get answerednow, come on, god-dammit, whats the story?

Nobody around here has to wait long for someone to say something.

Baby, George Nakashima designed this bar area, JD quietly corrects me. Not, um, Yaki Nakamashi, I mean Yuki Nakamorti, I meanoh shit, Peyton, get me out of this.

Yoki Nakamuri was approved for this floor, Peyton says.

Oh yeah? I ask. Approved by who?

Approved by, well, moi, Peyton says.

A pause. Glares targeted at Peyton and JD.

Who the fuck is Moi? I ask. I have no fucking idea who this Moi is, baby.

Victor, please, Peyton says. Im sure Damien went over this with you.

Damien did, JD. Damien did, Peyton. But just tell me who Moi is, baby, I exclaim. Because Im, like, shvitzing.

Moi is Peyton, Victor, JD says quietly.

Im Moi, Peyton says, nodding. Moi is, um, French.

Are you sure these specks arent supposed to be here? JD tentatively touches the panel. I mean, maybe its supposed to be, oh, I dont know, in or something?

Wait. I raise a hand. Youre saying these specks are in?

Victorweve got a long list of things to check, baby. JD holds up the long list of things to check. The specks will be taken care of. Someone will escort the specks out of here. Theres a magician waiting downstairs.