Naomi Mandel - Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho, Glamorama, Lunar Park

Bloomsbury Studies in Contemporary North American Fiction

Series Editor: Sarah Graham, Lecturer in American Literature, University of Leicester, UK

This series offers up-to-date guides to the recent work of major contemporary North American authors. Written by leading scholars in the field, each book presents a range of original interpretations of three key texts published since 1990, showing how the same novel may be interpreted in a number of different ways. These informative, accessible volumes will appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, facilitating discussion and supporting close analysis of the most important contemporary American and Canadian fiction.

Titles in the series include:

Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho, Glamorama, Lunar Park
Edited by Naomi Mandel

Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road
Edited by Sara Spurgeon

Don DeLillo: Mao II, Underworld, Falling Man
Edited by Stacey Olster

Louise Erdrich: Tracks, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Plague of Doves
Edited by Deborah L. Madsen

Margaret Atwood: The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake
Edited by J. Brooks Bouson

Philip Roth: American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America
Edited by Debra Shostak

Naomi Mandel

Naomi Mandel

Michael P. Clark

Alex E. Blazer

Elana Gomel

Naomi Mandel

David Schmid

Sonia Baelo-Allu

Arthur Redding

Naomi Mandel

Jeff Karnicky

Henrik Skov Nielsen

James Annesley

Each study in this series presents ten original essays by recognized subject specialists on the recent fiction of a significant author working in the United States or Canada. The aim of the series is to consider important novels published since 1990 either by established writers or by emerging talents. By setting 1990 as its general boundary, the series indicates its commitment to engaging with genuinely contemporary work, with the result that the series is often able to present the first detailed critical assessment of certain texts.

In respect of authors who have already been recognized as essential to the canon of North American fiction, the series provides experts in their work with the opportunity to consider their latest novels in the dual context of the contemporary era and as part of a long career. For authors who have emerged more recently, the series offers critics the chance to assess the work that has brought authors to prominence, exploring novels that have garnered acclaim both because of their individual merits and because they are exemplary in their creative engagement with a complex period.

Including both American and Canadian authors in the term North American is in no sense reductive: studies of Canadian writers in this series do not treat them as effectively American, and assessment of all the chosen authors in terms of their national and regional identity, as well as their race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, religion and political affiliation is essential in developing an understanding of each authors particular contribution to the representation of contemporary North American society.

The studies in this series make outstanding new contributions to the analysis of current fiction by presenting critical essays chosen for their originality, insight, and skill. Each volume begins with a substantial introduction to the author by the studys editor, which establishes the context for the chapters that will follow through a discussion of essential elements such as the writers career, characteristic narrative strategies, themes, and preoccupations, making clear the authors importance and the significance of the novels chosen for discussion. The studies are all comprised of three parts, each one presenting three original essays on three key recent works by the author, and every part is introduced by the volumes editor, explaining how the chapters to follow engage with the fiction and respond to existing interpretations. Each individual chapter takes a critical approach that may develop existing perceptions or challenge them, but always expands the ways in which the authors work may be read by offering a fresh approach.

It is a principle of the series that all the studies are written in a style that will be engaging and clear however complex the subject, with the aim of fostering further debate about the work of writers who all exemplify what is most exciting and valuable in contemporary North American fiction.

Sarah Graham

I would like to thank each of the contributors to this volume on Bret Easton Ellis for their inspiring and exciting work. It was a true privilege to collaborate with such enthusiastic, committed, and inventive scholars, many of whom I have yet to meet. Each taught me a great deal. Sarah Graham, the Series Editor, gave me the opportunity to edit this collection and remained my stalwart ally throughout the process. Anna Fleming and Colleen Coalter at Continuum Books have been consistently responsive and helpful.

My work on this volume was funded by a University of Rhode Island Career Enhancement Research Grant and supported by Winifred Brownell and Stephen Barber, to whom I owe special thanks. I am grateful to Dana Liljegren from the office of Amanda Urban for the information about translations of Elliss work. Thanks also to my colleagues Mary Cappello and Jean Walton, who let me read them my Introduction on a cold night in Maine, and to Carolyn Betensky, Ryan Trimm, and especially fellow Ellis fan Alain-Philippe Durand. I am grateful to my students at University of Rhode Island for their courageous and imaginative engagement with Elliss novels. I thank Marco Abel and Lszl B. Sri for their inspiring work on Ellis, and John Hodgkins for his helpful suggestions about The Informers and for returning to me his copy of Lunar Park.

My mother, Miriam B. Mandel, directly contributed to this volume by sharing her extensive editorial experience and offering excellent advice. My father, Jerome Mandel, and my sister Jessica also sustained me throughout this project, helping me when possible and laughing at me when necessary. I thank my friends and fellow outliers Aaron Stern and Seth Yurdin for their understanding and support. I am grateful to Barry Wall for his wisdom and care. My final and most heartfelt thanks is to Erik Sklar, who missed many movies, fixed countless drinks, ate lots of takeout, and even read American Psycho and concluded that it is a very funny book.

Naomi Mandel

This collection of critical essays on US novelist Bret Easton Ellis examines the novels of the authors mature period: American Psycho (1991), Glamorama (1998), and Lunar Park (2005). Though his earlier novels established Elliss reputation as a popular writer and accomplished stylist, this collection treats American Psycho as his definitive work. A notable departure from Elliss previous novels in size, scope, and ambition, American Psycho is easily one of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century. Its impact on contemporary literature and culture was seismic. This study pursues the shock waves of this impact into Elliss sub sequent work. The goals of the volume are to examine the alchemy of acclaim and disdain that accrues to this controversial writer, to direct critical attention to the literary and artistic significance of Elliss recent work, and to confirm the increased scholarly interest in Ellis as evidenced by the prevalence of his novels on University syllabi in the US and abroad and in studies of contemporary literature and postmodernism.