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User
Reviews 16
Approval 95%
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Last Active 04-22-21 3:46 am
Joined 01-18-14
Review Comments 13,327
| Brett Easton Ellis Ranked
This list has been 10 years in the making. Finally finished the last book and I feel I can weigh in. | | 11 |  | Native Daughters
Master Manipulator
The Informers
This is an anthology of mostly early work, and it really feels like it. Most of it lacks the polish of his subsequent works. Although B.E.E. naturally has a stream-of-consciousness style of writing, this feels like a series of fever dreams that he shakily recorded in a journal immediately upon waking and didn’t bother to brush up at all afterwards. The best story here by far is Letters From LA, which resonated and tore at me far more than most of his actual novels which usually leave me feeling hollow. It’s told in a series of letters written from a college girl named Anne to Sean Bateman’s character from Rules Of Attraction. This story was very heartbreaking as it’s implied that Anne had a massive crush on Sean but was rejected, yet aggressively pursued a friendship instead. There’s like 50 pages worth of long-winded personal letters here and it becomes increasingly evident with each one that not a single one was responded to. | | 10 | | Native Daughters
Master Manipulator
The letters tell a narrative of a regular girl, perhaps too naive and open-hearted for her own good, who happens to be a bit lost in life and is trying to reach out to someone she really connected to and on whom she is trying to rely on for a tiny nudge of guidance. As the letters grow more sparse and less detailed, we see in a weird time-lapse-sort-of-way how this person goes from naive kid to a disaffected pretty face in Hollywood. The worst part is, having read Rules Of Attraction, you know that all her affection and hope is completely misplaced in Sean Bateman who is basically a massive piece of shit, but then again this is a major theme in B.E.E’s work. The worst story by far is The Fifth Wheel which is absolutely nauseating and regrettable with no redeeming value whatsoever. It contains all the worst obscenities of American Psycho with none of the nuance, and it made me feel physically ill afterwards which is incredible in itself I guess. | | 9 |  | Charlotte Gainsbourg
Rest
Glamorama
I’ve been forcing myself to get through this novel for the better part of 6 months, slowly chipping away at it, and my god I’ve never put myself through such torture. Even now, having completed it (and in a very weird way appreciating it), I still have no idea what the fuck I just read. This book is like a bizarre social experiment. Without spoiling too much, it’s narratively like a movie within a movie within a book, which is very disorienting and absurd to such a level that even as the vapid protagonist is paranoidly obsessing that he is being filmed all the time, you as the reader feel like you’re being observed and recorded as you ingest this insane acid-trip of a novel and react to it. This is a fun one... | | 8 | | Charlotte Gainsbourg
Rest
If you read Rules Of Attraction, you remember Victor’s legendary lone chapter in that book and you know his character, and so it’s remarkable that this book manages to tell a rather long and convoluted mind-bending tale revolving around that insipid Stiffler-type character; ironically, this book is about someone with a very short attention-span, yet is for anyone but. | | 7 |  | Nine Inch Nails
Year Zero
Less Than Zero
It’s been a decade since I read this book but its impression is still left on me. The protagonist is a very introverted gay college dude who gets into the hard drug scene as he realizes that pretty much everything in his life poison. I have a hard time talking about this book, strangely. So many years later thinking back on it, it’s like there’s a weird lump in my throat. | | 6 |  | Electric Wizard
Dopethrone
Imperial Bedrooms
As if Less Than Zero wasn’t dark enough, this book picks up with the horrifically disaffected youths as they’re dealing with middle-age. Not for the faint of heart, this is like a film-noir French torture-film adapted into a book. I really love this book even though it’s utterly horrible and will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. The prose in this is insanely good, and pretty much every Rupert scene is unwillingly seared into my long-term memory. | | 5 |  | Cannibal Corpse
Red Before Black
American Psycho
Although the film-adaptation of this is one of the best of all time, it still has nothing on this book. That is mainly because B.E.E went to great, meticulous lengths to capture the mind of a psychopath that is next to impossible to capture on film. The constant internal monologues, the relentlessly clinical evaluations of individuals based on brand-named attire and custom business cards. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This novel goes much further into the sickening violence and depravity than the film does. My absolute favourite motif (of which there are many, this is a book of obsessive motifs) is characters’ inability to tell people apart. | | 4 | | Cannibal Corpse
Red Before Black
Because everyone is defined by job/clothes/restaurant they can get reservations at, everyone is constantly confusing everyone with everyone else in absolutely hilarious and key ways. It’s an absurd comedy of errors and it plays heavily into the amazing conclusion which leaves you stupefied as to whether to laugh or cry. Also there are actually intense scenes in this novel where characters are on the verge of sheer mental collapse based entirely on restaurant reservations. It’s amazing. Modern classic. | | 3 |  | AFI
Black Sails in the Sunset
The Rules Of Attraction
I stumbled upon this book at a very young age. This tale of nihilistic youth in the late 80s spending their college years living it up with hardcore drugs, sex, and rock’n’roll, yet feeling utterly empty and lost the entire time really hit me. It’s really B.E.E at his best, picking up where Less Than Zero left off. I have massive sentimentality about this book as it was my initiation, and I would be remiss in not pointing out that this is one of the best book-to-film adaptation of all time. As amazing as American Psycho is, this adaptation trumps it. | | 2 |  | As I Lay Dying
Shadows Are Security
Lunar Park
Well, this is hands down one of the most incredible novels I’ve ever read. Not even sure where to begin with this one. The protagonist in this is B.E.E himself, as he is coping with settling into a married-with-kid suburban routine after living a fast-and-hard lifestyle in his youth due to being a young breakout best-seller. While the first few chapters are an absolute meta laugh-riot, recounting the tales of the folly of youth, the novel quickly takes a much more serious turn as it deals with the grim reality of not only having to co-parent a very messed up child who is not yours, but also the fact that you yourself may be too broken to be who you need to be. | | 1 | | As I Lay Dying
Shadows Are Security
The prose in this book is some of the best I’ve ever read, and the way B.E.E captures the barriers in every-day life we experience all the time is incredible. Whether it’s as large as the great divide between generations that prevents a parent from connecting to their child, to just being an adoptive dad hosting a Halloween party and being forced to relate/interact with these other suburban dads while you know you spent the past decade snorting angel dust out of Pamela Anderson’s cleavage, this novel captures it. A massive peak in his career. | |
artiswar
12.06.17 | the better you look, the more you see. | Astral Abortis
12.06.17 | I tried reading American Psycho ages ago and couldn't make it more than 20 pages in. I'll try again but idk some books are just dead in the water from page one to me. | artiswar
12.06.17 | Yeah... Reading most of his stuff is like elaborately stabbing yourself in the eye with your thumb. But I will never forget those times I really rammed that thing in there. | artiswar
12.06.17 | You got pretty close there! | Toad
12.06.17 | Only read American Psycho - great idea, great execution, could have been done in a short story about 10 pages long. 3/5 | artiswar
12.06.17 | You're not wrong, even though all his novels can be summed up as bad things happen to bad people and everything is bad, that does not at all encompass the experience of reading these things. And no, American Psycho could not be told in 10 pages. In 200 pages maybe. | DDconjoined
12.06.17 | Oh, so happy a list was made about B.E.E. I agree with your ranking (mostly), but somehow I would slot Less Than Zero a bit higher. I hear he is writing something new as well. | artiswar
12.06.17 | I love Less Than Zero even though it seems low-ranked. It's just been so long since I read it, it's kind of furthest from my mind, and I prefer Imperial Bedrooms because of how fing nasty it is... I literally just finished Glamorama, and The Informers shortly before that, I would really like any feedback on those so I don't feel like I've gone fully insane in the process of reading those fucking things | Toad
12.06.17 | For me, American Psycho has like three ideas: 1. Impulse for violence at high levels of power / competition, 2. Brand obsession in consumer society, 3. Losing track of identity in the workplace. I think you're probably right about the 200 pages mark, especially given how 3 takes a while to set up (establishment, then eventual unravelling of character) - the other two could probably be tackled in a much shorter space
I'll have to read another novel by ellis eventually. i do admire his style and ambition | artiswar
12.06.17 | If you have to read a single Easton novel it should be Lunar Park. It's singular in his bibliography for the feels even though it occasionally relies on your knowledge of previous books. I feel like American Psycho is real easy to dismiss as violent filth, when there's a lot more going on, in particular the motifs; If you ignore the whole repetitive theme of identity confusion, then the fact that the protagonist is a blatant psychopath loses all weight. There's a balance that's carefully being ridden there that's easy to ignore there. But Lunar Park is a whole different beast entirely, it's maybe the only Easton book where there's a semblance of a connection to the protagonist. | artiswar
12.06.17 | Can we talk about the 25-page 3-way scene in Glamorama? Did anybody else read that? Because I feel like I may need to join a support group over that. | Davil667
12.06.17 | Very nice list, really digging Bret's writing style. Only read American Psycho, Lunar Park and Glamorama with American Psycho becoming one of my favorite novels of all time. The dark and haunting atmosperhe of Lunar Park also really etched itself into my mind, will def read again someday. Don't remember too much about Glamorama tbh... A very strange read to say the least. | Clumseee
12.06.17 | Big fan of Less Than Zero. Reading American Psycho next. Imperial Bedroom stinks. STINKS. | matbla00
12.06.17 | A great thread: I only watched American psycho but def will read either less than zero or lunar park during the summer. Actually I'd like to catch up on the postmodern American literature very much as I dig the atmosphere it has | Kalopsia
12.06.17 | I've only bothered to read The Rules of Attraction, Glamorama, American Psycho. And while I loved all three of those, I have zero desire to read literally anything else by Ellis. | artiswar
12.06.17 | @Clumseee I looooove Imperial Bedrooms. It's the closest thing to a full-on horror that he's done.
@Kalopsia lmao yeah that's understandable. I would really urge you to read Lunar Park though, it's very different from his other novels. | hikingmetalpunk
12.07.17 | 5 rules. just skip the music parts. |
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