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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Glamorama

Ellis

14:06 / 22.06.01

Did anyone out there understand this?

I found it utterly indecipherable.

Terrorists? Multiple film crews? Long lists of celebrities? Gah.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:35 / 22.06.01

I loved it.

What didn't you understand? It's not a simple plot-driven action thriller, even though it poses as one occasionally. The narrator's grip on reality isn't very solid to begin with and disintegrates completely over the course of the book. The line between what's 'real' and what's not is slowly blurred. It's very like that bit in the middle of Invisibles Vol 2 where there's the suggestion that it's all a big hoax run by Mason - at least, that's what it reminded me of.

The long lists of something (in this case celebrities) are in some ways an Ellis trademark, but they do serve a purpose: to start with, it's a refelction of the obsessions of that social scene, (and a consumerist society in general, the need to amass and catalogue etc) but they're also there to disrupt the flow of the text - creating a vaguely hypnotic effect. When he starts adding people like David Koresh in there randomly, the effect is decidedly unsettling.

[ 22-06-2001: Message edited by: Zenith Shoots His Big Mouth Off ]

Ganesh

16:20 / 22.06.01

There are very few books I don't/can't finish, but this was one of them. I'm not at all sure why; I think it just bored me. 'American Psycho' had the same effect but less so; by the time I'd reached the end, I'd decided it was a rather good (and oddly moral) black comedy - and I retrospectively glossed over the dull bits.

He's a strangely inconsistent writer, I think. I can never quite decide whether I like him or not.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

18:07 / 22.06.01

quote:Originally posted by Zenith Shoots His Big Mouth Off:
When he starts adding people like David Koresh in there randomly

I loved that bit. Wasn't Koresh dead by this point in time? It was almost as if the novel was taking place in an alternate reality where he'd become a celebrity instead.

There were some other great little bits of throw-away pop-culture weirdness: some character hanging out with 'one of the Aphex Twins' for example. Glamorama got a shitty review in The Face or ID where the journalist harped on about how BEE's fact checkers hadn't caught on to there only being one Aphex Twin...totally missing the point that the main character was a clueless, shallow proto-Nathan who would have constantly made fuck-ups like that because his conversation was garnered from style magazine predictions of 'the next big thing' (or did Ellis fuck up, because much of the information he used to write Glamorama - as with American Psycho - was from magazines?).

The other thing I was amazed by was that Ellis managed to outdo himself with some of the murder scenes. The bit where the girlfriend dies at the end left me genuinely shaken...and not un-concerned about Ellis' mental health.

[ 22-06-2001: Message edited by: basic ]

Ganesh

18:35 / 22.06.01

Hm. That makes me want to finish it now.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:20 / 23.06.01

basic, I'm sure the misinformation is deliberate where Aphex is concerned -

SPOILERS

after all, there's more than one twin in the book who shouldn't be there, isn't there?

Not so sure about some of the fuck-ups where Britpop culture is concerned, but he piles so much of it in there that it seems churlish to complain.

Oh, and Koresh was dead by that point. As was Tupac, who crops up near the end.

Ellis certainly has lots of issues where women are concerned... I think he wants to be a feminist but he's so fucked-up about his own sexuality that he's also a misogynist...

Red Cross Iodized Salt

20:37 / 23.06.01

quote:Originally posted by Ganesh:
I retrospectively glossed over the dull bits.
I always felt that the dull bits in American Psycho (although the endless descriptions and lists of expensive toys and designer cloths managed to be amusing as well) served two purposes. They underlined how Bateman - in his struggle to fit in - defines himself by his posessions and the social standing GQ magazine told him such posessions would grant him. The dull repetitive nature of these laundry lists also serve to numb the reader just before slapping him in the face with a murder scene.

Anyone read the 'Am.Psycho 2000' emails from Patrick Bateman that were sent out just before the film? As far as I know, BEE wrote most of them...you might still be able to sign up for them here.

quote:Originally posted by Zenith:
after all, there's more than one twin in the book who shouldn't be there, isn't there?

I didn't pick up on that before. Methinks its time for a re-read...

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

02:31 / 24.06.01

At the time of the UK release, my ex-girlfriend (not ex at the time, natch) signed up to recieve email from senor bateman, and was really looking forward to it, but recieved none, and was deeply disapointed. I assume it was timed purely for the US release. Goddamn yank-o-centric film promotion bods!

Pin

10:31 / 24.06.01

I havenb't read this thread beyond the word "SPOILERS" cos I think I'll pick the book back up... I'm only up to the boat though. I really haven't read much, but plese tell me he stops saying "And we'll lide down the surface of thing". That really annoyed me.

And I pay such little attention to clebrity gossip, I don't get any of the names...

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

00:44 / 25.06.01

Sorry -- thought it was a complete piece of crap. Starts with Ellis name-dropping every fucking celebrity I can think of, then turning into a completely different novel with a terrorist tasle. I finished only because I don't leave novels unfinished, but definitely decided that I was glad I checked it out of a library instead of buying it.

No star here laces

00:44 / 25.06.01

Um yeah, and that might be the whole point of the thing dearest.

00:44 / 25.06.01

Next week on Barbelith Book Club: authors, narrators, and how to tell the two apart.

deletia

10:18 / 25.06.01

I want a terrorist tassle! To go on my graduation gown. That would be so cool....

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

11:56 / 25.06.01

I meant, tale. Christ, I don't know why I don't bother with you people sometimes. I really don't.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

04:45 / 27.06.01

I enjoyed it, personally. It was fun to watch things slowly creep into the narrator's conciousness until things finally built to a head. While I'm positive I didn't entirely "get" the ending, I still throughly enjoied it.

No star here laces

07:58 / 27.06.01

Oh god, I'm just up to the bit when things start getting weird, just before the opening of the club.

I love this book

Victor's interview with MTV and the conversation with Lauren (and the fact that she has sex with him anyway) are utterly utterly priceless.

Does anyone else find that reading this book and entering victor's life actually reduces your mental faculties in the five minutes after you put it down? I was reading it over a coffee this morning and somebody I know from work stopped and said something to me, and all I could do was stare blankly at him cos none of it got processed (maybe because there were no celeb names mentioned...)

The Return Of Rothkoid

08:09 / 27.06.01

quote:Originally posted by basic:
Anyone read the 'Am.Psycho 2000' emails from Patrick Bateman that were sent out just before the film?
Yep. And what a bag of arse they were. I ended up unsubbing from it because it was so boring: a few "I'll make that bitch pay" kind of missives, mentions of Lear jets, that kind of thing. Yawnworthy; outside the book, Bateman just doesn't function.

American Psycho didn't do much for me, to be honest - I read it, and it was quite compelling, on occasion, but it left me unsatisfied, I guess. All mouth, no trousers.

[ 27-06-2001: Message edited by: Rothkoid ]

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:18 / 27.06.01

quote:Originally posted by Mecca the Soul Brother:
Does anyone else find that reading this book and entering victor's life actually reduces your mental faculties in the five minutes after you put it down?

I know what you mean - as with American Psycho, I definitely felt that immersing myself in the narrator's head left me a bit worse for wear after a while.

Glamorama does that even more I think because it's more relevant: I did find myself thinking "am I this shallow? oh God, I am... I am scum..."

Janean Patience

22:32 / 08.05.09

Late, drunk, expecting no responses.

My partner had left a bunch of quotes from Frankenstein next to the PC. Reading them without context while distracted, not long after watching The Rules Of Attraction, I imagined the quotes from Victor were from Glamorama.

"It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn."

"The same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for a long time."

"I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart."

"I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me."

"All the boys think she's a spy."

06:52 / 09.05.09

Are you for 'Glamorama', JP, or against it?

Just to be clear, it's all the same to me. I flushed the cat down the commode the other day, and it just seemed ... to be trying to give me a hard time. Those baleful eyes - you can bet I gave it an extra turn of the boot after that! And then paid for it, in hell.

Isn't this, in a sense, what Mr B's doing in 'Glamorama'? It seems like an important novel, to the extent that no one's really caught up with it yet. For the NY coke kid/Andy Warhol pal du jour a while ago to write such an odd, metaphysical nightmare is, I think, pretty impressive.

I can't claim to understand all of it, but, IMVHO, it's one of the most interesting books to be published in a while.

I'm going to stick my neck out here - it's better than 'Fever Pitch'. It's better, even than 'Man And Boy'. Which means it's ... it's just better, than shakespeare, innit?

Janean Patience

18:45 / 11.05.09

Oh, I'm all for Glamorama. I've only read it twice through from start to finish, relishing on the second run all the little tricks and prefigurings I missed first time, but I've dipped into it a lot. Victor acts as kind of a lens to make the airport-novel stylings of Ellis's plot and his writing all the more horrific for their banality. It says things about late-stage capitalism that nobody else has quite managed to frame.

On my second reading I tried much, much harder to follow the plot than first time thru. I still got lost by the end. Perhaps I'm only trying to throw a sympathetic light on my lack of reading comprehension skills, but I think you're meant to get lost; I don't think even the reader who sat there with a notepad keeping careful track of who was who would be able to separate the various plotters in the end. Victor was always doomed because he was stupid, and he was stupid because he chose to be stupid.

Apparently the book came about because Ellis wanted to write about Victor specifically following his cameo in The Rules Of Attraction. That's always struck me as odd, that this one-scene character was the inspiration for the whole book. But his section, and a brief section from Clay of Less Than Zero, are the most energetic parts of the book. It's infused with life. If only Patrick Bateman's walk-on did the same thing I'd have a theory going.

Anyone ever seen Glitterati? It's the full-length version of Victor's adventures from the ROA movie. Shot by the actor who starred in it as he went around doing all that vapid youthquake shit, and apparently it can only be shown as an underground movie because nobody who's in it gave their permission to be in it.