A Review of Bret Easton Ellis' Latest Novel, Lunar Park

The Bret Easton Ellis book review will always be prefaced with a terrible pun of a title. On a lazy Tuesday, before reading his new novel Lunar Park (Knopf, 2005, $24.95), I wrote a few of my own: “Brat Park,” “American Psycho, American Dad?,” “The Rules of Distraction,” “Not a Lot More Than Zero,” and, my favorite, “Craporama!” So obvious, so unfounded: Ellis is an easy target for the bitter book reviewer (who, in his or her own mind, on constant rotation, is “I can write better than John does, but (sigh) John does.”), but this book reviewer is going to take the high road. Sort of. I’m ambivalent. Cutting to the conclusive bone of the review is an odd (and perhaps even unwise) method of introduction, but when the marrow is so problematic, there’s just no other way. You’ll see.

As a voice for all that was wrong with the decade of little white envelopes, meaningless pansexuality, and credit cards used for all the wrong reasons; the decade when buying a Betamax was a smart investment; when Vanna White was an ingénue and Huey Lewis and the News tapes a day-of-release purchase, Bret Easton Ellis seemed to be above the punchline of American Psycho, until his own life started resembling all of the worst ‘80s’ excesses: Drugs, media, self-involvement, exclusivity. But don’t forget, American Psycho is a very structured and very good book; its ridiculously microwave-overfed violence may strike the parochial reader as too raw, but the NO EXIT denouement is as memorable as any of the last twenty years. More importantly, the novel understood and retaliated against two-faced Reaganomics and all other pisspoor administrative initiatives without once a hint of pedantry.