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"FacebookPinterestellisjacket2.png\n\nBut as hard as I tried to make the novel work for me, it couldn't help but assert itself as a massively disappointing effort. If you remember back 25 years to his electric debut (look, let's be honest: the novel was great because it was written by a 21-year-old\u2014not great by great-novel-written-by-an-adult standards), the single tolerable quality about Clay and his L.A. friends was the fact that they were kids. That they would ultimately get their shit together, become better people, and spend the rest of their lives as a fulfilling, good-hearted reaction\u2014a true redemption\u2014to their disgusting youth.\n\nWell, guess what? In Imperial Bedrooms, Ellis shatters that illusion by re-introducing us to all the same characters, 25 years later. And they are certainly themselves, only older\u2014though you'd never know it. Clay and his cadre of self-destructive, disaffected friends are just as immature, abusive, vengeful, and pitiful as they were in the 80s. This time, though, they've got money of their own and some industry clout to throw around. In short, if you're looking for Hollywood at its most bare-faced and ugly, this is your jam. If you bristle at Hollywood at its most bare-faced and ugly, you probably shouldn't hand over even the very few hours it takes to read this slender novel.\n\nThe thing is\u2014and this might be unfair to the author\u2014it's hard to tell where the intentional ugliness starts and stops with this one. Can I really blame the author for writing a book about unfathomably despicable people if that's his sole intention? Ellis has said, over and over, that he resents the conflation of his personal life and the characters in his books. (Well, then don't write novels that precisely resemble your own bio...) But in this case, I have to wonder if my distaste for the novel is all part of the plan. As in: hate Clay, hate his friends, hate Hollywood, hate my lazy prose\u2014that's the point, dude! But then you finish, and flip to the backflap of the jacket cover, where you are confronted with the most perilous\u2014and illuminating\u2014meta-question of all: is Ellis trying to look like an asshole in that photo [above], or is that just part of the art, too?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/the-working-title-for-bret-easton-elliss-new-book-was-teenage-pussy>