Readers of Bret Easton Ellis's novels and viewers of film adaptations such as "American Psycho" and "The Rules of Attraction" may be surprised by his latest venture into the horror genre, "Lunar Park," now in paperback and accompanied by Ellis's second book tour since the novel's publication.
A striking departure is the casting of himself, or a fictionalized version of himself, as the protagonist haunted by memories of the past, beginning with an exaggerated and satirical recollection of his early fame as part of the literary "Brat Pack," or specifically a group of young Generation X writers popular among the materialistic youth crowd in the 1980s and early '90s. In an online student news conference, Ellis explained the departure, "My experiences shaped me into the man I am. Since novels are reflections of that man-it's inevitable. As you get older, yes, you tend to draw more heavily on the past because you have more of one."
"Lunar Park" is an autobiographical novel, although there is a profound difference between the fictional Ellis and his other characters, some of whom return in the book, Ellis says, "Every character is a part of me-from Clay to Patrick Bateman to Victor Ward. But I'm a writer and creating them. Big difference."
His novels share a common theme - that money and fame is essentially dehumanizing and ultimately annihilating. It's hard to respect any of his characters. They are typically shallow, terrible people. Ellis himself brushed with fame during the peak of his popularity, something most writers could only dream about. It's no surprise that the fictional Ellis in "Lunar Park," gradually losing his mind over encounters with the ghost of his dead father and Patrick Bateman, the yuppie serial killer of the horrific "American Psycho," can be difficult to admire.
Regarding the return of serial killer Bateman in "Lunar Park," "I can't tell you how many times some dude has flipped open his cell phone to show me his Patrick Bateman costume. It's weird but I did resent Patrick Bateman's popularity at one point and I think that's what worked its way into 'Lunar Park'," said Ellis. "Lunar Park" expands on topics raised in his previous book, "Glamorama," such as international terrorism. In the novel, Ellis and his family have moved from the city to the suburbs due to a wave of suicide bombings, sniper attacks, and martial law. Urban areas become places best to be avoided. His wife, Jayne "wanted to raise, gifted, disciplined children, driven to succeed, but she was fearful of just about everything: the threat of pedophiles, bacteria, SUVs (we owned one), guns, pornography and rap music, refined sugar, ultraviolet rays, terrorists, ourselves."
In a 1999 piece for Gear Magazine titled "Why the Teletubbies Are Evil," he expressed his hatred for the frolicking, group-thinking, overgrown television sets as being the result of a profound insecurity and paranoia among the new parents of his generation, who over-identify with their children to their overall detriment.
"Though it lacks the forced, noxious gaiety of 'Barney,' 'Teletubbies' seems like a wicked satirist's idea of a horrible children's program watched in a future concocted by Huxley or Orwell or Gibson," Ellis wrote. "The soothing tones, the eerie quiet, the New Age-y vibe, the immaculate surfaces, everything so anal and controlled and antiseptic, a world where even the spontaneous seems rehearsed, the sheer humorlessness of it all-is what makes Teletubbies so creepy and emblematic of the new mothers and fathers of my generation."
In a scene at the mall with his two children, Ellis is watching his teenage son converse with a group of friends. The boys, who otherwise wouldn't be socializing if not for the identical name-brand clothing, seem uncomfortable with each other. Ellis writes, "And then, without warning, the group of boys broke up. Whatever interest they had in each other evaporated so rapidly that it seemed not to have existed at all... it suddenly bothered me that so little of his life revolved around poetry or romance. Everything was grounded in the dull and anxious day-to-day. Everything was a performance."
Ellis channels the inherent artificiality of the suburbs as an overgrown moonscape, a wasteland or theme park, "dreamed up and fractured and modern."
It is a series of genre stories. It moves from autobiography to biting social commentary, later to gothic horror as an homage to Ellis's childhood favorite Stephen King. The detachment from reality common to celebrities is central to much of Ellis's work. The book itself is a puzzle; the fictional Ellis is often exaggerated into a comically absurd character.
"It changed a lot from inception to completion. It became both a novel that mimicked that genre but also something more personal. I always have regrets about the books when they're done. But overall I feel that I emotionally got to a place with 'Lunar Park' that I wanted to get to," said Ellis. "Lunar Park" is biting social commentary, the fear and paranoia is a stark and depressing reminder of our times.
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