Imperial Bedrooms
Encyclopedia
Imperial Bedrooms is a novel by American author Bret Easton Ellis
. Released on June 15, 2010, it is the sequel to Less Than Zero, Ellis' 1985 bestselling literary debut, which was shortly followed by a film adaptation
in 1987. Imperial Bedrooms revisits Less Than Zero' s self-destructive and disillusioned youths as they approach middle-age in the present day. Like Ellis' earlier novel, which took its name from Elvis Costello
's 1977 song of the same name
, Imperial Bedrooms is named after Costello's 1982 album
.
Imperial Bedrooms, unlike Less Than Zero, is plot-driven. The action of the novel takes place twenty-five years after Less Than Zero. Its story follows Clay, a New York-based screenwriter after he returns to Los Angeles to cast his new film adaptation. There, he becomes embroiled in the sinister world of his former friends and confronts the darker aspects of his own personality. The novel opens with a post-modern literary device
that establishes the world of Imperial Bedrooms to be similar to but not exactly that of Less Than Zero; in doing this, Ellis is able to comment on the earlier novel's style and on the development of its moralistic film adaptation. The device allows Ellis to explore Clay's pathological narcissism
, masochistic and sadistic
tendencies, and the exploitative personality in the character which had not been explicit in Less Than Zero. Ellis did this in part to dispel the sentimental reputation Less Than Zero has accrued over the years, that of "an artifact of the 1980s
". Imperial Bedrooms retains Ellis' characteristic transgressive style and applies it to the 2000s and 2010s
, covering amongst other things, the impact of new communication technologies on daily lives.
Ellis began working on the novel during the development process of his 2005 novel, Lunar Park
. Imperial Bedrooms depicts scenes of sex, extreme violence and hedonism in a minimalist style devoid of emotion, recurring features in Ellis' work. Some commentators have noted, however, that unlike previous works, Imperial Bedrooms employs more of the conventional devices of popular fiction. Reviews were mixed and frequently polarised. Some reviewers felt the novel was a successful return to themes explored in Less Than Zero and Ellis' other novels, such as Lunar Park and American Psycho
(1991), while others derided it for being "boring" or self-indulgent. Prior to the novel's release, Ellis had already speculated about the possibility of a film adaptation featuring the actors from the 1987 Less Than Zero film. As of July 2010, there is no one attached to the film, though the rights to its adaptation are by default already held by the studio which produced Less Than Zero.
, "and that kind of pulpy
noir fiction
". He found inspiration in Chandler because "He didn't even know how some of his books ended. That's part of what makes those books existentialist masterpieces." To Ellis, "It's about a journey and a tone and style and this worldview he created." In terms of his own plotting, however, he opined that "plots really don't matter", nor solutions to mysteries, because it's "the mood that's so enthralling... [a] kind of universal, this idea of a man searching for something or moving through this moral landscape and trying to protect himself from it, and yet he's still forced to investigate it." Part of the "impetus" behind Imperial Bedrooms, which Ellis "wrestled with", was to try and dispel the "sentimental view of Less Than Zero" that made it, to some, "an artifact of the 80s" alongside "John Hughes movies and Ray-Bans and Fast Times at Ridgemont High
"; he felt he began assessing audience's reactions to his work when working on Lunar Park.
On April 14, 2009, MTV News
announced that Ellis had nearly finished the novel and it will be published in May 2010. At the time, Ellis revealed that all the novel's main characters would return. Prior to publication, Ellis had been convinced by his persuasive editor to remove some of the more graphic lines from Imperial Bedrooms' torture scenes, which he later regretted. "My most extreme act of self-censoring in Imperial Bedrooms," he said, however, was to omit a three-line description of a silver wall, because he felt that Clay would never have written it. Ellis stated he had no plans to make changes to the book as it stands in a second edition. Months prior to the book's release, Ellis tweeted
the first sentence of the novel, "They had made a movie about us." The Random House
website later announced the on sale date of June 22, 2010 in both hardback and paperback. With it, they released a picture of the book's cover and a short synopsis, which described the book as focusing on a middle-aged Clay, now a screenwriter, drawn back into his old circle. Amidst this, Clay begins dating a young actress with mysterious ties to Julian, Rip and a recently-murdered Hollywood producer; his life begins to spin out of control. In Imperial Bedrooms, Los Angeles returns once again as the book's setting. Along with New York, where Clay has been prior to coming home, it is one of Ellis' two major locations.
. His philandering friend Trent Burroughs, who has married Blair, is a manager while Clay's former classmate at Camden, Daniel Carter, has become a famous producer. Julian Wells, who was a male prostitute
in Less Than Zero, has become an ultra-discreet high-class pimp
representing struggling young actors who do not wish to tarnish future careers. Clay attempts to romance Rain Turner, a young woman auditioning for a role in his new film, leading her on with the promise of being cast, all the while knowing she is too old for the part. His narration betrays that he has done this with a number of men and women in the past, and yet often comes out of the relationship hurt and damaged himself.
As the novel progresses, Clay learns that his old acquaintance Rip Millar, now disfigured by plastic surgery and more dangerous than ever, also had a fling with the actress. Throughout the novel, Clay is being stalked
by an unknown person, and continually hears about the grisly murder of a young actor whom he knew; Clay disinterestedly watches the act of murder, which he later attributes to Rip, on the YouTube
application on his iPhone
. When Clay discovers that his former friend Julian is Rain's boyfriend, he instigates Rip in having Julian murdered. The novel then depicts sequences involving savage sexual and physical abuse of a beautiful young boy and young girl, perpetrated by Clay. The novel offers no indication as to whether these scenes are fantasy or reality. Clay experiences no feelings of remorse or guilt for this, for Julian's death, or for exploiting Rain. In fact, the opening exposition
describes the circumstances of Julian's death detachedly, many pages before the murder is depicted. In the last scenes, his ex-girlfriend Blair transpires to have been the one hiring people to follow Clay, deluded in believing Clay is still the man she believed she knew and loved as a teenager in the 1980s.
one could possibly imagine", they remained to other reviewers "particularly sympathetic". Like the novel, its characters were equally cultural milestones, described by a reviewer as "seminal characters" (of American fiction). On the subject of the 1987 film, Clay describes that "the parents who ran the studio would[n't] ever expose their children in the same black light the book did". To Bill Eichenberger, this shows how "the children have become the parents, writing scripts and producing movies, still imprisoned by Hollywood's youth and drug cultures – but now looking at things from the outside in." Eisinger comments for the New York Press
, that while "they're in careers now and new relationships and different states of mind... their preoccupations are just the same."
Clay, the protagonist of Less Than Zero, "once a paralyzed observer, is now a more active character and has grown to be a narcissist
". Clay's narcissism emerges, according to Ellis, because Ellis as a writer "wasn't that interested in the other characters, and neither is Clay." For the author, his became "an exploration of intense narcissism." In 2010, Clay is now a "successful screenwriter" with the "occasional producer credit". He returns to LA to help cast The Listeners (reminiscent of Ellis' involvement with the 2009 film adaptation of his short story collection The Informers
). Now 45, and no longer a disaffected teen, Clay is described by Details
as "arguably worse than American Psycho' s Patrick Bateman
"; Ellis says that he "wouldn't disagree" with this because Bateman's crimes are ambiguous. In terms of Clay's psychology, Ellis notes his preponderance for a "masochistic... cycle of control and rejection and seduction and inevitable pain", which "is something he gets off on because he's ...a masochist and not a romantic." The Los Angeles Times
notes how Clay "shares biographical details with Ellis", a successful party-boy, who in 1985 was "often conflated with his fictional counterpart." Ellis asserts to the contrary, "I'm not really Clay." As opposed to his portrayal in Less Than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms makes it more abundantly clear that Clay is as manipulative as those around him; he is, in Ellis' words, "guilty". As in Less Than Zero, Clay has "stuck to thinking and feeling as little as possible", "fending off the enemy of emotion with regular doses of alcohol and sedatives such as ambien
, living with a kind of psychic "locked-in" syndrome
." As in Zero and Psycho, the novel also poses the question of Clay's reality, The Independent
asking "Is Clay really being followed or is he being dogged by a guilty conscience for crimes committed, even when they are crimes of inaction?" Over the novel, "Clay shifts from damaged to depraved"; a "final scene in Imperial Bedrooms of unremitting torture... enacted by Clay on two beautiful teenagers who are bought and systematically abused" demonstrates "Clay's graduation from a passively colluding observer to active perpetrator... who either indulges in torture or fantasises about it."
The novel is written in the first-person
, from Clay's perspective. Clay, who "felt betrayed by Less Than Zero", uses Imperial Bedrooms to make a stand or a case for himself, though ultimately "reveals himself to be far worse than the author of Less Than Zero ever began to hint at." Clay still bears similarities to the earlier character in Less Than Zero; according to one reviewer, "not all that much is changed. Clay is a cipher, an empty shell who is only able to approximate interactions and experiences through acts of sadism and exploitation." He is also, in many ways, a new character, because the opening of the book presents that the Clay of Less Than Zero had merely been "just a writer pretending to be him". When asked why he "changed" Clay from "passive" to "guilty", Ellis explained he felt Clay's inaction in the original novel made him equally as guilty; it had "always bothered" Ellis that Clay didn't do anything to save the little girl being raped in the first novel. The Independent notes "his passivity [in Less Than Zero] has hardened into something far more culpable, and nefarious." According to Ellis, "In LA, over time, the real person you are ultimately comes out." He also speculates "maybe the fear turned him into a monster". Ellis remarks that he finds the developments in Clay "so exciting". One reviewer summarized the character's development, "The nascent narcissist of Less Than Zero... is now left in a "dead end". The novel is Ellis' "deeply pessimistic presentation of human nature as assailable... an unflinching study of evil."
Blair and Trent Burroughs share a loveless marriage. Blair remains, according to Janelle Brown, "the moral center of Ellis' work", and Trent has become a Hollywood manager. The Oregonian
notes "Although Blair and Trent have children, the children are never described and hardly mentioned; their absence is "even more unsettling than the absence of parents in a story about teenagers, underlining the endlessly narcissistic nature of the characters' world." Julian Wells has gone on to establish a very exclusive escort service of his own in Hollywood. While in Less Than Zero, Clay felt protective of Julian, who had fallen into prostitution and drug addiction, in the new novel, he attempts to have him killed. The "grisly" dispatch of Julian late in the book, and Clay's casual mention of it early on, were part of a "rhythm" that Ellis felt suited the book. He speculates whether "the artist looking back" becomes a destructive force. He hadn't planned to kill off the character, just finding that while writing "it felt right". Rip Millar occupies both terrifying and comic relief
roles in the novel. Vice describes him, hyperbolically, as "like the supervillain of these two books". Uncertainties about the character's "specifics" originate in Clay, who "doesn't really want to know, which makes it kind of scarier".
, Alison Kelly of the University of Oxford
observes the novel's "philosophical" qualities, and opines that its "thriller-style hints and foreshadowing
s... form part of a metaphysical investigation." Kelly describes it as "existentialist
to the extent that it confronts the minimal limits of identity" and an exposé of the worst depths of human nature. She further argues that the novel's motif of facial recognitions amounts to the message that people should be read "at face value", and that furthermore, past action is the greatest indicator of future behaviour, leaving no room for "change, growth, [or] self-reinvention". In terms of stylistic literary changes, Ellis also displays more fondness for the Ruskinian
pathetic fallacy
than in previous works. For the most part, the novel is written in Ellis' trademark writing style; Lawson refers to this as "sexual and narcotic depravities in an emotionless tone." With regard to this style, Ellis cites precursors to himself, particular the work of filmmakers. Ellis feels that the technique itself gives the reader a unique kind of insight into the characters, and comments that "numbness is a feeling too. Emotionality isn't the only feeling there is." In terms of style
, Ellis told Vice that he enjoyed his return to minimalism, because of the challenge of "[t]rying to achieve that kind of tension with so few words was enjoyable to do." While some reviewers of popular fiction derided Ellis's style as "flat", others found it unexpectedly moving.
' Clay; he describes "The movie was based on a book by someone we knew…. It was labeled fiction but only a few details had been altered and our names weren't changed and there was nothing in it that hadn't happened." The Los Angeles Times describes this as a "nifty little trick", because it allows Ellis to establish the newer book "as the primary narrative, one that trumps Ellis as author and the real world." The San Francisco Chronicle
calls it a "neat trick of authorial self-abnegation". Another reviewer describes it as Ellis at "his most ambitious", a "Philip Roth
ian, doppelgänger gambit", making his new narrator "the real Clay" and the other an imposter. This allows Ellis to skilfully, "with writerly jujitsu", acknowledge Robert Downey Jr.'s popular performance as Julian in the moralistic 1987 film, in which he died; Ellis appreciates the adaptation as a "milestone in a lot of ways". The device also allows the novelist to insert self-critique; The Sunday Times
reviewer notes that Imperial Bedrooms finds its characters "still a little sore at their depiction as inarticulate zombies". John Crace
, in his "digested read" of Imperial Bedrooms, insinuates through parody
that "the author" of the metafictional Less Than Zero is also meant to be Ellis, describing him in Clay's voice as "too immersed in the passivity of writing and too pleased with his own style to bother with many commas to admit it so he wrote me into the story as the man who was too frightened to love." With regard to the opening narrative conceit, Ellis queries "Is it complication ... or is it clarification?", opining that it certainly is the latter for Clay. Though Ellis never names himself in the book, he concedes to Lawson that although "I don't name the author", one can "guess [Bret Easton Ellis] is who the Clay of Imperial Bedrooms is referring to." Ellis told Vice that he hadn't explicitly considered when writing the novel whether Clay was referring to him or not. Eileen Battersby comments, "Just as he did in Lunar Park (2005), Ellis uses self-consciousness as a device." According to Vice
, this conceit of self-consciousness means that "Imperial Bedrooms is no mere sequel. It's more a culmination of all of Ellis's work", containing "the scatalogical violence of American Psycho" and "the otherwordly terror of Lunar Park". Ellis himself raises the "sequel" question, commenting "... I don't think it is [a sequel]. Well, I mean, it is and it isn't. It's narrated by him, sure. But I guess I could maybe have switched the names around and it could stand alone."
Asked about the motif and "casual approach to" bisexual characters in his novels, continued in Imperial Bedrooms, Ellis stated he "really [didn't] know", and that he wished he could provide "an answer – depicting [him] as extremely conscious of those choices". He believes it to be an "interesting aspect of [his] work". Details notes how Ellis' own sexuality, frequently described as bisexual, has been notoriously hard to pin down. Reviewers have long tried to probe Ellis on autobiographical themes in his work. He reiterates to Vice that he is not Clay. Ellis says that other contemporary authors (naming Michael Chabon
, Jonathan Franzen
, Jonathan Lethem
as examples) don't get asked if their novels are autobiographical. (However, Ellis tells one interview, that he "cannot fully" say that "I'm not Clay" because of their emotional "connections".) Vice attributes this streak to Ellis' age when Less Than Zero came out, which led to him being seen as a voice-of-the-generation
. Ellis feels that the autobiographical truths of his novels lie in their writing processes, which to him are like emotional "exorcisms". Crace's abovementioned parody suggests that Less Than Zero Clay was originally a flattering portrayal of Ellis. Ellis discusses lightly the kinds of self-insertion present in the book. While Clay is clearly (parodically) working on the film adaptation of The Informers, he is at the same time fully aware that he has been a character in Less Than Zero, and that ostensibly, Ellis is 'the author' whom Clay knew. However, there are clear differences to the characters, as well. For example, Ellis had to omit lines from the book he felt Clay would never have thought of, on subjects he would never have noticed. Ellis himself feels he is adapting to middle-age very well; Clay, however, isn't.
Imperial Bedrooms also breaches several new territories. When compared to Less Than Zero, its "huge shift" is a technological one. The novel picks up on many aspects of the early 21st century culture, such as Internet viral video
s which depict executions. The novel reflects how technology changes the nature of interpersonal relationships. Additionally, Clay is text
-stalked throughout the book; Ellis himself had been "text-stalked" before in real life. Ellis feels this was an unconscious exploration of the dynamics brought on by the new technology. The author also predicts that "fans of Less Than Zero" may "feel betrayed"; Imperial Bedrooms' thrust is its "narrative... of exploitation". One reviewer describes the novel's "central theme" as "Hollywood is an industry town running on exploitation", and criticises this theme for being unoriginal in 2010. An Irish Times review notes positively however that Ellis' "vision of society is bleak; his dark studies of the human animal as shocking as ever." The new setting poses questions, such as "Is Hollywood intended as a variation of ancient Rome
? Is the movie industry
a coliseum
?" Another review found that the celebrity setting, as visited before in his novel Glamorama
(1998), allows Ellis to make a number of observations about contemporary pop culture via Clay, such as when he asserts "that exposure can ensure fame". Ellis comments how in Less Than Zero, Clay's passivity worked to protect him from the "bleak moral landscape he was a part of", which he views as Clay's major flaw. Ellis developed this into the more unabashedly 'guilty' Clay of the new novel. Ellis says that "a portrait of narcissism was the big nut that I had. Of entitlement. This imperial idea." The difference he notes between this "portrait of a narcissist" and his earlier ones, such as American Psycho and Lunar Park, come in the form of its more moral bent: "This time", Ellis comments, "the narcissist reaches a dead end." To one reviewer, Clay's world at its most exaggerated, in the scenes of torture, reach Huxleyan
heights of dystopian fantasy
, comparing Imperial Bedrooms to Brave New World
(1932), "where the "command economy" now manifests as rampant, late-capitalist consumerism, where ambien is the new soma and humans are zombies: one character's face is "unnaturally smooth, redone in such a way that the eyes are shocked open with perpetual surprise; it's a face mimicking a face, and it looks agonized."
attempted to aggregate what they found to be polarised reviews of Imperial Bedrooms, noting that one Times
reviewer felt the novel was simply dull, "impoverished", and "ghastly", whereas the London Review of Books
felt that in spite of its flaws, the book was enjoyable for its "beautiful one-liners" and the fun of "seeing the old Easton Ellis magic applied to the popular culture of our era ... iPhones, Apple stores, internet videos and Lost
." The New Statesmen
compiled reviews from The Independent, The Observer
, and The New York Times
. The first two reviews are positive, praising Ellis' "modern noir", the book's "atmosphere", and indebtedness to Philip Roth and F. Scott Fitzgerald
, with the Observer saying it "ranks with his best in the latter register [of Fitzgerald]." The latter review accused Ellis of falling flat, attracting negative comparison to Martin Amis
; both have "a flair for such perfect, surreal description" but "struggle to set it in an effective context." Other writers attempting to gauge the book's reception also describe it as "mixed". The Periscope Press deemed that the novel's reviews were mostly negative, citing Dr. Alison Kelly's article for The Guardian as the only counter-example, while deeming that it "still read more like restrained criticism than outright praise".
On the subject of reviews, British critic Mark Lawson
notes the tendency for Ellis' reviews to be "unpredictable"; he cited the irony of favour amongst right-wing critics, and the extent to which the liberal media attack his work. Ellis himself, however, states that he "proudly" accepts the label of moralist. He also attributes some of the negative criticism that Imperial Bedrooms and Ellis' earlier works have received in the past to the earlier schools of feminist criticism
; today, he observes young girls "reading the works correctly", opining the books shoudn't be read through the lens of "old school feminism
." To that end, the author observes that older women reviewing Imperial Bedrooms in the US had issues with it, not least feelings of betrayal. He feels these are ironic because the book is in fact a critique of a certain kind of male perspective and behaviour.
Tom Shone
, writing for The Sunday Times
, praised the novel for its atypical qualities for Ellis, "known for his orgies of violence". Shone asks "Why is a new sequel to Less Than Zero... so moving?", noting the presence of "feelings" in the novel to be starkly different from Ellis' usual style. Touching on its personal qualities, Shone notes "If Lunar Park unspooled the atrocities of American Psycho back to their source, Imperial Bedrooms pulls the thread further and reaches Less Than Zero". The emotive energy in the new book is traced back to the last pages of Lunar Park as well; fellow writer Jay McInerney
observes that "The last few pages of [Lunar Park] are among the most moving passages I know in recent American fiction [because]... Bret was coming to terms with his relationship with his father in that book." Vice observes that the "final passages in both Imperial Bedrooms and Lunar Park pack a lot of emotional impact." San Francisco Chronicle hails Imperial Bedrooms as "the very definition of authorly meta: Ellis is either so deeply enmeshed in his own creepy little insular world that he can't write his way out of it, or else he is such a genius that he's created an entire parallel universe that folds and unfolds on itself like some kind of Escher
print."
Regarding the book's achievement, Shone remarks "He now stands at year zero – creatively, psychologically." However, typical features of Ellis' earlier works remain in tact; for example, in its depictions of violence. Commenting on its self-referential aspects, Janelle Brown of the San Francisco Chronicle recommends "for his next endeavor, Ellis should stop worrying and start looking for the exit of his own personal rabbit hole." The Buffalo News
awarded the novel its Editor's Choice. Jeff Simon comments that it "brings an excessive Reaganesque flavour to Obama America
". With regards to the novel's writing style, he comments "The first-person sentences run on and on, but the individual sections of the book are nothing if not minimal... ghastly narcissism or not, Bret Easton Ellis has a fictional territory all his own and, heaven forbid, a mastery there." The Wall Street Journal on the other hand, described this prose style as "flat and fizzless". Such is the book's violent aesthetic that, for Eileen Battersby of the Irish Times, "the book is closer to his remarkable third novel, American Psycho". She further compliments Ellis as "a bizarrely moral writer who specialises in evoking the amoral." Concerning his writing, she notes its "despair is blunt, factual and seldom approaches the laconic unease of JG Ballard."
Following her positive comments, however, Battersby concludes negatively. The book is a "bleak performance... a tired study of the vacuous" with the feeling of an improvised screenplay being performed by an uncommitted cast. She sums that Ellis' novel "consists of too many doors being left slightly ajar, and not enough rooms, or opportunities, being fully explored." Some critics have questioned the book's relevance to a contemporary audience. Dallas News
poses the question, whether Imperial Bedrooms is "a story anyone is interested in anymore", because Ellis' "blunt, spare, journal-entry prose" is no longer, in 2010, "the backstage pass" it once was to the lives of "LA's rich and famous". Furthermore, Tom Maurstrad argues that since the 1980s
, that decade has become a "go-to bargain bin for retro-trends and ready-made nostalgia, easy to package into fashion lines and TV shows". The review bemoans that the novel's theme, the dark side of Hollywood, is no longer a culture-shocking revelation, and that Ellis fails to capitalize on the narratorial conceit which it opens with. Maurstrad does highlight positive aspects, however. Ellis wisely "appropriates the unblinking brutality [of]... American Psycho, to add some dramatic heft to this anorexic update", making the sequel a "celebrity snuff film" to the earlier "backstage pass". The Wall Street Journal damned the novel as "a dull, stricken, under-medicated nonstory that goes nowhere." The Boston Globe
reviewer opined that "Ellis is aiming for noir, for the territory of James Ellroy
and Raymond Chandler, but ends up with an XXX-rated
episode of Melrose Place
."
Andrew McCarthy, who played Clay in the 1987 Less Than Zero film, described the novel as "an exciting, shocking conclusion... a surprising one." The actor praised Clay's character, citing a "wicked vulnerability" which the character covers up with alcohol, hostility, and its portrayal of a world "full of pain and suffering and unkindness" beneath the "glossy and shimmering and seductive" veneer of Hollywood. McCarthy described his experience of reading the book as like "revisiting an old friend", owing to the consistency of the characters' and Ellis' voices.
, and felt that interpreting it as a sequel to the 1987 movie adaptation
starring Andrew McCarthy
, Robert Downey Jr.
, James Spader
and Jami Gertz
"would be a great idea". Two months prior to the book's release, Less Than Zero actor Andrew McCarthy stated it was "early days" in thinking about a potential film adaptation; McCarthy felt, however, that the novel would adapt well. Because the characters in Imperial Bedrooms have been owned by 20th Century Fox since Ellis sold the film rights to Less Than Zero, prospective film for Imperial Bedrooms rights revert to Fox. Ellis stated to Vice in June 2010 that he would be interested in writing the screenplay. In July 2010 however, the author clarified to California Chronicle, saying "There's no deal, there's no one attached. There's been some vague talk among the cast members... As far as I know right now nothing's happening." Ellis opines that were Robert Downey Jr. to get involved, the film would move straight into production. However, remembering the adaptation process Less Than Zero went through, he admits "I've learned to be cautious about saying oh they'll never turn this dark depraved character into any sort of interesting Mulholland Drive
, David Lynch
kind of movie, but I could be totally wrong about that. I don't know."
Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...
. Released on June 15, 2010, it is the sequel to Less Than Zero, Ellis' 1985 bestselling literary debut, which was shortly followed by a film adaptation
Less Than Zero (film)
Less Than Zero is a 1987 American drama film loosely based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel of the same name. The film stars Andrew McCarthy as Clay, a college freshman returning home for Christmas to spend time with his ex-girlfriend Blair and his friend Julian , who is also a drug addict...
in 1987. Imperial Bedrooms revisits Less Than Zero
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...
's 1977 song of the same name
Less Than Zero (song)
"Less Than Zero" is the eighth track on Elvis Costello's debut album My Aim Is True, and the first Costello single that Stiff Records released.In the liner notes to the Rhino edition of the album, Costello writes:...
, Imperial Bedrooms is named after Costello's 1982 album
Imperial Bedroom
Imperial Bedroom is a 1982 album by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. It was the second Costello album, along with Almost Blue, not produced by Nick Lowe, the production duties handled by Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick...
.
Imperial Bedrooms, unlike Less Than Zero, is plot-driven. The action of the novel takes place twenty-five years after Less Than Zero. Its story follows Clay, a New York-based screenwriter after he returns to Los Angeles to cast his new film adaptation. There, he becomes embroiled in the sinister world of his former friends and confronts the darker aspects of his own personality. The novel opens with a post-modern literary device
Literary technique
A literary technique is any element or the entirety of elements a writer intentionally uses in the structure of their work...
that establishes the world of Imperial Bedrooms to be similar to but not exactly that of Less Than Zero; in doing this, Ellis is able to comment on the earlier novel's style and on the development of its moralistic film adaptation. The device allows Ellis to explore Clay's pathological narcissism
Narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder is a personality disorder in which the individual is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity...
, masochistic and sadistic
Sadistic personality disorder
Sadistic personality disorder is a diagnosis which appeared only in an appendix of the revised third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . The current version of the DSM does not include it, so it is no longer considered a valid...
tendencies, and the exploitative personality in the character which had not been explicit in Less Than Zero. Ellis did this in part to dispel the sentimental reputation Less Than Zero has accrued over the years, that of "an artifact of the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
". Imperial Bedrooms retains Ellis' characteristic transgressive style and applies it to the 2000s and 2010s
2010s
The 2010s, pronounced "twenty-tens" or "two thousand tens", is the current decade which began on January 1, 2010 and will end on December 31, 2019...
, covering amongst other things, the impact of new communication technologies on daily lives.
Ellis began working on the novel during the development process of his 2005 novel, Lunar Park
Lunar Park
Lunar Park is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis with elements of faux autobiography and pastiche. It was released by Knopf on August 16, 2005. It is notable for being the first book written by Ellis to use past tense narrative.-Plot summary:...
. Imperial Bedrooms depicts scenes of sex, extreme violence and hedonism in a minimalist style devoid of emotion, recurring features in Ellis' work. Some commentators have noted, however, that unlike previous works, Imperial Bedrooms employs more of the conventional devices of popular fiction. Reviews were mixed and frequently polarised. Some reviewers felt the novel was a successful return to themes explored in Less Than Zero and Ellis' other novels, such as Lunar Park and American Psycho
American Psycho
American Psycho is a psychological thriller and satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by the protagonist, serial killer and Manhattan businessman Patrick Bateman. The book's graphic violence and sexual content generated a great deal of...
(1991), while others derided it for being "boring" or self-indulgent. Prior to the novel's release, Ellis had already speculated about the possibility of a film adaptation featuring the actors from the 1987 Less Than Zero film. As of July 2010, there is no one attached to the film, though the rights to its adaptation are by default already held by the studio which produced Less Than Zero.
Background
The development of Imperial Bedrooms began after Ellis re-read Less Than Zero as part of the writing process for his 2005 novel, Lunar Park. The novel takes its name from Elvis Costello's 1982 album Imperial Bedroom, just as Less Than Zero had been named for a Costello single. After reading his first novel, Ellis began to reflect on what had become of the characters from Less Than Zero. Soon, he found himself "overwhelm[ed]" by the idea of what would become Imperial Bedrooms as it continually returned to him. After gestating the idea, and making "voluminous notes", his detailed outline became longer than the finished book. Ellis felt that this process of note-taking limited him to the novels that he genuinely wanted "to stay with for a couple of years". To this, he attributed having "written so few novels". Ellis's biggest influence in the course of writing Imperial Bedrooms was American novelist Raymond ChandlerRaymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
, "and that kind of pulpy
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
noir fiction
Hardboiled
Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...
". He found inspiration in Chandler because "He didn't even know how some of his books ended. That's part of what makes those books existentialist masterpieces." To Ellis, "It's about a journey and a tone and style and this worldview he created." In terms of his own plotting, however, he opined that "plots really don't matter", nor solutions to mysteries, because it's "the mood that's so enthralling... [a] kind of universal, this idea of a man searching for something or moving through this moral landscape and trying to protect himself from it, and yet he's still forced to investigate it." Part of the "impetus" behind Imperial Bedrooms, which Ellis "wrestled with", was to try and dispel the "sentimental view of Less Than Zero" that made it, to some, "an artifact of the 80s" alongside "John Hughes movies and Ray-Bans and Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a 1982 American coming-of-age teen comedy film written by Cameron Crowe and adapted from his 1981 book of the same name...
"; he felt he began assessing audience's reactions to his work when working on Lunar Park.
On April 14, 2009, MTV News
MTV News
MTV News is the news division of MTV, one of the first and most popular music television network in the U.S., as well as some of MTV's related channels around the world. MTV News began in the late 1980s with the program The Week In Rock, hosted by Kurt Loder, the first official MTV News correspondent...
announced that Ellis had nearly finished the novel and it will be published in May 2010. At the time, Ellis revealed that all the novel's main characters would return. Prior to publication, Ellis had been convinced by his persuasive editor to remove some of the more graphic lines from Imperial Bedrooms
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
the first sentence of the novel, "They had made a movie about us." The Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
website later announced the on sale date of June 22, 2010 in both hardback and paperback. With it, they released a picture of the book's cover and a short synopsis, which described the book as focusing on a middle-aged Clay, now a screenwriter, drawn back into his old circle. Amidst this, Clay begins dating a young actress with mysterious ties to Julian, Rip and a recently-murdered Hollywood producer; his life begins to spin out of control. In Imperial Bedrooms, Los Angeles returns once again as the book's setting. Along with New York, where Clay has been prior to coming home, it is one of Ellis' two major locations.
Plot
The novel opens with Clay, a 45-year old screenwriter, explaining that an author had adapted the events of his early-1980s Christmas vacation into a novel which later became a film. The author had been in love with Clay's girlfriend Blair, and depicted Clay somewhat differently from how he really is. The action of Imperial Bedrooms depicts Clay upon returning to Los Angeles, having lived in New York for four years, in order to assist in the casting of his new film. There, he meets up with his old friends, who were seen in Less Than Zero. Like Clay, they have all become involved in the film industryFilm industry
The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew...
. His philandering friend Trent Burroughs, who has married Blair, is a manager while Clay's former classmate at Camden, Daniel Carter, has become a famous producer. Julian Wells, who was a male prostitute
Male prostitution
Male prostitution is the practice of engaging in sexual acts for money. Compared to female sex workers, male sex workers have been far less studied by researchers, and while studies suggest that there are differences between the ways these two groups look at their work, more research is needed.Male...
in Less Than Zero, has become an ultra-discreet high-class pimp
Pimp
A pimp is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The pimp may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing a location where she may engage clients...
representing struggling young actors who do not wish to tarnish future careers. Clay attempts to romance Rain Turner, a young woman auditioning for a role in his new film, leading her on with the promise of being cast, all the while knowing she is too old for the part. His narration betrays that he has done this with a number of men and women in the past, and yet often comes out of the relationship hurt and damaged himself.
As the novel progresses, Clay learns that his old acquaintance Rip Millar, now disfigured by plastic surgery and more dangerous than ever, also had a fling with the actress. Throughout the novel, Clay is being stalked
Stalking
Stalking is a term commonly used to refer to unwanted and obsessive attention by an individual or group to another person. Stalking behaviors are related to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person and/or monitoring them via the internet...
by an unknown person, and continually hears about the grisly murder of a young actor whom he knew; Clay disinterestedly watches the act of murder, which he later attributes to Rip, on the YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
application on his iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
. When Clay discovers that his former friend Julian is Rain's boyfriend, he instigates Rip in having Julian murdered. The novel then depicts sequences involving savage sexual and physical abuse of a beautiful young boy and young girl, perpetrated by Clay. The novel offers no indication as to whether these scenes are fantasy or reality. Clay experiences no feelings of remorse or guilt for this, for Julian's death, or for exploiting Rain. In fact, the opening exposition
Exposition
Exposition may refer to:*Exposition *Exposition *Trade fair*Exposition , the debut album by the band Wax on Radio...
describes the circumstances of Julian's death detachedly, many pages before the murder is depicted. In the last scenes, his ex-girlfriend Blair transpires to have been the one hiring people to follow Clay, deluded in believing Clay is still the man she believed she knew and loved as a teenager in the 1980s.
Characters
Much critical attention has been given to the development of the characters from the original book, 25 years on. One review opined that "[Ellis'] characters are incapable of growth. They cannot credibly find Jesus or even see a skilled psychologist or take the right medication to fend off despair. They are bound to be American psychos." Their development, some critics have observed, illuminates the ways they have not developed as people; Clay is, for example, "in mind and spirit if not quite in body, destined to remain unchanged, undeveloped, unlikable and unloved." In Less Than Zero, though the characters of the novel compose for some "the most hollow and vapid representation of the MTV generationMTV Generation
The MTV Generation is a term sometimes used to refer to youth of the late 20th century. The term can mean different things to different people, and is sometimes used synonymously with the terms Generation X or Generation Y.- History :...
one could possibly imagine", they remained to other reviewers "particularly sympathetic". Like the novel, its characters were equally cultural milestones, described by a reviewer as "seminal characters" (of American fiction). On the subject of the 1987 film, Clay describes that "the parents who ran the studio would[n't] ever expose their children in the same black light the book did". To Bill Eichenberger, this shows how "the children have become the parents, writing scripts and producing movies, still imprisoned by Hollywood's youth and drug cultures – but now looking at things from the outside in." Eisinger comments for the New York Press
New York Press
New York Press was a free alternative weekly in New York City, that was published from 1988 to 2011. During its lifetime, it was the main competitor to the Village Voice...
, that while "they're in careers now and new relationships and different states of mind... their preoccupations are just the same."
Clay, the protagonist of Less Than Zero, "once a paralyzed observer, is now a more active character and has grown to be a narcissist
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
". Clay's narcissism emerges, according to Ellis, because Ellis as a writer "wasn't that interested in the other characters, and neither is Clay." For the author, his became "an exploration of intense narcissism." In 2010, Clay is now a "successful screenwriter" with the "occasional producer credit". He returns to LA to help cast The Listeners (reminiscent of Ellis' involvement with the 2009 film adaptation of his short story collection The Informers
The Informers
The Informers is a collection of short stories, seemingly linked by the same continuity, authored by American author Bret Easton Ellis. It was first published as a whole in 1994. Chapters 6 and 7, "Water from the Sun" and "Discovering Japan", were published separately in the UK by Picador in 2007...
). Now 45, and no longer a disaffected teen, Clay is described by Details
Details (magazine)
Details is an American monthly men's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications, founded in 1982. Though primarily a magazine devoted to fashion and lifestyle, Details also features reports on relevant social and political issues.-History:...
as "arguably worse than American Psycho
Patrick Bateman
Patrick Bateman is a fictional character, the antihero and narrator of the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and its film adaptation. He has also briefly appeared in other Ellis novels.-Biography and profile:...
"; Ellis says that he "wouldn't disagree" with this because Bateman's crimes are ambiguous. In terms of Clay's psychology, Ellis notes his preponderance for a "masochistic... cycle of control and rejection and seduction and inevitable pain", which "is something he gets off on because he's ...a masochist and not a romantic." The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
notes how Clay "shares biographical details with Ellis", a successful party-boy, who in 1985 was "often conflated with his fictional counterpart." Ellis asserts to the contrary, "I'm not really Clay." As opposed to his portrayal in Less Than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms makes it more abundantly clear that Clay is as manipulative as those around him; he is, in Ellis' words, "guilty". As in Less Than Zero, Clay has "stuck to thinking and feeling as little as possible", "fending off the enemy of emotion with regular doses of alcohol and sedatives such as ambien
Zolpidem
Zolpidem is a prescription medication used for the short-term treatment of insomnia, as well as some brain disorders. It is a short-acting nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic of the imidazopyridine class that potentiates gamma-aminobutyric acid , an inhibitory neurotransmitter, by binding to GABAA...
, living with a kind of psychic "locked-in" syndrome
Locked-In syndrome
Locked-in syndrome is a condition in which a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. Total locked-in syndrome is a version of locked-in syndrome where the eyes are paralyzed as...
." As in Zero and Psycho, the novel also poses the question of Clay's reality, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
asking "Is Clay really being followed or is he being dogged by a guilty conscience for crimes committed, even when they are crimes of inaction?" Over the novel, "Clay shifts from damaged to depraved"; a "final scene in Imperial Bedrooms of unremitting torture... enacted by Clay on two beautiful teenagers who are bought and systematically abused" demonstrates "Clay's graduation from a passively colluding observer to active perpetrator... who either indulges in torture or fantasises about it."
The novel is written in the first-person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
, from Clay's perspective. Clay, who "felt betrayed by Less Than Zero", uses Imperial Bedrooms to make a stand or a case for himself, though ultimately "reveals himself to be far worse than the author of Less Than Zero ever began to hint at." Clay still bears similarities to the earlier character in Less Than Zero; according to one reviewer, "not all that much is changed. Clay is a cipher, an empty shell who is only able to approximate interactions and experiences through acts of sadism and exploitation." He is also, in many ways, a new character, because the opening of the book presents that the Clay of Less Than Zero had merely been "just a writer pretending to be him". When asked why he "changed" Clay from "passive" to "guilty", Ellis explained he felt Clay's inaction in the original novel made him equally as guilty; it had "always bothered" Ellis that Clay didn't do anything to save the little girl being raped in the first novel. The Independent notes "his passivity [in Less Than Zero] has hardened into something far more culpable, and nefarious." According to Ellis, "In LA, over time, the real person you are ultimately comes out." He also speculates "maybe the fear turned him into a monster". Ellis remarks that he finds the developments in Clay "so exciting". One reviewer summarized the character's development, "The nascent narcissist of Less Than Zero... is now left in a "dead end". The novel is Ellis' "deeply pessimistic presentation of human nature as assailable... an unflinching study of evil."
Blair and Trent Burroughs share a loveless marriage. Blair remains, according to Janelle Brown, "the moral center of Ellis' work", and Trent has become a Hollywood manager. The Oregonian
The Oregonian
The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850...
notes "Although Blair and Trent have children, the children are never described and hardly mentioned; their absence is "even more unsettling than the absence of parents in a story about teenagers, underlining the endlessly narcissistic nature of the characters' world." Julian Wells has gone on to establish a very exclusive escort service of his own in Hollywood. While in Less Than Zero, Clay felt protective of Julian, who had fallen into prostitution and drug addiction, in the new novel, he attempts to have him killed. The "grisly" dispatch of Julian late in the book, and Clay's casual mention of it early on, were part of a "rhythm" that Ellis felt suited the book. He speculates whether "the artist looking back" becomes a destructive force. He hadn't planned to kill off the character, just finding that while writing "it felt right". Rip Millar occupies both terrifying and comic relief
Comic relief
Comic relief is the inclusion of a humorous character, scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension.-Definition:...
roles in the novel. Vice describes him, hyperbolically, as "like the supervillain of these two books". Uncertainties about the character's "specifics" originate in Clay, who "doesn't really want to know, which makes it kind of scarier".
Writing style
Writing for The ObserverThe Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, Alison Kelly of the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
observes the novel's "philosophical" qualities, and opines that its "thriller-style hints and foreshadowing
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing or adumbrating is a literary device in which an author indistinctly suggests certain plot developments that might come later in the story.-Repetitive designation and Chekhov's gun:...
s... form part of a metaphysical investigation." Kelly describes it as "existentialist
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
to the extent that it confronts the minimal limits of identity" and an exposé of the worst depths of human nature. She further argues that the novel's motif of facial recognitions amounts to the message that people should be read "at face value", and that furthermore, past action is the greatest indicator of future behaviour, leaving no room for "change, growth, [or] self-reinvention". In terms of stylistic literary changes, Ellis also displays more fondness for the Ruskinian
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
pathetic fallacy
Pathetic fallacy
The pathetic fallacy, anthropomorphic fallacy or sentimental fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations. The pathetic fallacy is a special case of the fallacy of reification...
than in previous works. For the most part, the novel is written in Ellis' trademark writing style; Lawson refers to this as "sexual and narcotic depravities in an emotionless tone." With regard to this style, Ellis cites precursors to himself, particular the work of filmmakers. Ellis feels that the technique itself gives the reader a unique kind of insight into the characters, and comments that "numbness is a feeling too. Emotionality isn't the only feeling there is." In terms of style
Style (fiction)
In fiction, style is the manner in which the author tells the story. Along with plot, character, theme, and setting, style is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.-Fiction-writing modes:...
, Ellis told Vice that he enjoyed his return to minimalism, because of the challenge of "[t]rying to achieve that kind of tension with so few words was enjoyable to do." While some reviewers of popular fiction derided Ellis's style as "flat", others found it unexpectedly moving.
Literary devices and themes
Imperial Bedrooms opens with an acknowledgement of the Less Than Zero novel and film both as actual items within the fictional history of Imperial BedroomsSan Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
calls it a "neat trick of authorial self-abnegation". Another reviewer describes it as Ellis at "his most ambitious", a "Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
ian, doppelgänger gambit", making his new narrator "the real Clay" and the other an imposter. This allows Ellis to skilfully, "with writerly jujitsu", acknowledge Robert Downey Jr.'s popular performance as Julian in the moralistic 1987 film, in which he died; Ellis appreciates the adaptation as a "milestone in a lot of ways". The device also allows the novelist to insert self-critique; The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
reviewer notes that Imperial Bedrooms finds its characters "still a little sore at their depiction as inarticulate zombies". John Crace
John Crace (writer)
John Crace is a British journalist writing for The Guardian.Crace is probably best known for his "The Digested Read" column, in which he reviews new fiction by condensing it into short narratives of about 700 words in the style of the book itself...
, in his "digested read" of Imperial Bedrooms, insinuates through parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
that "the author" of the metafictional Less Than Zero is also meant to be Ellis, describing him in Clay's voice as "too immersed in the passivity of writing and too pleased with his own style to bother with many commas to admit it so he wrote me into the story as the man who was too frightened to love." With regard to the opening narrative conceit, Ellis queries "Is it complication ... or is it clarification?", opining that it certainly is the latter for Clay. Though Ellis never names himself in the book, he concedes to Lawson that although "I don't name the author", one can "guess [Bret Easton Ellis] is who the Clay of Imperial Bedrooms is referring to." Ellis told Vice that he hadn't explicitly considered when writing the novel whether Clay was referring to him or not. Eileen Battersby comments, "Just as he did in Lunar Park (2005), Ellis uses self-consciousness as a device." According to Vice
Vice (magazine)
VICE is a free magazine and media conglomerate founded in Montreal, Quebec and currently based in New York City.Vice is available in 27 countries...
, this conceit of self-consciousness means that "Imperial Bedrooms is no mere sequel. It's more a culmination of all of Ellis's work", containing "the scatalogical violence of American Psycho" and "the otherwordly terror of Lunar Park". Ellis himself raises the "sequel" question, commenting "... I don't think it is [a sequel]. Well, I mean, it is and it isn't. It's narrated by him, sure. But I guess I could maybe have switched the names around and it could stand alone."
Asked about the motif and "casual approach to" bisexual characters in his novels, continued in Imperial Bedrooms, Ellis stated he "really [didn't] know", and that he wished he could provide "an answer – depicting [him] as extremely conscious of those choices". He believes it to be an "interesting aspect of [his] work". Details notes how Ellis' own sexuality, frequently described as bisexual, has been notoriously hard to pin down. Reviewers have long tried to probe Ellis on autobiographical themes in his work. He reiterates to Vice that he is not Clay. Ellis says that other contemporary authors (naming Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon born May 24, 1963) is an American author and "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation", according to The Virginia Quarterly Review....
, Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections , a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction...
, Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...
as examples) don't get asked if their novels are autobiographical. (However, Ellis tells one interview, that he "cannot fully" say that "I'm not Clay" because of their emotional "connections".) Vice attributes this streak to Ellis' age when Less Than Zero came out, which led to him being seen as a voice-of-the-generation
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
. Ellis feels that the autobiographical truths of his novels lie in their writing processes, which to him are like emotional "exorcisms". Crace's abovementioned parody suggests that Less Than Zero Clay was originally a flattering portrayal of Ellis. Ellis discusses lightly the kinds of self-insertion present in the book. While Clay is clearly (parodically) working on the film adaptation of The Informers, he is at the same time fully aware that he has been a character in Less Than Zero, and that ostensibly, Ellis is 'the author' whom Clay knew. However, there are clear differences to the characters, as well. For example, Ellis had to omit lines from the book he felt Clay would never have thought of, on subjects he would never have noticed. Ellis himself feels he is adapting to middle-age very well; Clay, however, isn't.
Imperial Bedrooms also breaches several new territories. When compared to Less Than Zero, its "huge shift" is a technological one. The novel picks up on many aspects of the early 21st century culture, such as Internet viral video
Viral video
A viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email...
s which depict executions. The novel reflects how technology changes the nature of interpersonal relationships. Additionally, Clay is text
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
-stalked throughout the book; Ellis himself had been "text-stalked" before in real life. Ellis feels this was an unconscious exploration of the dynamics brought on by the new technology. The author also predicts that "fans of Less Than Zero" may "feel betrayed"; Imperial Bedrooms
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
? Is the movie industry
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
a coliseum
Colosseum
The Colosseum, or the Coliseum, originally the Flavian Amphitheatre , is an elliptical amphitheatre in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy, the largest ever built in the Roman Empire...
?" Another review found that the celebrity setting, as visited before in his novel Glamorama
Glamorama
Glamorama is a novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1998. Unlike Ellis' previous novels, Glamorama is set in and satirizes the 1990s, specifically celebrity culture and consumerism...
(1998), allows Ellis to make a number of observations about contemporary pop culture via Clay, such as when he asserts "that exposure can ensure fame". Ellis comments how in Less Than Zero, Clay's passivity worked to protect him from the "bleak moral landscape he was a part of", which he views as Clay's major flaw. Ellis developed this into the more unabashedly 'guilty' Clay of the new novel. Ellis says that "a portrait of narcissism was the big nut that I had. Of entitlement. This imperial idea." The difference he notes between this "portrait of a narcissist" and his earlier ones, such as American Psycho and Lunar Park, come in the form of its more moral bent: "This time", Ellis comments, "the narcissist reaches a dead end." To one reviewer, Clay's world at its most exaggerated, in the scenes of torture, reach Huxleyan
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
heights of dystopian fantasy
Utopian and dystopian fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia...
, comparing Imperial Bedrooms to Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
(1932), "where the "command economy" now manifests as rampant, late-capitalist consumerism, where ambien is the new soma and humans are zombies: one character's face is "unnaturally smooth, redone in such a way that the eyes are shocked open with perpetual surprise; it's a face mimicking a face, and it looks agonized."
Reception
The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
attempted to aggregate what they found to be polarised reviews of Imperial Bedrooms, noting that one Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
reviewer felt the novel was simply dull, "impoverished", and "ghastly", whereas the London Review of Books
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
felt that in spite of its flaws, the book was enjoyable for its "beautiful one-liners" and the fun of "seeing the old Easton Ellis magic applied to the popular culture of our era ... iPhones, Apple stores, internet videos and Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
." The New Statesmen
New Statesmen
New Statesmen or New Statesman may refer to:*New Statesman, the British current affairs magazine*The New Statesman, TV series starring Rik Mayall*New Statesmen , written by John Smith and published in Crisis...
compiled reviews from The Independent, The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. The first two reviews are positive, praising Ellis' "modern noir", the book's "atmosphere", and indebtedness to Philip Roth and F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
, with the Observer saying it "ranks with his best in the latter register [of Fitzgerald]." The latter review accused Ellis of falling flat, attracting negative comparison to Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
; both have "a flair for such perfect, surreal description" but "struggle to set it in an effective context." Other writers attempting to gauge the book's reception also describe it as "mixed". The Periscope Press deemed that the novel's reviews were mostly negative, citing Dr. Alison Kelly's article for The Guardian as the only counter-example, while deeming that it "still read more like restrained criticism than outright praise".
On the subject of reviews, British critic Mark Lawson
Mark Lawson
Mark Gerard Lawson is an English journalist, broadcaster and author.-Life and career:Born in Hendon, London, Lawson was raised in Yorkshire and is a Leeds United fan. He was educated at St Columba's College in St Albans and took a degree in English at University College London, where his lecturers...
notes the tendency for Ellis' reviews to be "unpredictable"; he cited the irony of favour amongst right-wing critics, and the extent to which the liberal media attack his work. Ellis himself, however, states that he "proudly" accepts the label of moralist. He also attributes some of the negative criticism that Imperial Bedrooms and Ellis' earlier works have received in the past to the earlier schools of feminist criticism
Feminist criticism
Feminist criticism is a type of literary criticism, which was developed in the late 1960s, focusing on the role of women in literature. Two important representatives are Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir who claim that women are a subject and no object....
; today, he observes young girls "reading the works correctly", opining the books shoudn't be read through the lens of "old school feminism
First-wave feminism
First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. It focused on de jure inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage .The term first-wave was coined retroactively in the 1970s...
." To that end, the author observes that older women reviewing Imperial Bedrooms in the US had issues with it, not least feelings of betrayal. He feels these are ironic because the book is in fact a critique of a certain kind of male perspective and behaviour.
Tom Shone
Tom Shone
Tom Shone is a British film critic and writer. He was the Sunday Times film critic from 1994-9 and has written for Slate, the New Yorker, the New York Times and the London Daily Telegraph....
, writing for The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, praised the novel for its atypical qualities for Ellis, "known for his orgies of violence". Shone asks "Why is a new sequel to Less Than Zero... so moving?", noting the presence of "feelings" in the novel to be starkly different from Ellis' usual style. Touching on its personal qualities, Shone notes "If Lunar Park unspooled the atrocities of American Psycho back to their source, Imperial Bedrooms pulls the thread further and reaches Less Than Zero". The emotive energy in the new book is traced back to the last pages of Lunar Park as well; fellow writer Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney
John Barrett McInerney Jr. is an American writer. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City; Ransom; Story of My Life; Brightness Falls; and The Last of the Savages...
observes that "The last few pages of [Lunar Park] are among the most moving passages I know in recent American fiction [because]... Bret was coming to terms with his relationship with his father in that book." Vice observes that the "final passages in both Imperial Bedrooms and Lunar Park pack a lot of emotional impact." San Francisco Chronicle hails Imperial Bedrooms as "the very definition of authorly meta: Ellis is either so deeply enmeshed in his own creepy little insular world that he can't write his way out of it, or else he is such a genius that he's created an entire parallel universe that folds and unfolds on itself like some kind of Escher
M. C. Escher
Maurits Cornelis Escher , usually referred to as M. C. Escher , was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints...
print."
Regarding the book's achievement, Shone remarks "He now stands at year zero – creatively, psychologically." However, typical features of Ellis' earlier works remain in tact; for example, in its depictions of violence. Commenting on its self-referential aspects, Janelle Brown of the San Francisco Chronicle recommends "for his next endeavor, Ellis should stop worrying and start looking for the exit of his own personal rabbit hole." The Buffalo News
The Buffalo News
The Buffalo News is the primary newspaper of the Buffalo – Niagara Falls metropolitan area, and the area's only daily newspaper. It is the only newspaper owned by Berkshire Hathaway.-History:...
awarded the novel its Editor's Choice. Jeff Simon comments that it "brings an excessive Reaganesque flavour to Obama America
Presidency of Barack Obama
The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009 when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election...
". With regards to the novel's writing style, he comments "The first-person sentences run on and on, but the individual sections of the book are nothing if not minimal... ghastly narcissism or not, Bret Easton Ellis has a fictional territory all his own and, heaven forbid, a mastery there." The Wall Street Journal on the other hand, described this prose style as "flat and fizzless". Such is the book's violent aesthetic that, for Eileen Battersby of the Irish Times, "the book is closer to his remarkable third novel, American Psycho". She further compliments Ellis as "a bizarrely moral writer who specialises in evoking the amoral." Concerning his writing, she notes its "despair is blunt, factual and seldom approaches the laconic unease of JG Ballard."
Following her positive comments, however, Battersby concludes negatively. The book is a "bleak performance... a tired study of the vacuous" with the feeling of an improvised screenplay being performed by an uncommitted cast. She sums that Ellis' novel "consists of too many doors being left slightly ajar, and not enough rooms, or opportunities, being fully explored." Some critics have questioned the book's relevance to a contemporary audience. Dallas News
The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area, with a circulation of 264,459 subscribers, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in September 2010...
poses the question, whether Imperial Bedrooms is "a story anyone is interested in anymore", because Ellis' "blunt, spare, journal-entry prose" is no longer, in 2010, "the backstage pass" it once was to the lives of "LA's rich and famous". Furthermore, Tom Maurstrad argues that since the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
, that decade has become a "go-to bargain bin for retro-trends and ready-made nostalgia, easy to package into fashion lines and TV shows". The review bemoans that the novel's theme, the dark side of Hollywood, is no longer a culture-shocking revelation, and that Ellis fails to capitalize on the narratorial conceit which it opens with. Maurstrad does highlight positive aspects, however. Ellis wisely "appropriates the unblinking brutality [of]... American Psycho, to add some dramatic heft to this anorexic update", making the sequel a "celebrity snuff film" to the earlier "backstage pass". The Wall Street Journal damned the novel as "a dull, stricken, under-medicated nonstory that goes nowhere." The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
reviewer opined that "Ellis is aiming for noir, for the territory of James Ellroy
James Ellroy
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a so-called "telegraphic" prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black...
and Raymond Chandler, but ends up with an XXX-rated
X-rated
In some countries, X is or has been a motion picture rating reserved for the most explicit films. Films rated X are intended only for viewing by adults, usually legally defined as people over the age of 17.-United Kingdom:...
episode of Melrose Place
Melrose Place (2009 TV series)
Melrose Place is an American television series broadcast on The CW Television Network from September 8, 2009 to April 13, 2010. The fifth series in the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise, it is an updated version of the 1990s Fox prime time drama of the same name, featuring a group of young adults...
."
Andrew McCarthy, who played Clay in the 1987 Less Than Zero film, described the novel as "an exciting, shocking conclusion... a surprising one." The actor praised Clay's character, citing a "wicked vulnerability" which the character covers up with alcohol, hostility, and its portrayal of a world "full of pain and suffering and unkindness" beneath the "glossy and shimmering and seductive" veneer of Hollywood. McCarthy described his experience of reading the book as like "revisiting an old friend", owing to the consistency of the characters' and Ellis' voices.
Possible film adaptation
In May 2010, when MTV News first announced that Ellis had finished writing Imperial Bedrooms, the writer told them in interview that he had begun looking ahead to the possibility of a film adaptationFilm adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
, and felt that interpreting it as a sequel to the 1987 movie adaptation
Less Than Zero (film)
Less Than Zero is a 1987 American drama film loosely based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel of the same name. The film stars Andrew McCarthy as Clay, a college freshman returning home for Christmas to spend time with his ex-girlfriend Blair and his friend Julian , who is also a drug addict...
starring Andrew McCarthy
Andrew McCarthy
Andrew Thomas McCarthy is an American actor. He is known for his roles in the 1980s films St. Elmo's Fire, Mannequin, Weekend at Bernie's, Pretty in Pink, and Less Than Zero, and more recently for his role in the television shows Lipstick Jungle, White Collar and Royal Pains.-Career:McCarthy...
, Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr.
Robert John Downey, Jr. is an American actor. Downey made his screen debut in 1970 at the age of five when he appeared in his father's film Pound, and has worked consistently in film and television ever since. During the 1980s he had roles in a series of coming of age films associated with the...
, James Spader
James Spader
James Todd Spader is an American actor best known for his eccentric roles in movies such as Pretty in Pink, Less Than Zero, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Crash, Stargate, and Secretary...
and Jami Gertz
Jami Gertz
Jami Beth Gertz is an American actress. Gertz is known for her early roles in the films Sixteen Candles, Crossroads, The Lost Boys, Less Than Zero, the 1980s TV series Square Pegs with Sarah Jessica Parker, and 1996's Twister, as well as for her role as Judy Miller in the CBS sitcom Still Standing...
"would be a great idea". Two months prior to the book's release, Less Than Zero actor Andrew McCarthy stated it was "early days" in thinking about a potential film adaptation; McCarthy felt, however, that the novel would adapt well. Because the characters in Imperial Bedrooms have been owned by 20th Century Fox since Ellis sold the film rights to Less Than Zero, prospective film for Imperial Bedrooms rights revert to Fox. Ellis stated to Vice in June 2010 that he would be interested in writing the screenplay. In July 2010 however, the author clarified to California Chronicle, saying "There's no deal, there's no one attached. There's been some vague talk among the cast members... As far as I know right now nothing's happening." Ellis opines that were Robert Downey Jr. to get involved, the film would move straight into production. However, remembering the adaptation process Less Than Zero went through, he admits "I've learned to be cautious about saying oh they'll never turn this dark depraved character into any sort of interesting Mulholland Drive
Mulholland Drive (film)
Mulholland Drive is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological thriller written and directed by David Lynch, starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, and Laura Harring. The surrealist film was highly acclaimed by many critics and earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scène at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival...
, David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
kind of movie, but I could be totally wrong about that. I don't know."