Lunar Park By Bret Easton Ellis
Updated 6/16/2023 A new novel “The Shards” came out this year and it’s fantastic. I may write a review later. I did not think he could write well anymore after so many years of disappointing output. It’s as if Bret Easton Ellis read my notes and made improvements. It’s a horror novel, but the horror fits in which the plot unlike in Lunar Park where its half a drama about family life and half a horror novel. I loved the characters and the main character’s inner musings. Updated: 7/6/2023 I finished “The Shards” and I can’t decide if it one of the greatest novels of all time that feature an unreliable narrator. I may write a review of it at some point. I created notes, but now that I finished it, I am not sure based on the ending that I want to review it.
8/21/2022
Spoilers Ahead: do not read if you have not yet read the novel Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis.
Bret Easton Ellis is the author and also the name of the title character. Later another voice is introduced called the writer who is a voice in Bret Easton Ellis’s head. This is similar to David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King which has a character called Author who makes comments.
I thought at first I Lunar Park was better then Less Than Zero (Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel), but when it morphed into a horror novel it became unenjoyable. My feelings about the novel are mixed. I would give it 3 and half stars.
At first I was intrigued when the Terby or Furby doll did supernatural things. We don’t know if Bret Easton Ellis is imaging some of the events in the novel due to his relapse into drugs and alcoholism. But when it becomes clear that it’s real the drama was too over the top. The scenes in which he tries to make his marriage work are hopefully. One really pulls for BEE but at the same time he is not willing to give up his exciting party lifestyle for a boring suburban life. If Bret Easton Ellis really took as much drugs as the character named Bret Easton Ellis in Lunar Park he would quite disabled by now.
I thought the Clayton Character represented Bret Easton Ellis’s lost youth because he was jealous of Clayton making time with Aimee, the student he is trying to seduce at the college in which he works as a creative writing professor. In couples therapy Bret Easton Ellis confesses that he never wanted to have children and he feels resentful. BBE wants to blame his wife and not his addictions or his absences for their problems with their son. He is diagnosed with Narcissism in the book. But, it’s not clear how much of his problems are real and how much are supernatural happenings that he can’t control. If their son had not tragically disappeared they may have been able to work out their marriage issues.
When the son Robby asks Bret Easton Ellis what he should do if he was to be drafted Bret Easton Ellis suggests he should run away. This was foreshadowing to the Robby’s disappearance. There is also a serial killer enacting the crimes in Bret Easton Ellis book, American Psycho the reader assumes that the son has been murder or disappeared to NeverNeverland. Lost Boys and Fathers and Sons are themes in the book. The killer from American Psycho Patrick Bateman is supposed to be the ghost of Bret Easton Ellis’s deceased father Robert, but that never totally explained. Bret Easton Ellis, his father Robert Ellis, Patrick Bateman, his son Robby, and Clayton are closely connected or maybe they are different aspects of the same person? At the end of the novel someone shows up who could be his son Robby or the Clayton Character. Clayton/Robby no longer needs him and goes off on his way.
The Halloween Party and the Parent’s Night at the private school are some of the best parts entire book. But the most enjoyable part is the story was his book tour which was based on the real life book tour which Bret Easton Ellis did to promote his book Glamorama. Similar to of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson Lunar Park is a blending of real life, drug hallucinations and fiction.
Updated: This Is Not An Exit: The Fictional World Of Bret Easton Ellis is a free documentary on Youtube, but it convinced me not to read Imperial Bedrooms because it has a lot of murder porn. BEE needs some serious mental help if all these murders are floating around in his brain, but maybe that is what he enjoys writing about? Maybe his audience is reading it just for the murder porn and not as work of literature? I would not go to his book signing or lecture because of that. Julian is also murdered because (I guess) BEE wanted a big ending for Julian who does not die in the book Less Than Zero. I was well aware the the movie had almost nothing to do with the book. The characters and their names are used but they are completely different. Less Than Zero is a Hollywood sort of mortality movie about the dangers of drug addiction. Watching it today the movie seems boring and preachy. Lunar Park is a better book in many ways, but mostly because I feel sympathy for the main character since his internal life is on parade. Eyes Wide Shut worked for me as a movie because I able to relate to the characters. The Shards is going to be movie or a show because HBO picked it up.
Updated about The Shards: This book is a whole new level of creativity. I looked at his Patreon but he is offering only the Shards. I am not sure if its just what I already bought on Audible and Kindle or if its an alternate version or a rough draft. BEE has not updated the description since The Shards was released. What I loved most about the Shards was the scenes of everyday life in the early 80s. I graduated high school in 1983. He would of been the class of 1981 if he was attending his senior year in the fall of 1980. I assume he is going to have more stuff on his Patreon eventually about the film adaption, but since Hollywood is on strike, it will be years before anything get produced. I love the nostalgia but its the murder porn that I don’t need. Its disturbing. I hope he writes more novels that are just this good in the future. But, I don’t see how he could top this masterpiece. It kind of makes me feel proud that people who are my age can still have a finger on the pulse of what it’s like to be young.
Macy Makes Magic 