RSS Feed
As the decade draws to a close and my reading habits slow down to a trickle of Us Magazine and the occasional novel bought in a fit of fear that my brain is going soft from all the reality television I watch instead of reading, I’ve decided it’s time to memorialize the weirdest, craziest book I’ve read in the last ten years. Mostly to prove to myself that I once read actual literature, but also to let the rest of you know about perhaps the most messed up, most beautiful book written in the last decade.
And that book is Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis.
I’ve been a fan of Ellis ever since I read American Psycho over the course of two weeks (when I say ‘read’ I mean mostly read with occasional skimming because a girl can only take so many detailed descriptions of mutilated prostitutes). I liked his style, how he didn’t seem to care about what people were going to think about the blatant narcissism and the way women were treated (or disemboweled) in his words. His satire was so tightly wound a lot of readers thought he actually meant everything he wrote about, but I never worried. He was literary and readable with a slam-bang energy that I admired. Plus, he wasn’t scared to just go where his brain took him.
When I picked up Lunar Park a year or so ago I knew nothing about it except that it was a psudo-autobiographical novel about his rocky relationship with his father. I like memoirs, and found it interesting that he was writing a story that was at once true and completely untrue. So I spent the 11 dollars or whatever and started reading one night before bed…and didn’t stop.
I read for hours. And for hours the next night. I read and then slept with the light on and kept reading even when I wasn’t reading – I couldn’t get the story out of my mind. Why? Because it was so. F*&^ked. Up. Ellis put his imagery skills to work and created the scariest scenes you have ever witnessed, even if you’ve read every single Stephen King book ever written. Quite honestly, you have never imagined in your wildest nightmares the sort of things Ellis put down on paper. Take American Psycho and add a dash of hideous fear in it and that’s Lunar Park. But it’s also touching. Touching, sad, and ultimately beautiful. It was so beautiful that after I finished the last page, I couldn’t move from my bed. I started crying. I felt genuine emotion. …Which hasn’t happened since I was 14 and on my second Titanic movie outing.
Never before and never after Lunar Park have I had my mind so warped by a novel. It’s true but it’s not. It’s a terrifying horror story but it’s also a beautiful memoir about forgiveness between a father and son. It’s a great read but also an important book in terms of what’s possible if you stay true to whatever you want to say, no matter the outcome.
He may not be Tolstoy, but Bret Easton Ellis isn’t afraid to dump the very contents of his brain onto the page, paint with his blood, and serve himself up. That, to me, is weird, frightening and the most intriguing thing I’ve read in the last ten years.
I know it’s not a novel, but Kaufman’s “Adaptation” runs in the same vein as “Lunar Park” – and in my opinion is ten times more frightening. Kaufman had the balls to take two real people – two people SO real that they’re not even really celebrities – and rewrite their life stories in a way that would have been a total violation if it weren’t so effing genius.
Add fear to American Psycho? You mean more fear? Good God.
I haven’t read Lunar Park, though I have heard quite a bit about it. Looks like I’ll have to check it out now.
Alex…I totally admire ANYONE who has the balls to do the unthinkable in literature. Someday I hope to have balls like that.
You know, I never really thought about how strange Lunar Park really is. I read it years ago, when it came out in hardback. I had only read American Psycho by Ellis before that, so I expected similar grotesqueness. That didn’t happen. But I was drawn into the story is quite a strong way, much like you say, Jessica. I might just have to re-read it to celebrate the beginning of the new decade.
For the weird and wonderful from the 00’s I’d nominate Will Self – The Book of Dave.
I actually took this one off the shelf last night to read out the bit where one of the characters is about to die and his life flashes before his eyes, but none of the important stuff and all of the mundane stuff. It’s hilarious.
Plus the parts that are projections into the future are just plain scary.
[...] I enjoyed reading this about Bret Easton Ellis’s Lunar Park, which I never thought twice about before. (In fact, I initially read this article because I was in a hurry and got confused and thought the article was about the popular Luna Park by Kevin Baker.) I read Less Than Zero when I was much younger and was somehow disappointed when I compared it to the eye-candy that is Robert Downey, Jr. in the film adaptation, so that book didn’t do it for me. In college I read Rules of Attraction. Eh. I’ve always wanted to read American Psycho and I own a copy, but I’ve never been in a huge rush, for obvious reasons. But now I’m reconsidering. [...]
Thanks for the recc, I quite enjoyed this! My first Ellis book. The blurring of autobiography and fantasy reminded me quite a bit of Whitley Streiber’s Communion. It might have been because I read it at a younger age but Communion suspended my disbelief for longer.