Less Than Zero Discussion Thread

>>9550692
I really enjoyed Less Than Zero, it was one of the first books I read when getting more serious about
Reading.
Definitely agree Ellis hits the nail on the head. He does a good job of capturing youthful anxiety in a way that will resonate, even if the experience of doing drugs, and hanging out with friends, and sleeping around does not :(
Imperial Bedrooms wasn't received incredibly well, but I really liked it. It's similar in some ways to Less Than Zero, but ultimately it is a very different book. it's a quick read, even quicker than Less Than Zero, and more plot driven. Definitely pick it up, just don't expect Less Than Zero 2.

>>9550752
Yeah, part of me was jealous of Clay and company for all the casual sex and partying they got to do, but I also feel like that's part of the point of the book -- they have everything we're supposed to want and their lives are worse for it

I'll be sure to check out Imperial Bedrooms then, thanks for the info

I started reading a couple days ago and think it's revealing my superficial priorities. As neurotic and senseless those people are, I feel a part of myself envy them. I think it's mostly their good looks and status as I don't see anything romantic in the substance abuse or materialism.

The tedious repetition of the character's drug use and nightlife don't come off as boring even though the characters are clearly bored. Their detachment just makes them that much more desirable.

I also see beautiful, lithe girls as incapable of being wrong. Whatever they are doing is good as long as they're there.

This idea of decadent patricians keeps coming to back to me as I read. I imagine the high class youth of Athens and Rome and how there has always been a single coolest group of young people at the pinnacle of western culture above an extensive hierarchy of lesser groups that make up the network of society. I'm sort of disappointed that I'm nowhere near the top of our generations.

>>9550814
To be honest I used to think in a very similar way. All I really wanted was social validation, and I realize now that this want came from a lack of an internal sense of self-worth. I felt like I needed to do certain things (date the most attractive girl, go to the best college, get the highest paying job, etc) in order to justify my own existence, and if I wasn't perfectly successful, I had failed in my primary purpose in life (which was to achieve).

I remember in high school when someone asked what I wanted to study in college, and I told them "I don't know. Engineering I suppose." because all the top starting salaries online were in engineering fields. I remember my girlfriend in high school asking me "but what are you passionate about? what do you want to do for the rest of your life?" and I remember telling her "I don't know," when the real answer was "I'm not passionate about anything, except making money and achieving things," even though I couldn't realize it at the time. I think this is part of the reason why I found Clay so relatable.

One way I was able to find some level of peace was by realizing that no matter how much money I made or "success" I achieved conventionally, the social elite in this country were never going to see me as one of their own. I was never going to be one of these Phillips Exeter bred Manhattan elites on the inside track into private equity, but that's okay.

In the same way that Malcolm X only began to develop a sense of self-worth and vision when he realized that white america was never going to accept him and that he'd have to be successful in his own right if he was to be successful at all, we (the non-social elite) need to realize that the hyper-rich in this country will never look at us as part of their "in-group", and instead of idolizing that which we can never achieve, we ought to strive to develop a sense of self and a value structure independent of what we've been conditioned to want, and strive to achieve success in our own right and guided by our own internal compasses.

I'm sorry if this sounds preachy or like a thinly veiled incitement to class warfare (it's not), but it was a revelation that had a large impact on me, and the story of my life for the past year or so has been me trying to grapple with justifying my turn away from complete materialism and nihilism. I'm still not sure how it will end up, but I'm curious whether other people have had the same thoughts, and other conclusions they've reached.

>>9550692
Do what you want dude.

>>9550911

That's exactly how I was in highschool, trying to justify my own existence, except I had plans to go into medicine rather than engineering.

The fucked up thing about my situation is that I shed the achievement mentality my freshman year of college, which I thought was a standard part of growing only to realize that my family and old friends are particularly achievement obsessed people.

Just recently my mom told me that she's sad that I'm wasting my potential after I told her that I'm happy with what I'm doing. I'll also be seeing a friend this summer who told me last year that she wants to be neurologist to make lots of money so that she can be happy. Those were the simple terms she put it in which shocked me. I wa s so fucking wrong and most people don't grow out of the simple-minded status seeking.

It's frustrating that I've reverted to this mentality to some degree where I revere the likes of Clay and company, but I think it's just a consequence of being around my family too much.

The worst part is how sad I am for my family. I see my highschool self as misguided, so I can't help but pity my family and friends for being caught up in the rat race especially since I doubt they'll come around to seeing things as I do. Their achievements are so pathetically worthless is the worst part. They're division 1 and 2 athletes and maintain high gpas, but their schools aren't great and they will be/are mediocre in their professions.

It's just so God damn pointless and tired and boring. They also have awful taste in movies and music. This is some of the terrible shit I've heard while with them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXDAYlhdkyg It's pathetic and I know I'm pathetic by association. That's why I envy Clay because as unfilled as he is, he's better than this.

>>9551124
sort yourself out man. there's a balance between over and under achieving but being bitter towards others for following their own pursuits is a recipe for self-loathing.

on the topic of less than zero, i feel it is necessary to read imperial bedrooms after. sure it's cute to be myopic when you're 18 but follow the logical conclusion of carrying that around into middle age and it isn't so pretty.

>>9550911

This really struck a chord with me because I had such a similar experience. For me it was really more American Psycho than Less Than Zero because the violent bits in Psycho hides that it's an extremely personal novel about hating a life of conformity and materialism, written by Ellis when he was pursuing that sort of life (he has said as much).

I went to the kind of school where the elites go (but I was on scholarship) and tried to join that in-crowd and also found it (along with drugs and casual sex) empty. Reading Ellis was really helpful for me because his work which is really so personal (Zero was based on his journal entries) tells you about how unsatisfying a life like that ends up being. That's the thing about Psycho, too--its critique of consumer capitalism is really about a (failed) personal search for meaning and self.

I don't like Imperial Bedrooms because it's a lot less attractive to have those sort of problems when you're forty. I wish Ellis had gotten past that point but, maybe as a result of becoming famous for something he wrote at twenty-one, he seems to be stuck in that place mentally. I would not recommend it but if you haven't already read it I would definitely recommend Psycho which is actually very similar to Zero but more ambitious and satirical and "literary."

I'm always surprised when I read reactions to the book claiming that the characters are heinous. It takes some sort of callousness not to see the deep pain and compassion the Ellis feels for his characters. The self-assuredness of the moralist who takes other's moral failing as an excuse to not exercise empathy.

But describing those characters as isolate self-involved narcissists is not just a failure of character but a failure as a reader too. The whole novel pivots around the fact that, at least Clay, is not as self-involved, and his inability to concentrate on himself is what constantly hurts him. He worries about his little sister, just 13 and using, he is constantly trying to reach out to Blair trying to rekindle a tenderness that has wilted in his year off to college, he is trying to save both Julian and R.i.p., he is trying to recover from the coldness of his parents and his shock in seeing a worker dead in his pool.

Less than Zero is the novel of a 22 year old, full of noir tropes and 80s punk aesthetic, far from being an exercise in realism, which under the sheen of hipness and the edgy poses, has as its message that adulthood is not learning how to open up to the community, but how to be cruel despite one own's tendencies. The tone is set by what for many of us is our first lesson in hardening ourselves and letting go the ones we love: the passage from high school to college. An experience that to us now, many years later, may seem inconsequential and laughable exactly because we have been so quick to learn how to be detached, how to let others go. It's a learned cruelty that that allowed us, when we were teenagers, to make light of our first loves by thinking "it's just a highschool crush..." and Ellis protests that that to be so feels wrong, unjust, and painful.

>>9550937
bad answer

do what gives you a feeling of importance

>>9550814
Unfortunately the top generations today are not nearly as fun or attuned to the metaphysical emptiness of reality as those generations were.

The system of controls have catched up with them and rich kids have become over-achievers for over-achieving sakes. Boring, in line, they live healthy life styles, obey all the rules and are always too busy to have a single thought.

They date steady the girlfriend they have met in college, they have no drama, they have to look perfect, they have a loan and two children by 26 and a management job that sucks out of the 70 hours a week in exchange for a million a year.

They have never done drugs, maybe weed once at coachella, and they only have dinner parties where they act like they are 40 already.

It is the rare blacksheep that strays and goes into the party scene of ny and la, which is mostly funded by criminals, sex workers, and divorced rich men that have realized too late that they have thrown their life away in search of respectability.

Meanwhile young rich people sit around a table talking about their retirement plans and real estate options in costa rica.

>>9551124
>>9551563
I'm this guy >>9550911 and I just want to say I'm happy that other people feel the same way... I've always felt a little bit like the odd man out, since it seems like most people really do idolize the Rips and Trents of the world (Kardashains, Trumps, Sports superstars, etc). I've had friends of mine look at me like I was crazy when I've mentioned that going out to bars or clubs multiple times a week doesn't do it for me, and that casual sex is pretty unfulfilling past a certain point. It's almost like the Stanford duck syndrome -- everyone struggles with finding meaning in their life, but nobody wants to acknowledge it or try to work it out because that would require admitting that they don't have everything together right now.

>>9551712
I agree, I find it sort of ironic that I could envision american conservative audiences being appalled by the book, while not realizing that the book is an indictment of moral relativism and soulless materialism, both things that the american right opposes (or at least are supposed to if they didn't constantly abandon their philosophical base for short term gain).

>>9551763
I go to a college with a lot of wealthy kids and I will say that mostly, you're right. The overwhelming majority of kids who grew up rich tend to live very boring lives. Their only ambition in life is to get a corner office at Goldman Sachs or KKR or McKinsey, and they spend most of their time in college figuring out the easiest classes to take to get a 4.0, attempting to network through school clubs or off-campus events, and trying their hardest not to crack emotionally when inevitably they're faced with some sort of setback. However, I will say that not for the rich kids, but for the legitimately wealthy kids -- the kids whose dads you have heard of, whose parents and grandparents founded massive international companies, whose families have political legacies, by and large many of those kids are exactly like Clay, Blair, Trent, Rip, and probably Julian, although I don't hang around their crowd much for obvious reasons (not that I could anyway). These kids jet across Europe on weekends, do cocaine exhaustively at the mansions they party in, and still get into top ivy-league schools with sub 3.0 GPAs in some cases. So these people still do exist, but you're right in that they're not the "young rich", they're the much smaller group of people who grew up with unimaginable social and political connections.

>>9550692
What an amazing thread. I haven't seen one like it in months, I think. Almost every post is well thought out, lengthy, not to mention respectful. I wasn't even interested in this book but now I want to read it. Thanks, guys.