I'm a Bookworm

I’ve been meaning to write this review for a while now, but have been putting it off because it concerns one of my favourite books of all time, and I want to do it justice. So in preparation and anticipation, one day I set about rereading the book once again to make sure I did it the justice it deserves. As you might have ascertained from the tile and book cover in the post, the book is Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis. To give more structure and organization to the review, I want to write about this novel in three different parts, hopefully getting closer and closer to the essence of why it’s made such an impact on me.

Plot

The novel tracks the movements of Victor Ward, a 27 year old model-slash-actor-slash-club-owner who also happens to be sleeping with the girlfriend of his backer. He’s got an allowance from his rich father, a steady supermodel girlfriend, and lots of free time which he fills with scattered projects like snack food commercials, charity fashion shows and half-baked band practices. One day, he gets a call from a mysterious diplomat who invites him to make some quick money. Victor’s mission is: travel to London, find a love from his past, and bring her back to the USA.

The second half of the novel begins as Victor sets off for Europe, and effectively unravels the plot and characters set up in the first half. Once Victor arrives in London, he finds Jamie, along with her boyfriend and rich, supermodel friends, who also work as – terrorists. Victor is still in love with Jamie, but as his understanding of the complicated situation he’s gotten himself into grows, so does the violence, danger, the surrealistic nature of the writing.

Devices

Ellis employs several literary devices in the second half of the book, some of which I’d never encountered before. First, he profiles a loose network of characters which are connected across his books. Alison Poole, Sean and Patrick Bateman, Lauren Hynde and even Victor himself make appearances not only in Glamorama, but also in the novels The Rules of Attraction, The Informers and American Psycho. Ellis shows just how small the world that he writes about is; these stars and models seem to have the entire world at their feet, but their community is quite small, almost incestuous.

Surrealism is demonstrated in several ways in Glamorama, such as by the film crews that enter in the second half of the book to direct Victor’s life. Easton gives no explanation for them, not even when a second crew comes in to challenge the first. I have read some magical realism, like Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Margherita Dolce Vita by Stefano Benni, but I wasn’t very familiar with surrealism in literature before reading Glamorama.

Then, there’s the surrealistic presence of flies, the increasing cold, and the smell of feces, all of which grow stronger as the novel progresses through the second half. It reminds me of Sartre’s The Flies, in which the town suffers under a thick blanket of flies to signify its moral vacuity. Or, do these devices foreshadow that Victor is getting closer and closer to his own death?

Significance

Now we come to the fun part – why I love the book. This novel holds a special place for me because it marked my first read of Transgressive Fiction – wherein the characters try and wrestle with moral emptiness (whether they know it or not) by acting in unorthodox ways. I enjoy all the layers of Glamorama -  from the superficial name dropping of celebrities in the opening, to the descent of a barely coherent plot. It’s got all the glitz of pop culture while easing the reader into heavier themes, asking that you make connections between the novel’s two halves. I’ll leave you with one more thought, since this review is becoming a literary work in itself… What shapes our attitudes to both terrorism and pop culture? The mainstream media.

- The Reader

[Image reproduced from tangentlabs.co.uk. Permission provided under the Fair Dealing Act]