Glamorama
Encyclopedia
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
. Time
describes the novel as "a screed against models and celebrity."
-style ghost story novel, what would eventually become Lunar Park
; finding it difficult at the time, he began work on the other novel which he had in mind. This was a Robert Ludlum
-style thriller, with the intention of using one of his own vapid characters who lack insight as the narrator.
thriller conceit of someone "behind all the awful events", to dramatise the revelation of a world of random horror. The lack of resolution contributes to Ellis' artistic effect. The obsession with beauty is reflected in consistent namedropping; this satirizes Victor's obsession with looks, and perhaps is indicative of the author's own attraction to glamor.
Ellis drops names in Glamorama so often that Entertainment Weekly
describes "Nary a sentence... escapes without a cameo from someone famous, quasi-famous, or formerly famous. In fact, in some sentences, Ellis cuts out those pesky nouns and verbs and simply lists celebrities." Namedropping and commoditization have a depersonalizing effect (a world reduced to "sheen and brands"); as the reviewer for The Harvard Crimson
observes, "When Victor undergoes a transformation to a law student, we know he is different because he now wears a Brooks Brothers
suit and drinks Diet Coke
. London and Paris become nothing more than a different collection of recognizable proper nouns (Notting Hill
and Irvine Welsh
in the first case; Chez Georges and Yves Saint Laurent
in the second)." A writer for the New York Times observes "much of his prose consists of (intentionally) numbingly long lists of his characters' clothes and accouterments... out of which his loft-dwellers somewhat hopefully attempt to assemble something like an identity". In speech, his writing demonstrates the ways in which his characters, too, have internalized the language of consumerist advertising and marketing. According to the Lakeland Ledger
, Glamorama is something of a Through the Looking-Glass
allegory
and a cautionary tale
navigating the perils of dissolving identity.
In parody of how people now think in modern terms, Ellis "annoying[ly]" lists "the songs that are playing in the background, or even quoting them, as he does with Oasis
' "Champagne Supernova
"; in effect, the novel is provided with a movie soundtrack
. As such, the book feels at times like a movie, and sometimes more specifically, a snuff film
. New technology such as photo manipulation
software (e.g. "PhotoSoap
for Windows 95
") are featured in the novel. This creates an ironic situation in which Victor, the character obsessed by appearances, is haunted by fake images that appear real which implicate him in a murder; it becomes hard to tell what is real in the 'modern' world. As such, "meaningful identity is obliterated"; this furthers the recurring joke from American Psycho wherein "characters are always getting confused by their friends with other people, with no noticeable consequences".
The book prominently contains the conceit wherein Victor's life is being filmed by a camera crew "introduced a third of the way into the book". As well as a postmodern
device to examine the questionable "reality" of the situation, it also functions as a "tidy commentary" on the advent of mass surveillance
in the 1990s. EW interprets the scene to mean "Modern life has become a movie (a point made more cogently by Neal Gabler
's new book, Life the Movie)." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
took the same meaning from the conceit, and described it as a "not-so-deep observation" that "has no real pay-off". The New York Times felt it was a "halfhearted narrative device ... suggesting that the novel's action is actually part of a film that's being made." The reviewer felt that allusions to ""the director" or to the fact that this or that scene is a "flashback
"" was used to retroactively suggest cohesion in the novel's plot.
"As much as celebrity itself, our collective celebrity worship becomes the real target of Ellis' satire", writes the Star Tribune
. Models in the novel act as a synecdoche
of the larger culture. Reviewer Eric Hanson writes, "Their [models'] selfishness and brutality, he implies, are simply an extreme manifestation of what consumer culture encourages in everyone." Victor's own pursuit of being cool or too hip "destroys him". A CNN
reviewer gives the example of Victor not wanting to explain his impersonator, "because the places he was seen were always hot spots he should have frequented."
(1987). In Glamorama, now an "A-list model, would-be-actor and current "It boy
", "an uberstereotype of the male model", Victor lives by his catchphrase mantra "the better you look, the more you see". As Harvard Crimson observes, "His lifestyle is the extreme of everything the current culture worships: he can't avoid thinking in brand names and image and speaks with lines from pop songs." Uncharacteristic for an Ellis protagonist, as the Crimson notes, Victor is "terrified by" the "coldbloodedness" he encounters when he becomes embroiled in international terrorism. As an unintelligent narrator, Victor (through his inability to comprehend his situation), underlines how "the world of celebrity in Glamorama is inescapable". Compared to other Ellis protagonists, Victor is less "sensitive and insightful" than Less Than Zero
' s Clay, neither the "preening psychopath" that is American Psycho
' s Patrick Bateman
", he is nevertheless an "[un]sympathetic protagonist (in his own way, he's as morally bankrupt as ... Patrick Bateman)." As narrator, "Victor's perceptions" sum up "[the glamor world's] disconnection from what the rest of us consider "real life"... [where] Everything he sees is a brand name."CNN speculates when Victor begins speaking to the novel's "film crew" (one of its literary devices), that this could mean that the character is schizophrenic
. Victor comes across "oddly homophobic
for a member of the pansexual
New York fashion scene"; when his gay assistant accuses "I know for a fact you've had sex with guys in the past", he retorts that he did "the whole hip bi thing for about three hours back in college".
The mysterious F. Fred Palakon first appears a quarter of the way into the novel, when he offers to pay Victor $300,000 to track down his former Camden classmate Jamie Fields, a double-agent working in the terrorist organisation with which Victor becomes involved. It is never clarified exactly which political organisation Palakon appears to be working for; he even appears alongside Senator Johnson, Victor's father, a United States Senator with ambitions to become President
. Of Palakon, 'the director' says "We've been through this a hundred times... There is no Palakon. I've never heard that name. Victor's girlfriend Chloe Byrnes is a supermodel and a recovering drug addict. Alison Poole, the main character from Jay McInerney
's 1988 novel Story of My Life
, appears, having also previously appeared in American Psycho in 1992. In Glamorama, Alison is "[Victor's] boss's girlfriend (another supermodel)", "here playing Lewinsky
". Bobby Hughes is a successful male model and the leader of his international terrorist group. Victor engages in a bisexual threesome
with him and with Jamie Fields.Glamorama, pp.334-340. Lauren Hynde from The Rules of Attraction also reappears, having become a successful actress with ties to Hughes' terrorist organisation; other Rules characters appear (e.g., in flashback) such as Bertrand, who is now a terrorist also.
wrote a composition for chamber ensemble entitled Glamorama Spies which was inspired by the novel.
Glitterati is a 2004
film directed by Roger Avary
assembled from the 70 hours of video footage shot for the European sequence of The Rules of Attraction
. It expands upon the minimally detailed and rapidly recapped story told by Victor Ward, portrayed by Kip Pardue
, upon his return to the United States after having travelled extensively around Europe. In regard to expanding upon those events, the film acts as a connecting bridge between The Rules of Attraction and the upcoming film adaptation set to be directed by Avary. Avary has called Glitterati a "pencil sketch of what will ultimately be the oil painting of Glamorama."
In 2009, Audible.com
produced an audio version of Glamorama, narrated by Jonathan Davis
, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.
In 2010, when a film adaptation of Glamorama was mentioned in an interview with Movieline.com, Bret Easton Ellis commented, "I think the days of being able to make that movie are over." From the same interview, Ellis mentioned that an idea for a mini-series adaptation was brought forth to HBO though it was ultimately declined and further stating the movie would be left in Roger Avary's hands if one was to be made.
On October 13 2011, Bret Easton Ellis reported on Twitter the following:
comedy Zoolander
. Ellis stated that he is aware of the similarities, and went on to say that he considered and attempted to take legal action. Ellis was asked about the similarities in a BBC interview. In the response to the question, he said that he is unable to discuss the similarities due to an out-of-court settlement.
' s Joel Stein noted "The idea--models so solipsistic
that they become terrorists--is a good-enough one for a short story of 15 pages, but it's unsustainable at 482." He describes the book's first 185 pages as "inanely repetitive". Entertainment Weekly opines "It's like reading Page Six
of the New York Post
, but for 482 pages." One reviewer found the opening scenes "funny enough" although noted that it "gets tired easily". Contrarily, the Star Tribune
felt "the satiric early half is Ellis in peak form, the thriller-style second half is less successful." In fact, the humour in the novel was praised by multiple critics. The Star Tribune notes Victor's lack of depth, malapropism
s, overuse of the word "baby" and the novel's "enchantingly disaffected monotone" of "a been-there-done-that Valleyspeak
". Hanson felt that the horror elements in the "labyrinthian" thriller section of the novel seemed "recycled from American Psycho." Entertainment Weekly also state their preference for the "first 189 pages". Contrarily, the New York Times felt that the book was devoid of fun, where even the blackest satire (e.g. Evelyn Waugh
's Loved One) are more humorous.
EW places Glamorama within an emerging tradition of celebrity satire, noting "the glitterati are the satirical target du jour, what with Woody Allen
's limp, oral-sex-filled film Celebrity
, and Jay McInerney's clever novel Model Behavior" (both 1998). McInerney's criticism of the novel notes its comparative darkness to his own Model Behaviour (also about 90s nightlife and supermodels), published the same year, saying "I deliberately wrote a comic novel because you don't go chasing butterflies with sledgehammers". (Regarding McInerney's novel, Stein had felt that the novelist's attempt at a zeitgeist
novel was one "looking at the '90s through an '80s lens".) Harvard Crimson noted, similar to McInerney, that "Celebrity by itself teeters so often into self-parody that it seems too easy to bash it" but remarks that "Fortunately, Ellis does more than that injecting Glamorama with a sharper plot than those of earlier novels, a plot which kicks in about a quarter of the way into the novel." The New York Times question the choice of subject matter as well: "Ellis's satirical message is, essentially, a one-liner, and hardly an original one at that -- celebrity culture is vapid, yes, and?" The reviewer furthermore suggested "Glamorama is itself just another artifact of the culture it pretends to criticize."
The book's style is summarized by one reviewer as "a book that reads like a movie", and another notes that Ellis' writing "can be sharp", and succeeds in creating a "creepy sense of dread about our culture". On its influence, Time felt that the novel's "contribution" to the world comes in Victor's catchphrase, which they describe as Tom Wolfe
an. In an otherwise damning review, the New York Times commented "[Ellis] has an uncannily keen eye for the tiny details of the lives of the abel-obsessed yuppies and would-be celebs he's sending up". A CNN reviewer felt, upon reading the book, that "Bret Easton Ellis is a gifted writer"; he praised his "unflinching eye" in capturing the details of "the ensemble worn by a notorious clothes horse, or the grisly aftermath of a hotel bombing, or the graphic details of a menage a trois
[sic]." The world Ellis evokes, through the eyes of the male model, Harvard Crimson notes is one "where no one has any emotions beyond the visceral response, where all the sex scenes are described in purely pornographic terms."
A.J. Jacobs of Entertainment Weekly did not enjoy the book's more "meta" conceits, and gives the novel a 'C'. Daniel Mendelsohn of the New York Times opines derisively that "Like its predecessors, Glamorama is meant to be a withering report on the soul-destroying emptiness of late-century American consumer culture, chichi downtown division; but the only lesson you're likely to take away from it is the even more depressing classic American morality tale about how premature stardom is more of a curse than a blessing for young writers." The CNN reviewer concludes "in the end, "Glamorama" is less than the sum of its parts".
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by American writer Bret Easton Ellis
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...
. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
in 1998. Unlike Ellis' previous novels, Glamorama is set in and satirizes the 1990s
1990s
File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...
, specifically celebrity culture
Celebrity culture
A celebrity culture is the structure that influences those deemed to be celebrities.-Brief history of celebrity culture:Any medium can be viewed as a vehicle for creating a celebrity culture. The famous religious books of the world's faiths are replete with examples of individuals who are well...
and consumerism
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
describes the novel as "a screed against models and celebrity."
Development
Ellis wanted to write a Stephen KingStephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
-style ghost story novel, what would eventually become 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:...
; finding it difficult at the time, he began work on the other novel which he had in mind. This was a Robert Ludlum
Robert Ludlum
Robert Ludlum was an American author of 23 thriller novels. The number of his books in print is estimated between 290–500 million copies. They have been published in 33 languages and 40 countries. Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd.-Life and...
-style thriller, with the intention of using one of his own vapid characters who lack insight as the narrator.
Literary devices and themes
The novel is a satire of modern celebrity culture; this is reflected in its premise, which features models-turned-terrorists. A character remarks, "basically, everyone was a sociopath...and all the girls' hair was chignoned." The novel plays upon the conspiracyConspiracy fiction
The conspiracy thriller is a subgenre of thriller fiction. The protagonists of conspiracy thrillers are often journalists or amateur investigators who find themselves pulling on a small thread which unravels a vast conspiracy that ultimately goes "all the way to the top"...
thriller conceit of someone "behind all the awful events", to dramatise the revelation of a world of random horror. The lack of resolution contributes to Ellis' artistic effect. The obsession with beauty is reflected in consistent namedropping; this satirizes Victor's obsession with looks, and perhaps is indicative of the author's own attraction to glamor.
Ellis drops names in Glamorama so often that Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
describes "Nary a sentence... escapes without a cameo from someone famous, quasi-famous, or formerly famous. In fact, in some sentences, Ellis cuts out those pesky nouns and verbs and simply lists celebrities." Namedropping and commoditization have a depersonalizing effect (a world reduced to "sheen and brands"); as the reviewer for The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, was founded in 1873. It is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates...
observes, "When Victor undergoes a transformation to a law student, we know he is different because he now wears a Brooks Brothers
Brooks Brothers
Brooks Brothers is the oldest men's clothier chain in the United States. Founded in 1818 as a family business, the privately owned company is now owned by Retail Brand Alliance, also features clothing for women, and is headquartered on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City.-History:On April 7,...
suit and drinks Diet Coke
Diet Coke
Diet Coke is a sugar-free soft drink produced and distributed by The Coca-Cola Company. It was first introduced in the United States on August 9, 1982, as the first new brand since 1886 to use the Coca-Cola trademark...
. London and Paris become nothing more than a different collection of recognizable proper nouns (Notting Hill
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
and Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...
in the first case; Chez Georges and Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent (brand)
Yves Saint Laurent or YSL is a luxury fashion house founded by Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé. Today, its chief designer is Stefano Pilati. Yves Saint Laurent, founder of the brand, died in 2008.-History:...
in the second)." A writer for the New York Times observes "much of his prose consists of (intentionally) numbingly long lists of his characters' clothes and accouterments... out of which his loft-dwellers somewhat hopefully attempt to assemble something like an identity". In speech, his writing demonstrates the ways in which his characters, too, have internalized the language of consumerist advertising and marketing. According to the Lakeland Ledger
The Ledger
The Ledger is a daily newspaper serving Lakeland, Florida and the Polk County area. It is owned by The New York Times Company. Jerome Ferson became publisher of the newspaper on July 30, 2007....
, Glamorama is something of a Through the Looking-Glass
Through the Looking-Glass
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of literature by Lewis Carroll . It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
and a cautionary tale
Cautionary tale
A cautionary tale is a tale told in folklore, to warn its hearer of a danger. There are three essential parts to a cautionary tale, though they can be introduced in a large variety of ways. First, a taboo or prohibition is stated: some act, location, or thing is said to be dangerous. Then, the...
navigating the perils of dissolving identity.
In parody of how people now think in modern terms, Ellis "annoying[ly]" lists "the songs that are playing in the background, or even quoting them, as he does with Oasis
Oasis (band)
Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
' "Champagne Supernova
Champagne Supernova
"Champagne Supernova" is a song by English rock band Oasis, written by guitarist Noel Gallagher. The seven-minute anthem is the closing track on the record-breaking album Morning Glory?...
"; in effect, the novel is provided with a movie soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
. As such, the book feels at times like a movie, and sometimes more specifically, a snuff film
Snuff film
A snuff film is a motion picture genre that depicts the actual death or murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects, for the express purpose of distribution and entertainment or financial exploitation. For-profit snuff films are generally regarded as an urban legend, whose...
. New technology such as photo manipulation
Photo manipulation
Photo manipulation is the application of image editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception , through analog or digital means.- Types of digital photo manipulation :...
software (e.g. "PhotoSoap
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
for Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
") are featured in the novel. This creates an ironic situation in which Victor, the character obsessed by appearances, is haunted by fake images that appear real which implicate him in a murder; it becomes hard to tell what is real in the 'modern' world. As such, "meaningful identity is obliterated"; this furthers the recurring joke from American Psycho wherein "characters are always getting confused by their friends with other people, with no noticeable consequences".
The book prominently contains the conceit wherein Victor's life is being filmed by a camera crew "introduced a third of the way into the book". As well as a postmodern
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
device to examine the questionable "reality" of the situation, it also functions as a "tidy commentary" on the advent of mass surveillance
Mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance of an entire population, or a substantial fraction thereof.Modern governments today commonly perform mass surveillance of their citizens, explaining that they believe that it is necessary to protect them from dangerous groups such as terrorists,...
in the 1990s. EW interprets the scene to mean "Modern life has become a movie (a point made more cogently by Neal Gabler
Neal Gabler
Neal Gabler is a professor, journalist, author, film critic and political commentator.He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan and holds advanced degrees in film and American culture.-Journalist:...
's new book, Life the Movie)." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also known simply as the "PG," is the largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.-Early history:...
took the same meaning from the conceit, and described it as a "not-so-deep observation" that "has no real pay-off". The New York Times felt it was a "halfhearted narrative device ... suggesting that the novel's action is actually part of a film that's being made." The reviewer felt that allusions to ""the director" or to the fact that this or that scene is a "flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
"" was used to retroactively suggest cohesion in the novel's plot.
"As much as celebrity itself, our collective celebrity worship becomes the real target of Ellis' satire", writes the Star Tribune
Star Tribune
The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is published seven days each week in an edition for the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. A statewide version is also available across Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The...
. Models in the novel act as a synecdoche
Synecdoche
Synecdoche , meaning "simultaneous understanding") is a figure of speech in which a term is used in one of the following ways:* Part of something is used to refer to the whole thing , or...
of the larger culture. Reviewer Eric Hanson writes, "Their [models'] selfishness and brutality, he implies, are simply an extreme manifestation of what consumer culture encourages in everyone." Victor's own pursuit of being cool or too hip "destroys him". A CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
reviewer gives the example of Victor not wanting to explain his impersonator, "because the places he was seen were always hot spots he should have frequented."
Characters
Victor Ward is the novel's lead character, who had previously appeared as Victor Johnson in The Rules of AttractionThe Rules of Attraction
The Rules of Attraction is a dark comedy and satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis published in 1987. The novel focuses on a handful of rowdy and often sexually promiscuous, spoiled Bohemian college students at a liberal arts college in 1980s New Hampshire, primarily focusing on three of them who...
(1987). In Glamorama, now an "A-list model, would-be-actor and current "It boy
It girl
"It girl" is a term for a young woman who possess the quality "It", absolute attraction.The early usage of the concept "it" in this meaning may be seen in a story by Rudyard Kipling: "It isn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just 'It'."...
", "an uberstereotype of the male model", Victor lives by his catchphrase mantra "the better you look, the more you see". As Harvard Crimson observes, "His lifestyle is the extreme of everything the current culture worships: he can't avoid thinking in brand names and image and speaks with lines from pop songs." Uncharacteristic for an Ellis protagonist, as the Crimson notes, Victor is "terrified by" the "coldbloodedness" he encounters when he becomes embroiled in international terrorism. As an unintelligent narrator, Victor (through his inability to comprehend his situation), underlines how "the world of celebrity in Glamorama is inescapable". Compared to other Ellis protagonists, Victor is less "sensitive and insightful" than Less Than Zero
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...
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...
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:...
", he is nevertheless an "[un]sympathetic protagonist (in his own way, he's as morally bankrupt as ... Patrick Bateman)." As narrator, "Victor's perceptions" sum up "[the glamor world's] disconnection from what the rest of us consider "real life"... [where] Everything he sees is a brand name."CNN speculates when Victor begins speaking to the novel's "film crew" (one of its literary devices), that this could mean that the character is schizophrenic
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. Victor comes across "oddly homophobic
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
for a member of the pansexual
Pansexuality
Pansexuality refers to the potential for sexual attractions, sexual desire, romantic love, or emotional attraction, towards people of all gender identities and biological sexes...
New York fashion scene"; when his gay assistant accuses "I know for a fact you've had sex with guys in the past", he retorts that he did "the whole hip bi thing for about three hours back in college".
The mysterious F. Fred Palakon first appears a quarter of the way into the novel, when he offers to pay Victor $300,000 to track down his former Camden classmate Jamie Fields, a double-agent working in the terrorist organisation with which Victor becomes involved. It is never clarified exactly which political organisation Palakon appears to be working for; he even appears alongside Senator Johnson, Victor's father, a United States Senator with ambitions to become President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
. Of Palakon, 'the director' says "We've been through this a hundred times... There is no Palakon. I've never heard that name. Victor's girlfriend Chloe Byrnes is a supermodel and a recovering drug addict. Alison Poole, the main character from 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...
's 1988 novel Story of My Life
Story of My Life (novel)
Story of My Life is a novel published in 1988 by the American author Jay McInerney.-Plot and characters:The novel is narrated in the first-person from the point of view of Alison Poole, "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old." Alison is originally from Virginia and...
, appears, having also previously appeared in American Psycho in 1992. In Glamorama, Alison is "[Victor's] boss's girlfriend (another supermodel)", "here playing Lewinsky
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Samille Lewinsky is an American woman with whom United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship" while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996...
". Bobby Hughes is a successful male model and the leader of his international terrorist group. Victor engages in a bisexual threesome
Threesome
A threesome is a group of three engaged in the same activity. In relation to a sexual activity a threesome refer to the activity involving three people of any gender or sexual orientation...
with him and with Jamie Fields.Glamorama, pp.334-340. Lauren Hynde from The Rules of Attraction also reappears, having become a successful actress with ties to Hughes' terrorist organisation; other Rules characters appear (e.g., in flashback) such as Bertrand, who is now a terrorist also.
Adaptations
In 1999, the contemporary Italian composer Lorenzo FerreroLorenzo Ferrero
Lorenzo Ferrero is a contemporary Italian composer with a predilection for opera, a librettist, author, and book editor. He started composing at an early age and wrote over a hundred compositions thus far, including twelve operas, three ballets, and numerous orchestral, chamber music, solo...
wrote a composition for chamber ensemble entitled Glamorama Spies which was inspired by the novel.
Glitterati is a 2004
2004 in film
The year 2004 in film involved some significant events. Major releases of sequels took place. It included blockbuster films like Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Passion of the Christ, Meet the Fockers, Blade: Trinity, Spider-Man 2, Alien vs. Predator, Kill Bill Vol...
film directed by Roger Avary
Roger Avary
Roger Avary is a Canadian film and television producer, screenwriter, olive farmer and director in the American mass media industry. He was behind the screenplays of the films Silent Hill and Beowulf...
assembled from the 70 hours of video footage shot for the European sequence of The Rules of Attraction
The Rules of Attraction (film)
The Rules of Attraction is a 2002 satirical dark comedy film directed by Roger Avary, based on the novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis. It stars James van der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, Ian Somerhalder, Jessica Biel, and Kip Pardue.-Plot:...
. It expands upon the minimally detailed and rapidly recapped story told by Victor Ward, portrayed by Kip Pardue
Kip Pardue
Kevin Ian "Kip" Pardue is an American actor and model, best known for his roles in the films Remember the Titans, Driven, The Rules of Attraction, and Thirteen....
, upon his return to the United States after having travelled extensively around Europe. In regard to expanding upon those events, the film acts as a connecting bridge between The Rules of Attraction and the upcoming film adaptation set to be directed by Avary. Avary has called Glitterati a "pencil sketch of what will ultimately be the oil painting of Glamorama."
In 2009, Audible.com
Audible.com
Audible.com is an Internet provider of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming.Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio and TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers....
produced an audio version of Glamorama, narrated by Jonathan Davis
Jonathan Davis (audiobook narrator)
Jonathan Davis is an audiobook narrator and voice actor. He has received critical acclaim for his narration in a variety of genres. He has garnered accolades from Publisher's Weekly, USA Today, and Audio File Magazine. He was a finalist for an Audie Award in the Thriller/Suspense category for his...
, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.
In 2010, when a film adaptation of Glamorama was mentioned in an interview with Movieline.com, Bret Easton Ellis commented, "I think the days of being able to make that movie are over." From the same interview, Ellis mentioned that an idea for a mini-series adaptation was brought forth to HBO though it was ultimately declined and further stating the movie would be left in Roger Avary's hands if one was to be made.
On October 13 2011, Bret Easton Ellis reported on Twitter the following:
Zoolander controversy
Fans have noted similarities to the Ben StillerBen Stiller
Benjamin Edward "Ben" Stiller is an American comedian, actor, writer, film director, and producer. He is the son of veteran comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara....
comedy Zoolander
Zoolander
Zoolander is a 2001 American satirical comedy film directed by and starring Ben Stiller. The film contains elements from a pair of short films directed by Russell Bates and written by Drake Sather and Stiller for the VH1 Fashion Awards television specials in 1996 and 1997. The short films and the...
. Ellis stated that he is aware of the similarities, and went on to say that he considered and attempted to take legal action. Ellis was asked about the similarities in a BBC interview. In the response to the question, he said that he is unable to discuss the similarities due to an out-of-court settlement.
Reception
Much criticism of the novel noted its length. TimeSolipsism
Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus and ipse . Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not...
that they become terrorists--is a good-enough one for a short story of 15 pages, but it's unsustainable at 482." He describes the book's first 185 pages as "inanely repetitive". Entertainment Weekly opines "It's like reading Page Six
Society page
In journalism, society reporting or society journalism is the reporting of society news in a newspaper or magazine. In the newsroom it is the province of the society desk.-Beginnings:...
of the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
, but for 482 pages." One reviewer found the opening scenes "funny enough" although noted that it "gets tired easily". Contrarily, the Star Tribune
Star Tribune
The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is published seven days each week in an edition for the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. A statewide version is also available across Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The...
felt "the satiric early half is Ellis in peak form, the thriller-style second half is less successful." In fact, the humour in the novel was praised by multiple critics. The Star Tribune notes Victor's lack of depth, malapropism
Malapropism
A malapropism is an act of misusing or the habitual misuse of similar sounding words, especially with humorous results. An example is Yogi Berra's statement: "Texas has a lot of electrical votes," rather than "electoral votes".-Etymology:...
s, overuse of the word "baby" and the novel's "enchantingly disaffected monotone" of "a been-there-done-that Valleyspeak
Valspeak
Valleyspeak or Valspeak is a common name for an American sociolect, originally of Los Angeles, California, in particular Valley girls. This stereotype, which originated in the 1970s, became an international fad for a certain period...
". Hanson felt that the horror elements in the "labyrinthian" thriller section of the novel seemed "recycled from American Psycho." Entertainment Weekly also state their preference for the "first 189 pages". Contrarily, the New York Times felt that the book was devoid of fun, where even the blackest satire (e.g. Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
's Loved One) are more humorous.
EW places Glamorama within an emerging tradition of celebrity satire, noting "the glitterati are the satirical target du jour, what with Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
's limp, oral-sex-filled film Celebrity
Celebrity (film)
Celebrity is a 1998 comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. The screenplay focuses on the divergent paths a couple takes following their divorce.-Plot:...
, and Jay McInerney's clever novel Model Behavior" (both 1998). McInerney's criticism of the novel notes its comparative darkness to his own Model Behaviour (also about 90s nightlife and supermodels), published the same year, saying "I deliberately wrote a comic novel because you don't go chasing butterflies with sledgehammers". (Regarding McInerney's novel, Stein had felt that the novelist's attempt at a zeitgeist
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...
novel was one "looking at the '90s through an '80s lens".) Harvard Crimson noted, similar to McInerney, that "Celebrity by itself teeters so often into self-parody that it seems too easy to bash it" but remarks that "Fortunately, Ellis does more than that injecting Glamorama with a sharper plot than those of earlier novels, a plot which kicks in about a quarter of the way into the novel." The New York Times question the choice of subject matter as well: "Ellis's satirical message is, essentially, a one-liner, and hardly an original one at that -- celebrity culture is vapid, yes, and?" The reviewer furthermore suggested "Glamorama is itself just another artifact of the culture it pretends to criticize."
The book's style is summarized by one reviewer as "a book that reads like a movie", and another notes that Ellis' writing "can be sharp", and succeeds in creating a "creepy sense of dread about our culture". On its influence, Time felt that the novel's "contribution" to the world comes in Victor's catchphrase, which they describe as Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
an. In an otherwise damning review, the New York Times commented "[Ellis] has an uncannily keen eye for the tiny details of the lives of the abel-obsessed yuppies and would-be celebs he's sending up". A CNN reviewer felt, upon reading the book, that "Bret Easton Ellis is a gifted writer"; he praised his "unflinching eye" in capturing the details of "the ensemble worn by a notorious clothes horse, or the grisly aftermath of a hotel bombing, or the graphic details of a menage a trois
Ménage à trois
Ménage à trois is a French term which originally described a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household – the phrase literally translates as "household of three"...
[sic]." The world Ellis evokes, through the eyes of the male model, Harvard Crimson notes is one "where no one has any emotions beyond the visceral response, where all the sex scenes are described in purely pornographic terms."
A.J. Jacobs of Entertainment Weekly did not enjoy the book's more "meta" conceits, and gives the novel a 'C'. Daniel Mendelsohn of the New York Times opines derisively that "Like its predecessors, Glamorama is meant to be a withering report on the soul-destroying emptiness of late-century American consumer culture, chichi downtown division; but the only lesson you're likely to take away from it is the even more depressing classic American morality tale about how premature stardom is more of a curse than a blessing for young writers." The CNN reviewer concludes "in the end, "Glamorama" is less than the sum of its parts".
Further reading
- Mandel, Naomi ed. (2010) Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho, Glamorama, Lunar Park, Continuum, ISBN 0826435629.
External links
- Book review from The ObserverThe ObserverThe 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,...
- http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.900/11.1.r_ayers.txt from Postmodern CulturePostmodern CulturePostmodern Culture is an electronic academic journal established in 1990. It is the result of an early experiment in electronic content delivery via the Internet. The journal publishes commentary and criticism on a wide range of concerns including literary theory, politics, and contemporary society...