Imperial Bedrooms
(Knopf, Hardcover, 9780307266101, 192pp.)
Publication Date: June 15, 2010
Categories: Literary
Eric El Camino has hated me for loving Brett Easton Ellis novels. His feelings were a flame of burning desire. His rage burned like a bonfire set by an eddy on the beach. He would put a chock hold on me and hang me in my locker, because he was the authority on what was good literature. He was only thirteen but he knew better than all the other kids, and he was willing to use violence to prove it.
I consider Brett Easton Ellis one of the best writers of all time. He is one of my guilty pleasures. There was a time when his books, even American Psycho, shaped how I interpreted the times I was part of. Ellis books are always dark, but inside that dark is a flickering light that gives hope, a promise of future glory. They are a true reinterpretation of the American Dream. Something happened to the American Dream between 1997 and 2010 (tragedy at Columbine, the twin Towers, space shuttles exploding on a return flight, the dot boom fiasco, the BP Oil Spill) taking the alluring world of Ellis and twisting it into a knot. An unyielding knot holding hope and joy locked into an affair with disillusion.
Today, I listened to the album that coincides with Ellis's new novel Imperial Bedrooms and think,
"Wow, I can't wait to read his new novel!"
I also think I will download the soundtrack and raise a toast to my innocence.
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