I had heard of Ellis and his work before -- especially this, his debut novel -- but really have had no other exposure to him. I have never even seen the film adaptation of Less Than Zero, but decided, after the disappointing adaptation of American Psycho, that there had to be more on the page that there was on the screen.
There is, but not much more -- and that’s kind of the point.
At a red light on Sunset, I lean over and kiss her and she puts the car into second and speeds up. On the radio is a song I have already heard five times today but hum along to anyway. Blair lights a cigarette. We pass a poor woman with dirty, wild hair and a Bullock’s bag sitting by her side full of yellowed newspapers. She’s squatting on a sidewalk by the freeway, her face tilted toward the sky; eyes half-slits, because of the glare of the sun. Blair locks the doors and then we’re driving along a side street up in the hills. No cars pass by. Blair turns the radio up. She doesn’t see the coyote. It’s big and brownish gray and the car hits it hard as it runs out into the middle of the street and Blair screams and tries to drive on, the cigarette falling from her lips. But the coyote is stuck under the wheels and it’s squealing and the car is having difficulty moving. Blair stops the car and puts it in reverse and turns the engine off. I don’t want to get out of the car, but Blair’s crying hysterically, her head in her lap, and I get out of the car and walk slowly over to the coyote. It’s lying on its side, trying to wag its tail. Its eyes are wide and frightened looking and I watch it start to die beneath the sun, blood running out of its mouth. All of its legs are smashed and its body keeps convulsing and I begin to notice the pool of blood that’s forming at the head. Blair calls out to me, and I ignore her and watch the coyote. I stand there for ten minutes. No cars pass. The coyote shudders and arches its body up three, four times and then its eyes go white. Flies start to converge, skimming over the blood and the drying film of the eyes. I walk back to the car and Blair drives off and when we get to her house she turns on the TV and I think she takes some Valium or some Thorazine and the two of us go to bed while “Another World” starts.
Told entirely through Clay’s eyes, Ellis’s story has a lot of coyotes in it -- famously, of course, Clay’s heroin-addicted friend Julian, forced into prostitution by his habit, but also many other unnamed victims -- including the 12-year-old sex slave that Clay’s drug dealer keeps drugged in his bedroom and the closeted businessman from Indiana that is Julian’s john at the Saint Marquis hotel. And Clay watches them all with an affected disinterest, fueled only, as the novel’s title suggests, by seeing how low things can actually get.
And in the elevator on the way down to Julian’s car, I say, “Why didn’t you tell me the money was for this?” and Julian, his eyes all glassy, sad grin on his face, says, “Who cares? Do you? Do you really care?” and I don’t say anything and realize that I really don’t care and suddenly feel foolish, stupid. I also realize that I’ll go with Julian to the Saint Marquis. That I want to see if things like this can actually happen. And as the elevator descends, passing the second floor, and the first floor, going even farther down, I realize that the money doesn’t matter. That all that does is that I want to see the worst.
Less Than Zero is not for everyone. As our narrator and only guide through the story, eventually Clay’s vision will become grafted onto the reader’s, and each reader will have to grapple with the nihilism that permeates his universe. At only 208 pages, that can be a fairly short journey, but one that may not ultimately be worth it.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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