Glamorama

 

Since its publication is the late 1990s, "Glamorama" has garnered a series of mixed reviews, either lavish praise or outright condemnation. I think I'm a bit more nuanced in my viewpoint. 

I do like Bret Easton Ellis as an author, especially his satirical commentary on pop culture. Once I read the description for "Glamorama" years ago, it was added to my now-eternally long "to read" list on Powells.com. Finally, I decided to purchase it, and it was a lot more fucked-up than I initially thought.

It's true. The first half of the book is a little exhausting with the stupid, repulsive protagonist (a D-list model/actor named Victor) gallivanting around Manhattan's social scene and dropping infinite names of the celebrities he bumps elbows with. But, I think this is the point Easton Ellis is making: to illustrate Victor's extreme superficiality and emptiness by confining himself to a world of fleeting interactions in an attempt to somehow elevate his profile to the level he hopes to achieve.

I feel the first part of the novel could easily have been condensed into approximately 100 pages, as it's just filled with mind-numbingly stupid dialogue between Victor and the celebrities he interacts with. Particularly annoying is Victor's constant phrase, "What's the story, baby?" 

You start to glimpse a little bit of foreboding disaster when he meets a mysterious man named Palakon, urging him to go to London on the QE2 to find a famous actress named Jamie Fields.

Here is where the book starts getting more twisted.

While on the QE2, he has ominous interactions with multiple people, including a woman named Marina who disappears around halfway through the trip. When he gets to London and meets Jamie, things take a turn for the worse and things get violent, particularly a torture scene with another famous person named Sam Ho.

The weird thing about this book, and one I didn't quite understand, was that Victor, Jamie and everyone he interacts with are inside a script the whole time, followed around by a director and a film crew. 

Even as things get shockingly out of control and Victor loses his mind, the director is still telling him what to say and how to respond.

This component overall had the feel of a snuff film, and it makes it hard to discern what is reality for Victor and what is fiction. Additionally, the presence of the director (which extends back to the book's first half set in New York) is never fully explained. Easton Ellis didn't have to spare all the details, but some implication of what is going on would have been better. 

Eventually, Victor goes to Paris, and things get insanely gory. He becomes even more repulsive, still spewing his vapid catchphrases in a Xanax-induced haze, and I did have a bit of a sadistic wish that something horrible would happen to him, chiefly death. 

A particularly graphic scene details a plane crash triggered by a bomb explosion. Easton Ellis is so good at crafting vivid, minute descriptions that I thought about this scene frequently the next two days, even when I had put the book down. 

"Glamorama" is a mess, it's true, and the point may arguably be "celebrities are superficial fuckheads. That's it." But there is an element of surveillance to it, a need to be in the public eye, that lends itself especially well to the era of exploitation on social media we are currently in, particularly as it concerns individuals like the Kardashians.

The book could definitely have been shorter, particularly the first half, but Easton Ellis knew what he was doing. I don't regret reading it overall. 

Rating: 6/10