Glamorama

  Acclaim for Bret Easton Ellis’s

  Glamorama

  “One of the passing delights of Glamorama … is to imagine how scholars of postmodern fiction will explain it a century hence .… The book seems to go insane while you’re reading it, but Ellis doesn’t fear the appearance of chaos. He invents a fresh hell on every page. [And] through all this mayhem, the style remains mysteriously elegant.”

  —The New Yorker

  “Ellis … has become one of the finest literary satirists in America.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “The book succeeds in delivering a creepy sense of dread about our culture. Glamorama’s contribution to the world may be the motto of its main character, a male model: The better you look, the more you see. As a sum-up of our decade, it’s downright Tom Wolfean.”

  —Time

  “Gets under the skin of our celebrity culture in a way that is both illuminating and frightening.”

  —Daily Telegraph, London

  “A tour de force … simply his best work to date .… Ellis remains a laser-precise satirist, but the wit now dominates.”

  —Esquire

  “Ellis’s achievement is pristine .… What’s fresh and arresting in Glamorama is its uncompromising triviality, its rigorous transience .… Ellis has written this way before, of course, but never with such crazy focus. His run-on sentences only seem lazy, his strings of references only feel ad-hoc; in fact they’re as calculated as Victor’s guest lists. This premeditation shows most clearly in the dialogue, which manages to be pointed and hilarious just when it seems most casual and screwy.”

  —New York

  “What Ellis does with cunning and brilliance and style is to dress his models in language that is terminally hip yet vitally comprehensible.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Glamorama boasts memorable if despicable characters and downright hysterical dialogue .… An important stepping stone in [Ellis’s] career.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle & Examiner

  “An accomplished send-up that reflects Ellis’s considerable talent as a writer, a novel loaded with entertainment and ambition.”

  —The Oregonian

  “Ellis’s hypnotically perfect prose is able to incorporate just about any convention he puts his mind to .… His greatest strength is that he not only refuses to state the obvious—that his characters’ behavior is inexcusable—but also finds comedy where none would seem to exist.”

  —Spin

  “Nearly alone among his contemporaries, [Ellis has] had the courage, and the genius, never to leave the literary playing field as he found it.”

  —Salon

  “Brutally funny .… Glamorama courses with energy and intelligence.”

  —Bookforum

  “His most ambitious book yet.”

  —Rolling Stone

  “The perfect fin de siècle novel .… Sick, twisted, and possibly brilliant.”

  —The Advocate

  “A wonderful lampooning of people badly needing a good lampooning .… Ellis’s dialogue is fresh and energetic. His narration is deliciously decadent.”

  —The Plain Dealer

  “Pure Ellis—brimming with unsettling details, ironic dialogue, and black humor .… [He] moves Victor through a series of implausible situations so masterfully that the reader is willing to suspend disbelief.”

  —Vogue

  “An American masterpiece .… This is writing of extraordinary wit and precision.”

  —Scotland on Sunday

  “A comic and frightening story .… The pleasures of a celebrity-worshipping narrative overlaying a violent, chilling and, in the style of Ballard, instructive plot are too great to ignore.”

  —Newsday

  “An affirmation inside a horror story .… [Ellis is] a master stylist with hideously interesting new-fangled manners and the heart of an old-fashioned moralist.”

  —The Observer, London

  Also by Bret Easton Ellis

  The Informers

  American Psycho

  The Rules of Attraction

  Less Than Zero

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Glamorama

  Bret Easton Ellis is the author of Less Than Zero; The Rules of Attraction; The Informers, a collection of stories; and American Psycho. He lives in New York City

  for

  Jim Severt

  my thanks

  Gary Fisketjon

  Amanda Urban

  Julie Grau

  Heather Schroder

  Sonny Mehta

  There was no time when you nor I nor these kings did not exist.

  —Krishna

  You make a mistake if you see what we do as merely political.

  —Hitler

  1

  33

  “Specks—specks all over the third panel, see?—no, that one—the second one up from the floor and I wanted to point this out to someone yesterday but a photo shoot intervened and Yaki Nakamari or whatever the hell the designer’s name is—a master craftsman not—mistook me for someone else so I couldn’t register the complaint, but, gentlemen—and ladies—there they are: specks, annoying, tiny specks, and they don’t look accidental but like they were somehow done by a machine—so I don’t want a lot of description, just the story, streamlined, no frills, the lowdown: who, what, where, when and don’t leave out why, though I’m getting the distinct impression by the looks on your sorry faces that why won’t get answered—now, come on, god-dammit, what’s the story?”

  Nobody around here has to wait long for someone to say something.

  “Baby, George Nakashima designed this bar area,” JD quietly corrects me. “Not, um, Yaki Nakamashi, I mean Yuki Nakamorti, I mean—oh shit, Peyton, get me out of this.”

  “Yoki Nakamuri was approved for this floor,” Peyton says.

  “Oh yeah?” I ask. “Approved by who?”

  “Approved by, well, moi,” Peyton says.

  A pause. Glares targeted at Peyton and JD.

  “Who the fuck is Moi?” I ask. “I have no fucking idea who this Moi is, baby.”

  “Victor, please,” Peyton says. “I’m sure Damien went over this with you.”

  “Damien did, JD. Damien did, Peyton. But just tell me who Moi is, baby,” I exclaim. “Because I’m, like, shvitzing.”

  “Moi is Peyton, Victor,” JD says quietly.

  “I’m Moi,” Peyton says, nodding. “Moi is, um, French.”

  “Are you sure these specks aren’t supposed to be here?” JD tentatively touches the panel. “I mean, maybe it’s supposed to be, oh, I don’t know, in or something?”

  “Wait.” I raise a hand. “You’re saying these specks are in?”

  “Victor—we’ve got a long list of things to check, baby.” JD holds up the long list of things to check. “The specks will be taken care of. Someone will escort the specks out of here. There’s a magician waiting downstairs.”

  “By tomorrow night?” I roar. “By to-mor-row night, JD?”

  “It can be handled by tomorrow, no?” JD looks at Peyton, who nods.

  “Around here, ‘tomorrow night’ means anywhere from five days to a month. Jesus, does anybody notice I’m seething?”

  “None of us have been exactly sedentary, Victor.”

  “I think the situation is simple enough: those”—I point—“are specks. Do you need someone to decipher that sentence for you, JD, or are you, y’know, okay with it?”

  The “reporter” from Details stands with us. Assignment: follow me around for a week. Headline: THE MAKING OF A CLUB. Girl: push-up bra, scads of eyeliner, a Soviet sailor’s cap, plastic flower jewelry, rolled-up copy of W tucked under a pale, worked-out arm. Uma Thurman if Uma Thurman was five feet two and asleep. Behind her, som
e guy wearing a Velcro vest over a rugby shirt and a leather windjammer follows us, camcording the scene.

  “Hey baby.” I inhale on a Marlboro someone’s handed me. “What do you think about the specks?”

  Girl reporter lowers her sunglasses. “I’m really not sure.” She thinks about what position she should take.

  “East Coast girls are hip,” I shrug. “I really dig those styles they wear.”

  “I don’t think I’m really part of the story,” she says.

  “You think any of these bozos are?” I snort. “Spare me.”

  From the top floor, Beau leans over the railing and calls down, “Victor—Chloe’s on line ten.”

  Girl reporter immediately lifts the W, revealing a notepad, on which she doodles something, predictably animated for a moment.

  I call up, staring intently at the specks: “Tell her I’m busy. I’m in a meeting. It’s an emergency. Tell her I’m in a meeting and it’s an emergency. I’ll call her back after I put the fire out.”

  “Victor,” Beau calls down. “This is the sixth time she’s called today. This is the third time she’s called in the last hour.”

  “Tell her I’ll see her at Doppelganger’s at ten.” I kneel down, along with Peyton and JD, and run my hand along the panel, pointing out where the specks begin and end and then start up again. “Specks, man, look at these fuckers. They glow. They’re glowing, JD,” I whisper. “Jesus, they’re everywhere.” Suddenly I notice an entire new patch and yelp, gaping, “And I think they’re spreading. I don’t think that patch was here before!” I swallow, then croak in a rush, “My mouth is incredibly dry because of this—could someone get me an Arizona diet iced tea in a bottle, not a can?”

  “Didn’t Damien discuss the design with you, Victor?” JD asks. “Didn’t you know the existence of these specks?”

  “I don’t know anything, JD. Nothing, nada. Remember that. I … know … nothing. Never assume I know anything. Nada. Nothing. I know nothing, not a thing. Never—”

  “I get it, I get it,” JD says wearily, standing up.

  “I really can’t see anything, baby,” Peyton says, still on the floor.

  JD sighs. “Even Peyton can’t see them, Victor.”

  “Ask the vampire to take off his fucking sunglasses,” I snarl. “Spare me, man.”

  “I will not tolerate being called a vampire, Victor.” Peyton pouts.

  “What? You tolerate being sodomized but not being called Dracula in jest? Am I on the same planet? Let’s move on.” I wave my arm, gesturing at something invisible.

  As the entire group follows me downstairs toward the third floor, the chef—Bongo from Venezuela via Vunderbahr, Moonclub, Paddy-O and MasaMasa—lights a cigarette and lowers his sunglasses while trying to keep up with me. “Victor, we must talk.” He coughs, waves smoke away. “Please, my feet are killing me.”

  The group stops. “Uno momento, Bongo,” I say, noticing the worried glances he’s throwing Kenny Kenny, who’s connected in some weird way to Glorious Foods and has yet to be informed he has nothing to do with catering tomorrow night’s dinner. Peyton, JD, Bongo, Kenny Kenny, camcorder guy and Details girl wait for me to do something, and since I’m at a loss I peer over the third-floor railing. “Come on, guys. Shit, I mean I’ve got three more floors and five more bars to check. Please, give me some space. This is all very hard. Those specks almost made me literally sick.”

  “Victor, no one would deny the existence of the specks,” Peyton says carefully. “But you have to place the specks within a, um, certain, well, context.”

  On one of the monitors lining the walls on the third floor, MTV, a commercial, Helena Christensen, “Rock the Vote.”

  “Beau!” I yell up. “Beau!”

  Beau leans over the top railing. “Chloe says she’ll be at Metro CC at eleven-thirty.”

  “Wait, Beau—Ingrid Chavez? Has Ingrid Chavez RSVP’d?” I yell up.

  “I’m checking—wait, for the dinner?”

  “Yes, and I’m gritting my teeth, Beau. Check the Cs for dinner.”

  “Oh my god I have got to speak to you, Victor,” Bongo says in an accent so thick I’m unsure of its origin, grabbing my arm. “You must let me have my time with you.”

  “Bongo, why don’t you just get get the the hell out of here,” Kenny Kenny says, his face twisted. “Here, Victor, try a crouton.”

  I snatch one out of his hands. “Mmm, rosemary. Delish, dude.”

  “It is sage, Victor. Sage.”

  “You you sh-sh-should go to hell,” Bongo sputters. “And take that sickening crouton with you.”

  “Will both of you mos take a Xanax and shut the fuck up? Go bake some pastries or something. Beau—goddamnit! Speak to me!”

  “Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Cindy Crawford, Sheryl Crow, David Charvet, Courteney Cox, Harry Connick, Jr., Francesco Clemente, Nick Constantine, Zoe Cassavetes, Nicolas Cage, Thomas Calabro, Cristi Conway, Bob Collacello, Whitfield Crane, John Cusack, Dean Cain, Jim Courier, Roger Clemens, Russell Crowe, Tia Carrere and Helena Bonham Carter—but I’m not sure if she should be under B or C.”

  “Ingrid Chavez! Ingrid Chavez!” I shout up. “Has Ingrid Chavez fucking RSVP’d or not?”

  “Victor, celebs and their overly attentive PR reps are complaining that your answering machine isn’t working,” Beau calls down. “They say it’s playing thirty seconds of ‘Love Shack’ and then only five seconds to leave a message.”

  “It’s a simple question. Yes or No is the answer. What else could these people possibly have to say to me? It’s not a difficult question: Are you coming to the dinner and the club opening or are you not? Is that hard to grasp? And you look just like Uma Thurman, baby.”

  “Victor, Cindy is not ‘these people,’ Veronica Webb is not ‘these people,’ Elaine Irwin is not ‘these people’—”

  “Beau! How are the As shaping up? Kenny Kenny, don’t pinch Bongo like that.”

  “All nine of them?” Beau calls down. “Carol Alt, Pedro Almodóvar, Dana Ashbrook, Kevyn Aucoin, Patricia, Rosanna, David and Alexis Arquette and Andre Agassi, but no Giorgio Armani or Pamela Anderson.”

  “Shit.” I light another cigarette, then look over at the Details girl. “Um, I mean that in a good way.”

  “So it’s like … a good shit?” she asks.

  “Uh-huh. Hey Beau!” I call up. “Make sure all the monitors are either on that virtual-reality videotape or for god’s sake MTV or something. I passed a screen that had VH1 on it, and some fat hick in a ten-gallon hat was weeping—”

  “Will you meet Chloe at Flowers—sorry, Metro CC?” Beau yells down. “Because I’m not gonna lie anymore.”

  “Oh, you’ll lie,” I scream up. “That’s all you ever do.” Then, after glancing casually at the Details girl: “Ask Chloe if she’s bringing Beatrice and Julie.”

  Silence from upstairs makes me cringe, then Beau asks, thoroughly annoyed, “Do you mean Beatrice Arthur and Julie Hagerty?”

  “No,” I shout, gritting my teeth. “Julie Delpy and Beatrice Dalle. Spare me. Just do it, Beau.”

  “Beatrice Dalle’s shooting that Ridley Scott—”

  “The speck thing has really gotten to me. You know why?” I ask the Details girl.

  “Because there were … a lot?”

  “Nope. Because I’m a perfectionist, baby. And you can write that down. In fact I’ll wait a minute while you do so.” Suddenly I rush back to the panel beneath the bar, everyone rushing back with me up the stairs, and I’m wailing, “Specks! Holy Christ! Help me, somebody, please? I mean everyone’s acting like there’s a question as to whether these specks are an illusion or a reality. I think they’re pretty goddamn real.”

  “Reality is an illusion, baby,” JD says soothingly. “Reality is an illusion, Victor.”

  No one says anything until I’m handed an ashtray, in which I stub out the cigarette I just lit.

  “That’s, uh, pretty heavy,” I say, looking at the girl reporter. “That’s pretty
heavy, huh?”

  She shrugs, rotates her shoulders, doodles again.

  “My reaction exactly,” I mutter.

  “Oh, before I forget,” JD says. “Jann Wenner can’t make it, but he wants to send a”—JD glances at his notepad—“check anyway.”

  “A check? A check for what?”

  “Just a”—JD glances at his pad again—“a, um, check?”

  “Oh god. Beau! Beau!” I call up.

  “I think people are wondering why we don’t have a whatchamacallit,” Peyton says. Then, after much finger snapping, “Oh yeah, a cause!”

  “A cause?” I moan. “Oh god, I can only imagine what kind of cause you’d want. Scholarship fund for Keanu. Find Marky Mark a gay brain. Send Linda Evangelista to the rain forest so we can pounce on Kyle MacLachlan. No thank you.”

  “Victor, shouldn’t we have a cause?” JD says. “What about global warming or the Amazon? Something. Anything.”

  “Passé. Passé. Passé.” I stop. “Wait—Beau! Is Suzanne DePasse coming?”

  “What about AIDS?”

  “Passé. Passé.”

  “Breast cancer?”

  “Oh groovy, far out,” I gasp before slapping him lightly on the face. “Get serious. For who? David Barton? He’s the only one with tits anymore.”

  “You know what I’m trying to say, Victor,” JD says. “Something like Don’t Bungle the Jungle or—”

  “Hey, don’t bungle my jungle, you little mo.” I consider this. “A cause, hmm? Because we can”—I mindlessly light another cigarette—“make more money?”

  “And let people have some fun,” JD reminds me, scratching at a tattoo of a little muscle man on his bicep.

  “Yeah, and let people have some fun.” I take a drag. “I’m considering this, you know, even though the opening is in, oh, less than twenty-four hours.”

  “You know what, Victor?” Peyton asks slyly. “I’m getting the, ah, perverse temptation, baby, to, ah—now don’t get scared, promise?”

  “Only if you don’t tell me who you’ve slept with in the last week.”

  Wide-eyed, Peyton claps his hands together and gushes, “Keep the specks.” Then, after seeing my face contort, more timidly offers, “Save … the specks?”