“I know who you are and I know what you’re doing.”

 Today I am taking a break from my usual #WW feuilleton to say a few words about Glamorama. I got this book as a Xmas present from son no 2, and so I read it with attention. Of course I am aware of the scandal around American Psycho, and of some of the damning reviews that welcome Glamorama in 1998, in equal number to admiring ones. I am on the side of the admirers: don’t be fooled by the jealous, this was, still is, will be for a long time, an important book. And I think Ellis is an important writer.

Since 1998 we have seen more horrors, on these shores and elsewhere, some perpetuated by us, our governments, our contractors, our armies. Others, well… We can’t be sure ever,  of what is true and what is cinema, can we?

Victor Ward/Johnson is a hero of our time. He’s possibly a great lover, in the sense of the dying years of the 20th century, in the crumbling empire named America. His girlfriend Chloe, the most beautiful of models, dies an atrocious death in Paris, capital of terrorism – after all the word was coined there! The impostor who stalks Victor, and eventually substitutes himself to him, bed his women, gets his money, and is the only victor, blessed by Johnson senior, presidential hopeful: for so it is that lies trump truth, and the beautiful people be damned.

Read Glamorama, there is one of the keys to our times.

Related Articles

• 17 Things We Learned From Bret Easton Ellis’s Reddit AMA (flavorwire.com)
• Bret Easton Ellis’s tweets provoke ‘ban’ from gay media awards (guardian.co.uk)