“I go to the University of Spoiled Children,” Blair says, still grinning, running her fingers through her long blond hair.īlair and Trent laugh and she grabs his arm to balance herself for a moment. “UCLA or as the Orientals call it, UCRA.” Trent imitates an old Japanese man, eyes slit, front teeth stuck out in parody, and then laughs drunkenly. Trent offers his hand and Daniel smiles and adjusts his sunglasses and lightly shakes it. “Hey, Clay,” Trent says, a red-and-green-plaid scarf wrapped around his neck. There are people at the party from high school, most of whom I haven’t seen since graduation and they all stand next to the two huge trees. There are two Christmas trees, one in the living room and one in the den and both have twinkling dark-red lights coloring them. In this early scene from Less Than Zero, the narrator Clay has returned to Los Angelos on Christmas break from his first semester in college and is going to a high school friend’s Christmas party:

If Joe McGinnis had been my writing instructor, I still never would have gotten a book deal, so I’m not complaining I’m just pointing it out.

My writing instructor in college was a guy who once brought in a somewhat known literary author of the 1980s to speak, but I don’t think the author really knew my writing instructor.ĭon’t get me wrong. Who in the literary world would have wanted to read their novels?Įllis had an advantage over other writers my age because his writing instructor was famous writer Joe McGinnis who probably helped Ellis get a book deal. Now that I’m in my 50s, I’m really not interested in college debauchery, unless it’s funny.Īnyway, at the time, I wondered how young authors like those in the Literary Brat Pack managed to get published. I didn’t want to read about privileged students. I went to a state school and for the most part had to pay my way. I was a college student when Less Than Zero came out, and I had no interest in reading it because I was already a college student and wasn’t interested in the literary debauchery of other college students, especially students from elite colleges. He also focused on youthful Los Angelos debauchery instead of youthful New York debauchery.

He didn’t use an obvious gimmick like Tama Janowicz (starting off a book with a paragraph about dicks) or Jay McIerney (writing in the 2nd person present tense). Out of the three most famous authors in the literary Brat Pack of the 1980s, Less Than Zero author Bret Easton Ellis seemed to me to be the strongest writer.

Bret easton ellis below zero