'Less Than Zero,' Bret Easton Ellis’ uncensored story of apathy

Mini Essay | July 7, 2024

This piece contains spoilers.

Though I hesitate to admit it, I am completely captivated by the work of Bret Easton Ellis. 

I read his most esteemed novel American Psycho (1991) about a year ago, and it has lingered in my memory ever since with its unabashedly offensive writing and deplorable characters. His 1987 novel The Rules of Attraction was a repetitive cycle of drugs and sex narrated by a miserable cast of college students, wrapped in the same nihilistic, insufferable tone present in American Psycho. With blunt language and unsettling imagery, Ellis prints an indelible image in my mind that few authors parallel. He cushions no blows. He censors less than nothing. Instead of skirting around taboo topics, he cuts to their juiciest, meatiest parts and lets the blood drip. 

I approached Less Than Zero expecting something equally vulgar, and I wasn’t disappointed. Published in 1985, this debut novel oozes with the same themes present in American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction, but takes them down a different road. Set in Los Angeles’s affluent San Fernando Valley region, the story is narrated by 18-year-old Clay, a college student returning home for the holidays, and details his four weeks of hedonistic endeavors. Surrounded by wealthy young adults descended from expired Hollywood stars, Clay engages in endless drug-fueled parties and meaningless hookups. Despite this constant company, there seems to be a complete lack of genuine affection between the characters.

A sizable chunk of the story is dedicated to Clay’s withering relationship with his old friend Julian. Though he is oblivious to it at first, he soon learns that Julian has turned to prostitution to fund his heroin addiction. At a get-together, Clay’s friend Trent plays a snuff film that everyone but the former seems to enjoy. In what is possibly the book’s most disturbing scene, Clay’s drug dealer Rip reveals a drugged-up sex slave he keeps chained to his room, to which, once again, no one displays an adverse reaction. Each scene is a punch to the gut, another exhibition of the cruelty orchestrated by his friends that he feels increasingly estranged from. However, the literal actions of these characters are not the only places the horror lies—rather, the worst thing about this book is the blunt, apathetic way in which these horrors are told. 

“‘Nothing. Nothing makes me happy. I like nothing,’ I tell her.”

Ellis doesn’t romanticize drug use and depression, nor does he dress it up with prosaic metaphors. His writing is minimalistic, thus it cleaves like a knife to the bone. Apathy is spread thick, palpable across each of the pages, yet it remains subtle, cleverly weaved into the tone on which the story is built. The characters remain unfazed, complacent, and sometimes pleased by these horrific actions, and as a result, they become indifferent. Lukewarm. The emotional needle is static, operating within a limited range when it should be flying in a hundred directions.  

In short fragments, Clay recalls an old family vacation to Palm Springs during which his grandmother was dying of cancer. As his family relaxed and engaged in idle conversation, Clay felt he was the only one who cared about her imminent death. He seems to be haunted by this memory, recalling it in several points throughout the book. This makes me wonder if his apathy partially stems from this experience of being concerned and vulnerable. To give weight to something in an attempt to cherish it is simply that—a weight—and perhaps Clay’s lack of love and passion is a deliberate choice to protect himself. 

"Disappear Here."

That's what it says on a billboard Clay sees throughout the story. It’s a perfect connection to the aforementioned apathy. Clay loves nothing and is interested in little. “I don't want to care,” he tells his ex-girlfriend Blair before he returns to school. “If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care.” The billboard represents Clay’s mindset; he disappears into himself and closes off from the world around him, letting it grow fainter until it’s too clouded for him to see anything for its beauty or its terror. 

“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles,” goes the opening line. “Though that sentence shouldn't bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter.” To me, this line highlights the lack of attention toward substantive material and the obsession with things that don’t matter. It’s not that Clay doesn’t notice the world around him—he simply does not dig into anything enough to connect to it emotionally. Merging is a passing thought, easy to digest and easier to forget. He clings onto this fact because it’s better to hold onto something that hardly matters than it is to preoccupy himself with something that does. His passiveness is protective, a shield from the pain that an open heart might attract. 

Clay constantly disappears into himself, and he ends where he begins. Him and his friends come together but mostly they fall apart, and his lack of concern with any of it dampens him with a nihilistic apathy that not even the California sun can dry out. 

Photos found on Pinterest 

thevintageproject.blogspot.com (left)

French book cover (center)

24.media.tumblr.com (right)