Someone from L.A. sent me a video tape, unmarked, and I am afraid to play it but probably will. I have lost my I.D. three times this term. I tell the person I see in psychological counselling that I feel the apocalypse is near. She asks me how my flute tutorial is progressing.
Oddly, given that it doesn't quite have the landmark status of his other work, The Rules of Attraction is perhaps Ellis' finest novel. More than that, perhaps an era-defining novel in a Kerouac kinda way, when the dust finally settles.
Maybe its modesty is the point: whereas he sometimes tries just a bit too hard, feeding hype rather than creating truly great fiction, this is a consolidation of previous efforts, and the result is simple and devastating. Here, Ellis' glassy prose has a distinctly romantic sheen: much as this is a novel dominated by the utter, nihilistic blankness of ultra-rich America, it's also a deeply affecting piece that summons up a vivid melancholy for its open conclusion.
A superficially simple work - Ellis' essential genius is to say nothing about people with nothing to say - that drags you into its hidden depths, deft and witty and mournful.
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