The Rules of Attraction Book

"So I stand against the wall, listen to REM, finish the beer, get more, keep my eye on the Freshman girl. Then some other girl, Deidre I think her name is, black spiked hair that already looks dated and trendy, black lipstick, black fingernail polish, black kneesocks, black shoes, nice tits, okay body, Senior, comes over and she's wearing a black halter top even though it's like forty below in the room and she's drunk and coughing like she has T.B., swigging Scotch. I've seen her stealing Dante in the bookstore."

Bret Easton Ellis, in describing this girl, gives us those extra descriptive terms that make us give Deidre a second look. Coughing, swigging, and stealing. Okay, so she is a bit trashy, a bit goth, a bit too easy, maybe, but any girl that steals Dante would definitely have perked my interest back in the day. The music is loud so I'd have to nuzzle up to her ear. She probably smells faintly still of the perfume she put on earlier, but her skin has probably also started to soak up some of the aromas from the party.

I'd tell her, I saw you stealing Dante.

Now Sean is way more worried about banging the cute freshman girl.... Why?... because she is garden-fresh, practically just hatched. She hasn't been initiated into the Camden Liberal Arts college tradition of swill, sweat, and semen. Interesting enough, Camden is probably the most famous college in recent American literary history. Writers Ellis, Jonathan Lethem, and Jill Eisenstadt all attended the very expensive Bennington College in Vermont. All have used Camden as a fictional universe for their Bennington experiences. The author Donna Tartt also attended Bennington, but in her novel The Secret History, she uses the fictional name of Hampden.

Camden. Hampden. I do believe there is literary collusion going on. No Russians as far as I can tell were involved.

Sean has a stalker, a sweet secret admirer, who leaves him love notes in his mail box. "It is simple. I watch him. He reveals himself in dark contours. Everything I believe in floats away when I witness him, say, eating or crossing the boundaries of a crowded room. I feel a scourge. I have his name written on a sheet of pale blue paper that is tissue thin." She is a ghost throughout the book as we whiplash between different narrators who all reveal pieces of what has happened. Sometimes their accounts differ, and sometimes the omission of facts from one narrator, in particular, reveals much about how far they are from understanding what they truly desire. Sometimes they lie. The task for the reader is to evaluate what we are told until the truth becomes a glittering, but tarnished, pearl.

So I've sort of introduced Sean to you, as he is tucking Deidre into his back pocket in case he needs her while he attempts to catch the eye of cute freshman. As the plot develops, his life becomes more complicated as he finds himself trapped in a confusing, obsessive relationship (sexship) with Lauren. To add more spice to the caldron of lust, he also is having sex with...Paul? Is he? As this triangle acquires more weight, we start to understand the inability of any of these characters to get passed impulsive desires and find any meaning in love.

"'He likes him. He likes her. I think she likes someone else, probably me. That's all. No logic.'"

Ask that same question of these people a week later and the corners of the triangle will point in different or all new directions. It is all fluid and meaningless, but not without psychological mutilation.

Remember the stalker?

"The seeds of love have taken hold and if we can't burn together, I'll burn alone."

Going to class at Camden seems optional. It is certainly low on the list of priorities. These kids are being washed up on the shores of a hedonistic island, and if anyone is feeling inhibited, soon the copious amounts of alcohol, drugs, and hormonally driven lust have them dancing to the latest Talking Heads album along with the natives.

It makes me wonder, after these people are booted off the island, how anyone can reintegrate into regular society. Camden will leave these people morally decimated, distrustful, and with probably more than one nasty habit. Ahhh yes, the '80s.

Don't miss the Dressed to Get Screwed party. The highlight of the year.

The book jacket says this is a vast departure from Bret Easton Ellis's first book, Less Than Zero, which for a few chapters I was thinking what the hell are they talking about, but as I got deeper in the book, I started to realize that this book is actually significantly different from his first book. In Less Than Zero, his characters are soulless, people really beyond redemption in my opinion. In this book, he infuses some humor, some legitimate pain, and explores deeper themes about adolescents awkwardly trapped in an extended childhood and with no real idea why anyone would ever want to be an adult. They are rich, spoiled, and lost. LIke a spectre floating behind the scenes, we have the tale of the secret admirer who is the only person who seems to understand real desire, and sustainable love. The poignancy of her situation will make your heart strings tremble.

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