WHAT'S A LTTLE EXCREMENT EATING: the Brett Easton Ellis Story

===At the LA Times website there was a very convincing video for Bret Easton Ellis’s IMPERIAL BEDROOMS which Knopf was publishing.

===I am listening to a compilation of Nico’s greatest songs: it starts with “I’m Not Saying”… it will move through “Janitor of Lunacy” and end with “The End”… does one need to say more…

===I should be reading Philippe Sollers’ MYSTERIOUS MOZART or maybe looking again at David Galloway’s A FAMILY ALBUM…

===But I have been reading IMPERIAL BEDROOMS. A sequel to LESS THAN ZERO.

===I have skipped to the scene toward the end as directed by the NY Times review where the narrator hires a man and woman and does things to them in Palm Springs. You can read the opening chapter. He has learned from Joan Didion and Truman Capote: may their example be forgiven! Skip to the last one.

===People will do anything for a buck, is the usual moral lesson.

===But I guess we all know that.. even stuff with excrement and beatings and all the rest of it.

===The questions: how much per welt?

===How much excrement must be consumed or used?

===How much per insertion of penis?

===Does the receptacle matter in these calculations?

===Do tears cost extra or are they a deduction from the negotiated fee?

===Who cleaned up the mess?

===You might say it is all an incitement to revolution.. .and to think of Ellis as being a revolutionary writer probably takes a little effort but why not?

===Such writing was used to undermine the aristocracy in France before the revolution

===None of the people Ellis--- here I have momentarily forgotten that these are invented characters though the appeal of Ellis is in his being one of those guys like Jay McInerney and all the rest of the crew celebrated in VANITY FAIR to be known as one of the “insiders”--- writes about deserve to live a moment longer and of course he shows what can happen to someone who is tortured to death… but again we now know all about that.. so one thinks of revolution… what a little Maosim could do or how about a Holiday in Cambodia and a little mind cleaning by the Khmer Rouge—those well educated intellectuals, graduates of good French schools--- but then Mao just used revolution so he could infect 12 year old girls with syphilis and kill more than 40 million people: the great helmsman at work...

===So what’s a little shiteating among the rich, I guess is the lesson of Brett Easton Ellis

==================None of this is out of the ordinary. Ed Sanders in the early 70s when he did his book about Charlie Manson THE FAMILY was telling me he discovered far worse things than Manson in Hollywood but the publisher wouldn’t allow him to report on it: thrill killings and the usual corpse fucking among the Hollywood elite, as Sanders said at that party for the Hell’s Angels sponsored by John Lennon (I kid you not)…

===and that is what was scary about Manson and the people he had ordered killed… the then pregnant wife of a rapist now still on the lam … what do you expect?… Hollywood people were afraid their secrets would come out an Manson was part of them at the time… but Manson kept his mouth shut and was grist enough for the mill.. too much reality is more than most people can stand as recently in the Grass Roots a guy was telling me about the distinguished biographer of Picasso who had a thing for dead bodies in the south of France….

===So a great video and writing that reads like a forensics report…

===Maybe it leads to Michael Breslow--- whose LIFE LINE about a guy faking medical research and which came with a nice blurb from Anthony Burgess+++ look for it if you can find it++++ went on to write the unpublished novel POLIO but he himself got killed by throat cancer--- had a girl friend who he wanted to write about who was a lawyer defending guys in a prison riot and how she got a guy off of a rape charge because she was able to prove he fucked the guy after the guy was dead so the charge had to be reduced to just corpse abuse…

===Knopf of course is publishing Thomas Bernhard’s MY PRIZES in a few months and I am sure the great sales of this book will support the disappointing sales of IMPERIAL BEDROOMS…

===One shouldn’t forget that Brett Easton Ellis was unleashed upon the world by Joe McGuiness who stabbed--- how ironic--- Jeffrey McDonald in the back with his book FATAL VISION.

=You remember the case? Green Beret doctor kills his family. Claims it was a Mansonlike gang that did it.. but case re-opened and McDonald went down and is still in jail. The BBC did a documentary suggesting there was reasonable doubt, but no luck, the knife was firmly in the McDonald’s back thanks to Joe McGuiness.

=I can tell you this: I'd rather read Bret Easton Ellis than Raymond Carver or the dread Toni Morrison who I fear is always lurking with another book...Imperial BedroomsLife Line: 2My Prizes: An Accounting