In the "By the Book" feature in the NY Times, they sometimes ask authors what book have they read that they consider as "guilty pleasures." My feeling is that no one should feel guilty about reading a book, but if I had to specify certain books as guilty pleasures, I'd have to go with books by Bret Easton Ellis. As someone who was a teenager in the 1980s, I read Less Than Zero like a lot of folks my age along with Ellis's other books. His work was so different from what I'd been reading at the time and I enjoyed it. I'm reading his latest novel, The Shards, now and it's entertaining. I saw Bret years ago at the Barnes and Noble in New York around Union Square. He was doing a talk and Andrew McCarthy was there also. They were discussing the movie version of Less Than Zero (that Andrew starred in). Bret talked about seeing the movie and realizing as he watched it that none of the text from his book actually showed up in the film. (I think they did use that "people are afraid to merge" line in it, but I digress.) What surprised me was how perfectly calm and likeable Bret seemed during that chat. I was expecting him to be a jerk, but he wasn't! He was funny and entertaining. I was also surprised to see so many younger people at that reading. I was expecting the crowd to be filled with people who were my age (Gen X folks), but we were outnumbered by the Millennials.
I told my sister Bret must feel like he lived his best life during the 1980s because he sure writes about that decade a lot. I just don't understand writing about a specific time period over and over. But, to each his own, I guess. I loved the 1970s because I was a kid during that decade and didn't have the pressures that come with age back then. The 1970s were tacky and ridiculous, but I loved that decade. However, I don't want to relive that time. I don't want to relive the 1980s or 90s either, although the 70s, 80s, and 90s are all looking better and better compared to what's going on today!
