Bret Easton Ellis Needs to Move On

 

 

The Shards (2023)

By Bret Easton Ellis

Alfred A. Knopf, 594 pages.

★★

 

Once upon a time, Bret Easton Ellis was a zeitgeist writer and the hottest thing going. That was then; this is now. The problem with zeitgeist writers is that they seem self-indulgent when the zeitgeist changes and they don't.

 

The Shards is another semi-autobiographical work with Ellis at the center of things that sort of happened. It takes us back to 1981 when Ellis was a senior at Buckley, a private prep school for bright, privileged kids capable of doing stupid things. It also revolves around a serial killer that’s a mash up of Los Angeles monsters such as the Hillside Strangler (1979), William Bonin, the Freeway Killer (1980), and possibly West Side rapist/murderer Brandon Thalmer (1981-83) and/or the Manson Family.

 

The sanguinary aspects of the novel notwithstanding, The Shards is instantly unlikable because of a cast defined by obscene materialism and cluelessness. Kids at Buckley drive to school in their BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and Porches. They think nothing of dressing in Gucci and Armand, lunching at eateries frequented by celebrities, and living in homes with butlers and cooks. Although all are underage, they drink at posh bars and hone their decadence by smoking clove cigarettes, popping Quaaludes, snorting cocaine, or tripping on LSD. Their pool parties are orgiastic affairs that cost more than a public school's monthly budget and feature hook-ups, vomiting (that the help will clean up) and Pablo Escobar quantities of coke. As for parents, many are separated, divorced, or out of the country, and the ones who are present are as bad as their offspring. Buckley is a real place, by the way, and I doubt it is flattered by a portrait of students as feral elites in training.

 

Bret is in a relationship with Debbie Schaeffer, though he's secretly having sex with Matt Kellner and other young men, and will eventually also fall prey to Debbie's hotshot Hollywood bigwig father Terry. Hey, it's a small price to pay for the possibility of a script. Bret’s friend Thom Wright is the main squeeze of the drop-dead gorgeous Susan Reynolds. Senior year takes place against a backdrop of disappearances and murders that involve bizarre preludes and mutilation of animals and humans. Sounds charming, doesn't it? Buckley life is further disrupted by a late transfer, Robert Mallory, who is hunky, though Bret finds him disturbing and untruthful. Bret is pretty sure he saw him with one of the women who was murdered, though Robert denies it.

 

Matt's murder sends Bret into paranoia territory. A beige van is seen in the area and rumor holds that it's associated with The Trawler, who may or may not be in tight with the cult-like Riders of the Afterlife. Bret comes to suspect that Robert might be or know The Trawler, and he knows that Robert is a liar. His Buckley clique simply don't believe him and defends Robert, especially when they learn something of his life before coming to Los Angeles. Susan even seems to be falling for him, which launches Thom into a jealous rage. That, by the way, might be the only actual teen-like reaction in the book.

 

All of this sets up a violent showdown of sorts. That “sort” would be of the histrionic, clichéd, and improbable variety. We read to find the solution to the mystery, but Ellis disappoints. Who is The Trawler? Robert? Bret? The Riders of the Afterlife? An unknown? Is Bret a hero, a pariah, or a monster? Is there any point to a mystery that doesn't tell us? I'm a fan of ambiguity, but if I read 594 pages I want more than Ellis offers.

 

The Shards is really about how Ellis embraced being gay. This is 2024, so it's not as if justification is necessary. The novel is quite graphic in describing both hetero and homosexual trysts, and even more so in detailing acts of violence. One is left with the sense that Ellis has written a hybrid pornographic/horror novel. Mostly, though, it seems that Ellis wants us to look at him. Sorry dude, your ship has sailed. Find other subjects. His insistence of putting himself front and center reminds me of how Woody Allen did the same in movies long after his neurotic sex-driven self was past its expiration date. The last thing we need is a recycled gay Woody Allen.

 

Rob Weir