The Rules of Attractions by Bret Easton Ellis

I've only read three books by Ellis: American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and now this one.

Ellis is, truly, an existential writer. It hurts to read some of this stuff. Attraction swiftly carries you along. It's easy to read quickly because distinctions between minor characters become as meaningless to the reader as they are to the main characters. You just zip right along. It does have the feeling of capturing fleeting thoughts, their repetition, their meaninglessness, their overlooked attempts at insight.

So, I would say that this book, of the three, is the one that focuses on the particular existential angst of relationships. It can be summed up in the line repeated throughout, "Nobody ever really knows anybody else," and its additional idea: we just have to tolerate each other.

This book left me wondering if, indeed, I have a moral center. If everyone else in the world is just like me or if, perhaps, I have something or lack something that makes me essentially different. Then I wondered if we all have this sensation, in our own ways, from time to time. And so on.

Try to fill the void with sex, and you get these people: young, drunk, totally out of touch or maybe in touch. Who knows? Who can tell?

Not only am I very tired, I also have lost the initial passion I had about this book when I first read it. I would recommend it, as I would the other Ellis books, to young people with a streak of darkness in them, as well as a penchant for willful self-destruction under the guise of "fun."