Laws of attraction

the Laws of attraction ( The Rules off Attraction ) is the second novel of Bret Easton Ellis, going back to 1987, telling the descent into Hell of an group of youth American students at the end of the Années 1980.

Synopsis

Elect draws up the portrait, as in Less than zero , of a young jet set through the daily life of a band of students of an imaginary campus, Camden, which spends their times drinking, shooter, to kiss and change section, and all thus miss their life and their loves.

In Camden College, in the New Hampshire a various fauna of students evolves/moves which activates itself rather apart from the courses: Sean Bateman, the cool guy, rather beautiful child, who deale and which kisses all that moves (“Rock'n'roll & roll” like he says), changing U.V unceasingly. ; Lauren Hyden, coed in art which is hung up again with its dreams of love; Paul Denton, Gay resulting from a middle-class medium for which nothing never turns as it is necessary; Victor Ward who loses himself deeply at the time of his voyage in Europe; and a whole fauna of supporting characters who revolve around them, Stuart, Clay…

But all becomes complicated when Sean falls in love with Lauren, which awaits the return of Victor, idealized in a romantic summer, whereas Paul, ex of Lauren does not cease badgering it sexually, and all the three themselves are courted by others: Sean receives anonymous love letters, which it supposes being of Lauren, Lauren is courted without the knowledge by a timid young man, Paul is caught up with by old relations and young people homo, like Stuart…

The emotional crises, excesses of superficiality, the banal daily scenes intersected with scenes of smash and with gargantuesques festivals, all mixes and intermingles in a typical muddle years 1980 ( sex, drug and rock' N roll ) which is managed by the laws of attraction.

The outcome is tragic: Victor returns from Europe but does not recognize any more Lauren, which is comforted with Sean, they will separate after a Avortement of the young girl, Paul is rejected by Sean (“I want to know you” says him it; it with what Sean will answer, in echo with Lauren: “You cannot. You will never know me, nobody does not know anybody”), the young girl in love secretly with Sean commits suicide, and the vacuity of the characters taking the step on the force of the feelings.

The writing of Elect

Bret Easton Ellis belongs to the literary current behaviorist, born with the the United States in the Années 1920, dictating to the authors to be “objective”. Thus the novel is based on conversations and facts in which the author does not intervene with his own subjectivity. The intrigue is told, as in Less than zero ( Less than zero ), by a narrator who belongs to the history.

But so in this first novel, the only narrator is Clay, here the narrators change constantly: the Sean-Lauren-Paul trio tell alternatively the three-quarters of the book, regularly intersected by accounts with Victor, Stuart, Mitchell, Patrick (the brother of Sean), and letters of in love secret with Sean. The tone is voluntarily monocorde and the slang style, constantly referred with the popular culture of the years 1980 (music rock'n'roll and cinema underground), which leaves the reader adapt the events itself.

There exists however, as in Réussir of Martin Amis, left nine years earlier, of the remote regions in L (be) 'intrigue (S) and the author voluntarily leaves discordances between subjective testimonys of the characters and of the lies, which creates an environment disturbs and waiting of resolution, which never arrives. But that is especially with the clean subjectivity of each character who saw the action with his manner, depending on his frame of mind, and thus the same scene is perceived and told differently by two characters.

And even if the style is drier, letting see the action in sordid crudeness (sometimes voyeurist), the feelings are real and the novel lets them show through with force, before dissolving them by the superficiality of the characters. Elect reveals its time in its vacuity.

“ the author from Less than zero described in its second delivers a new descent into Hell which is at the university. Its heroes, of the students resulting from a typified middle-class, soak, from one drift to another, in the illusions of the sex and drug, on a bottom of rock'n'roll… Bret Easton Ellis paints a generation into negative, by showing the dead ends of the desires, the existential urgencies and the lacks. All that by means of a sober, fast and rough writing. The phraseology of this decade only contains with it a whole microphone-history. A language. ” Patrick Amine, Art Close

Anecdotes

As in all the novels of Elect, one finds characters existing in the other books: the anti-hero of Less than zero , Clay, appears with a course, and is even a narrator a short moment; Patrick Bateman, the brother of Sean, who appears at the end, is the main character of American Psycho , the following novel of the author, where Sean appears as furtively as his brother in the laws of attraction ; Victor is the hero of Glamorama , where also Lauren appears.
the novel starts in the middle of a sentence and is completed in the middle of a sentence, which gives the feeling to the reader to arrive right in the middle of a scene and to leave before the end, but also a feeling of not-projection, as if the novel had not led nowhere to nowhere.
the novel was adapted to the cinema in 2002 by Roger Avary, with in particular James Van Der Beek and Jessica Biel, under the title the Laws of attraction .

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