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He called it a failed experiment because he originally intended to record every detail of the Las Vegas trip as it happened, and then publish the raw, unedited notes; however, he revised it during the spring and summer of 1971. For example, the novel describes Duke attending the motorcycle race and the narcotics convention in a few days' time; the actual events occurred a month apart. Later, he wrote, "I found myself imposing an essentially fictional framework on what began as a piece of straight/crazy journalism".
Nevertheless, critics call "Fear and Loathing" Thompson's crowning achievement in gonzo journalism. For example, journalist and author Mikal Gilmore said the novel "feels free wheeling when you read it [but] it doesn't feel accidental. The writing is right there, on the page—startling, unprecedented and brilliantly crafted".
The original version of the novel was published in "Rolling Stone" magazine under the byline "Raoul Duke". The book was published with Thompson's name as the author.
In chapter 8 of part I, Thompson tells a story about his neighbor, "a former acid guru who later claimed to have made that long jump from chemical frenzy to preternatural consciousness". In the "Rolling Stone" article the neighbor was identified as "Dr. Robert De Ropp on Sonoma Mountain Road". In the book version, the name and the street were redacted "at insistence of publisher's lawyer".
In chapter 12 of part 2, Thompson tells of a belligerent drunk confronting Bruce Innes, of Canadian folk band The Original Caste, at a club in Aspen. The drunk was identified in the "Rolling Stone" version as "Wally Schirra, the Astronaut". In the book version he is only identified as "a former Astronaut" and his name is, again, redacted "at insistence of publisher's lawyer".
British artist Ralph Steadman added his unique and grotesque illustrations to the "Rolling Stone" issues and to the novel. Steadman had first met Thompson when "Scanlan's Monthly" hired Steadman to do the illustrations for Thompson's first venture into gonzo journalism called "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved."
Many critics have hailed Steadman's illustrations as another main character of the novel and companion to Thompson's disjointed narrative. "The New York Times" noted that "Steadman's drawings were stark and crazed and captured Thompson's sensibility, his notion that below the plastic American surface lurked something chaotic and violent. The drawings are the plastic torn away and the people seen as monsters."
Steadman has expressed regret at selling the illustrations, at the advice of his agent, to "Rolling Stone" founder Jann Wenner for the sum of $75, which remained in Wenner's possession until he sold them in 2016. As a result of that transaction Steadman has largely refused to sell any of his original artwork and has been quoted as saying "If anyone owns a Steadman original, it's stolen." While there are original pieces held outside his archive, they are exceedingly rare. The artist has kept possession of the vast bulk of his artwork.
An audiobook version was released by Margaritaville Records and Island Records in 1996, on the 25th anniversary of the book's original publication. It features the voice talents of Harry Dean Stanton as the narrator/an older Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Jarmusch as Raoul Duke, and Maury Chaykin as Dr. Gonzo, with Jimmy Buffett, Joan Cusack, Buck Henry and Harry Shearer in minor roles. Sound effects, period-appropriate music and album-like sound mixing are used extensively to give it the surreal feeling characteristic of the book. Quotes from Thompson himself bookend the album.
The album is presumably out-of-print, due to its relative rarity, but is sought after by fans for its high production values and faithfulness to the book's tone. Excerpts of it were included in the Criterion Collection release of the movie.
The novel's popularity gave rise to attempted cinematic adaptations; directors Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone each unsuccessfully attempted to film a version of the novel. In the course of these attempts, Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando were considered for the roles of Duke and Dr. Gonzo but the production stalled and the actors aged beyond the characters. Afterwards, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were considered, but Belushi's death ended that plan. Art Linson's 1980 film "Where the Buffalo Roam" starring Bill Murray and Peter Boyle is based on a number of Thompson's stories, including "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas".
In 1989, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was almost made by director Terry Gilliam when he was given a script by illustrator Ralph Steadman. Gilliam, however, felt that the script "didn't capture the story properly". In 1995, Gilliam received a different script he felt worth realising; his 1998 film features Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro as Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo respectively. However, criticism was mixed and the film was a box office failure.
A graphic novel adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", adapted by Canadian artist Troy Little, was released in October 2015. In interviews, Little said "We decided right off the bat not to go the Steadman route, or be too influenced by the movie either, and draw Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro. So we wanted to make it its own unique thing... For me, capturing the manic energy and spirit of the book, and staying true to the feel of "Fear and Loathing" was my big goal."
"Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson," an episode of the ABC/Marvel Studios superhero series "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.", first broadcast on May 24, 2019, not only takes its title from the novel, it also incorporates plot elements from the novel and 1998 film, particularly around characters having to navigate a casino (in this case a casino on an alien planet) while under the influence of a psychedelic drug.
The 2013 album Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! by Panic! at the Disco (originally from Las Vegas) was named after a line from the book.
The music videos for Lil Wayne's "No Worries" and The Weeknd's song "Heartless" draw heavy inspiration from the 1998 film.
Japanese electronicore band Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas is named after the book and film.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a 2018 novel by American author Ottessa Moshfegh. Moshfegh's second novel, it is set in New York City in 2000 and 2001 and follows an unnamed protagonist as she gradually escalates her use of prescription medications in an attempt to sleep for an entire year.
"My Year of Rest and Relaxation" is Ottessa Moshfegh's second novel, following "Eileen" (2015, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize), as well as a novella ("McGlue", 2014) and a short story collection ("Homesick for Another World", 2017). Moshfegh initially planned "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" to be focused primarily on the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, even reaching out to terrorism expert Paul Bremer, though she called off the interview and the project took a different tack.
Of her experience writing the novel, Moshfegh said:
I feel like the book was successful in that I graduated out of a lot of those concerns by writing the book. When I wrote the book, my passion and anger were located much more outwardly and so the tone of the narrator, who I think a very angry person, is not something I relate to anymore.
"My Year of Rest and Relaxation" was published on July 10, 2018, by Penguin Press.
Told in the present tense (while the narrator includes some memories of her past, she recounts them as thoughts occurring to her in the present rather than as flashbacks), the novel is "tuned to a hyper-contemporary frequency," Tolentino wrote, with the narrator's indifference to real-life events highlighting the way her plan for self-improvement by tuning out the world contrasts with "the oft-preached mandates of authenticity or engagement". (At the same time, Tolentino suggests, "There is something in this liberatory solipsism that feels akin to what is commonly peddled today as wellness.")
According to literary review aggregator Literary Hub, the novel received very positive reviews. In "Slate", Laura Miller praised the novel, saying, "Moshfegh excels here at setting up an immediately intriguing character and situation, then amplifying the freakishness to the point that some rupture feels inevitable." The "Publisher's Weekly" review found the book "captivating and disquieting...showcas[ing] Moshfegh's signature mix of provocation and dark humor." Several reviews, including Miller and "Publishers Weekly", felt "the novel drags a bit in the middle", though the ending was widely praised, with Miller saying Moshfegh "found a more satisfying way to resolve the plot" in "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" than in her first novel, "Eileen".
Reviewing the novel in "The New Yorker", Jia Tolentino wrote, "Ottessa Moshfegh is easily the most interesting contemporary American writer on the subject of being alive when being alive feels terrible." In "The New York Times", Dwight Garner was more hesitant in his praise, but ultimately concluded: "Moshfegh writes with so much misanthropic aplomb, however, that she is always a deep pleasure to read. She has a sleepless eye and dispenses observations as if from a toxic eyedropper."
Les Chemins de Katmandou ("the roads to Kathmandu") is a 1969 novel by the French writer René Barjavel. It tells the story of a man who joins a group of hippies who live and travel in Nepal, where they take drugs and practice free love in the belief that it will free them from materialism, only to meet disappointment.
The novel was the adaptation of the 1969 film "The Pleasure Pit", directed by André Cayatte and starring Renaud Verley and Jane Birkin. The film had 1,635,664 admissions in French cinemas.
Bongwater is a 1995 American debut novel by Michael Hornburg. Utilizing two different narrative perspectives, it follows a drug dealer and his counterculture friends in Portland, Oregon, as well as his tempestuous ex-girlfriend who has fled to New York City after the dissolution of their short-lived relationship.
The novel was adapted into a 1998 film of the same name starring Luke Wilson, Alicia Witt, and Brittany Murphy.
The novel shifts from first-person narration by David, a marijuana dealer and aspiring filmmaker in Portland, Oregon, to third-person narration by Courtney, his ex-girlfriend who has left Portland and is living in the East Village in New York City, where she has moved into a squat. Prior to leaving, she had caught David's house on fire and left it to burn down.
After Courtney leaves, David moves in with their mutual friends, Robert and Tony, a gay couple, and begins dating Mary, a stripper, but still reminisces of Courtney. David and Mary go to visit David's childhood friend Phil, who grows marijuana in the mountains, while in New York, Courtney's friend Jennifer comes to visit and they attend a party in Brooklyn.
The novel was based in part on Hornburg's own experiences living in Portland, Oregon in the 1980s, where he was attending Portland State University. The novel's female character, Courtney, was inspired by Courtney Love, whom Hornburg purportedly had a relationship with.
"Alternative Press" called the novel "one of coolest books of the year. Hornburg explodes the whole grunge mythos by taking it out of the realm of the flash photo spread and giving us the seamy, unimaginative days upon days of fear and hopelessness." Karen Karbo in reviewing the book, wrote: "No one writing today walks the line between glamour and pathos better than Michael Hornburg. Being young and lost in America has never looked so good, or so terrifying. "Bongwater" is at once gorgeous, witty, and sad."
In their review of the novel, "The Seattle Weekly" said: "There is no grunge bodice-ripper [in the novel]; it sticks close to the theory that life is never simple and people always suck. "Bongwater" is written from first-hand experience, simple prose touched with just enough witty embroidery to seize the imagination. The music is peripheral, the real sound a silent scream."
Leslie Holdcroft of "The Seattle Times", however, gave the novel a negative review, writing: "Hornburg brings us the struggling-artists' guide to Portland, including cheap sex, drugs, strippers, drag queens, an accidental house fire and air that "smells like worms." Hornburg's version of Manhattan's East Village looks even worse: Take all those bad things, add violence and concrete...The end result is like a bad tourist guide: plenty of street addresses, building names, and insider's tips, but little reason to stay and explore."
Vurt is a 1993 science fiction novel written by British author Jeff Noon. The debut novel for both Noon and small publishing house Ringpull, it went on to win the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke Award and was later listed in "The Best Novels of the Nineties".
"Vurt" tells the story of Scribble and his "gang", the Stash Riders, as they search for his missing sister Desdemona. The novel is set in an alternate version of Manchester, England, in which society has been shaped by Vurt, a hallucinogenic drug/shared alternate reality, accessed by sucking on colour-coded feathers. Through some (never explained) mechanism, the dreams, mythology, and imaginings of humanity have achieved objective reality in the Vurt and become "real".
Before the novel begins, Scribble and his sister take a shared trip into a vurt called English Voodoo, but upon awakening Scribble finds his sister has disappeared. Out of that trip comes an amorphous semi-sentient blob which Mandy, a fellow Stash Rider, nicknames "The Thing from Outer Space". From that point on, Scribble is on a mission to find a rare and contraband Curious Yellow feather so that he might find his sister.
"Vurt" achieved both critical and commercial success, attracting praise from the science fiction community as well as the literary arena. It has been stylistically compared to William Gibson's cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer", as well as Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange".
In "High Anxieties", a book exploring the modern concept of addiction, Scribble is used as an example of a character who has traded addiction for a chance at transcendence. Brodie "et al." liken Scribble's incorporation of Vurt technology into his biological body as a metaphor for the revelation potentially gained through drug use. They point out that the exchange rate between the real and the Vurt is tempered by Hobart's Constant, or "H"—which is "not incidentally", Brodie argues, "slang for heroin."
The book has attracted criticism due to its implausible science and "wild and kaleidoscopic" yet unsatisfying plot. "Entertainment Weekly" felt "Vurt" was undeserving of receiving the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke Award, saying the book's "sentimental incest and adolescent self-congratulation ... is never really startling or disturbing."
Jeff Noon says "Vurt" originally began as an adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's "The Torture Garden", an anti-authoritarian novel written at the turn of the 20th century. Noon, recently exposed to virtual reality technology by the magazine Mondo 2000, depicts the torture garden as a virtual world. Noon also credits Joseph Campbell's book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" for inspiring the narrative structure of "Vurt".
The character of Desdemona is based on the character of the same name from William Shakespeare's play "Othello".
The Curious Yellow feather is a possible allusion to the 1967 Swedish film "I Am Curious (Yellow)", which uses non-linear narrative structures and postmodern techniques like the novel. It might also be a reference to computer worms (the Vurt is riddled with virtual reality serpents which propagate from game to game, like computer worms replicate themselves by hijacking computer programs).
"Vurt" has been described as a retelling of Orpheus' visit to the Underworld. Orpheus and Scribble are both poets and musicians, and each attempts to rescue their idealised lovers from an alternate reality. As Joan Gordon points out, cyberspace represents "the underside of the human condition" and therefore the journey to virtual reality is comparable to the mythic journey to commune with the dead. In addition, the myth of Orpheus, like "Vurt", explores what it means to be human in relation to the non-human; Orpheus encountered the dead, and Scribble the virtual simulations created by computers.
There are multiple allusions to stories by Lewis Carroll, such as a club the main character walks into, referred to as the Slithy Tove, which is a quote from Carroll's poem, the Jabberwocky.
There have been a few comic adaptations of the novel, most notably "Vurt – The Comic Remix", with art by Lee O'Connor.
In August 2015, Ravendesk Games conducted a Kickstarter campaign, successfully funding a tabletop role-playing game version of "Vurt". The campaign reached its goal in only ten days, suggesting an ongoing public awareness and cult-like fondness for the novel. Featuring all-new material by Jeff Noon himself, the RPG was officially released in October 2017 to critical praise.
Although Noon began the screenplay for the film version of "Vurt" in 2002, with Iain Softley scheduled to direct, in 2005 he stated on his public website that "Of the Vurt film, all has gone silent at the moment. Don't hold your breath."
In 2000, Liam Steel directed "Vurt: The Theatre Remix", which ran for three weeks at Contact Theatre in Manchester.
In 2013, 20th anniversary edition of the novel was published, featuring three new stories and a foreword by Lauren Beukes.
The Rules of Attraction is a satirical black comedy novel by Bret Easton Ellis published in 1987. The novel follows a handful of rowdy and often sexually promiscuous, spoiled bohemian students at a liberal arts college in 1980s New Hampshire, including three who develop a love triangle. The novel is written in first person narrative, and the story is told from the points of view of various characters.
The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2002. Ellis himself has remarked that among film adaptations of his books, "The Rules of Attraction" came closest to capturing his sensibility and recreating the world of his novels.
The novel is written in the first-person, continuing the aesthetic of Ellis' earlier "Less Than Zero", and is told from the points of view of multiple characters. The main narrators are three students: Paul, Sean, and Lauren. A number of other characters also provide first-hand accounts throughout the story, which takes place at the fictional Camden College, a liberal arts school on the East Coast of the United States. The three main characters (who rarely attend class) end up in a love triangle within a sequence of drug runs, "Dressed to Get Screwed" parties, and "End of the World" parties.
The story begins and ends midway through a sentence (the first word in the book being 'and', the last words are 'and she') in order to give the effect that it begins somewhere closer to the middle, rather than at a true beginning (in medias res). Another interpretation is that the story has neither a beginning nor an ending, signifying the endless cycle of debauchery in which the characters of the novel engage. This is sometimes mistaken by readers as a typographical error or the result of a missing page, but was purposely written by Ellis. The novel ends in a similar fashion, with the last sentence cut off before its end.
Sean is a twenty-one-year-old student from a wealthy family. He is very promiscuous and a heavy substance abuser, as well as a drug dealer in the employ of Rupert Guest. He becomes romantically involved with Lauren, a relationship he considers to be true love. It is also implied that Sean is bisexual, as he apparently becomes involved in a sexual relationship with Paul Denton. However, whether these encounters are real or simply a product of Paul's imagination is left ambiguous; Paul narrates sexual incidents between himself and Sean, while such incidents are absent from Sean's own narration.
Lauren is a painter and poet who has sexual relations with several boys on campus, all the while pining for Victor, her boyfriend who left Camden and headed to Europe. She is often depressed and very emotional. She is in her senior year at Camden.
At the beginning of the novel, it is revealed that Lauren lost her virginity at a party during her freshman year at Camden, where she got so intoxicated that she passed out in bed with another student only to awaken and find herself being raped by a pair of townies. She becomes romantically involved with Sean Bateman halfway through the book, even though she holds Sean in contempt and considers the relationship nothing but a way to pass the time before Victor comes back from Europe. She was also in a relationship with Paul before the events of the book take place. The character reappears as a main character in "Glamorama", in which she becomes reacquainted with Victor after having become a successful model and actress.
"The Rules of Attraction" was adapted into a film of the same name in 2002. It was directed by Roger Avary and starred James Van Der Beek as Sean, Shannyn Sossamon as Lauren, Ian Somerhalder as Paul, and Kip Pardue as Victor.
The Nexus Trilogy is a postcyberpunk thriller novel trilogy written by American author Ramez Naam and published between 2012-2015. The novel series follows the protagonist Kaden Lane, a scientist who works on an experimental nano-drug, Nexus, which allows the brain to be programmed and networked, connecting human minds together. As he pursues his work, he becomes entangled in government and corporate intrigue. The story takes place in the year 2040.
"Nexus" tied for Best Novel in the 2014 Prometheus Awards given out by the Libertarian Futurist Society. It was also shortlisted for the 2014 Arthur C. Clarke award. "Nexus" was published in 2012. Its sequel, "Crux", was published in 2013. The third volume of the trilogy, "Apex", was published in 2014, and won the 2015 Philip K. Dick Award. The film rights to "Nexus" were purchased by Paramount in 2013.
After returning to the monastery, the ERD recon spider robots shoots a neuro toxin at Kade and Shu. Feng cuts Kades right arm off to prevent the spreading of the toxin. Shu is killed. Nexus 5 is spread around the world, despite the efforts of government forces. Warren Becker, the Enforcement Division Deputy Director at the ERD, commits suicide. Kade uses gecko genes to grow back his arm.
Six months after the upload of the construction plan of the Nexus, a nano drug, which allows the brain to be programmed and networked, connecting human minds together, the world faces terrorism and massive abuse of the new technology. The Liberation Front, a terror cell secretly created and headed by the US-American government, spread terror in the name of posthumanism, to prevent people from using the new technology and bring up an atmosphere of two 'n' eight to take drastic measures against Nexus.
In the meantime, our protagonist Kade and his new friend, clone warrior Feng, are fleeing from the CIA, which want see them both killed. On the elopement Kade is trying to stem the misuse of the nano drug to prevent a war between posthumans and humans. He has a code to the Nexus system that he can use to hack it.
The secret services are very interested in the code. Ilya Aleander dies as prisoner because she didn't give the code to her turnkeys. Rangan Shankari can escape.
Su-Yong Shu died in Nexus and now lives on as a computer intelligence and prisoner on a server belonging to the Chinese government. Ling Shu, her daughter, tries to help her mother escape. At the end of the book, the mother uses Ling Shus Nexus system to hack her brain and take over the body of her daughter.
In Thailand, Samantha Cataranes helps in a protectory.
The United States and China in particular and the Earth in general are aroused by disturbances. Unrest and riots spread with Nexus-upgraded protesters and police. Su-Yong Shu, the former dead neuroscientist who stole her daughter's body by downloading herself into it, tries to take over all electronic systems and with them the entire world, recreating it to fit her imagination. The posthumans are called Apex, the climax, and reinstatement of humankind.
The film rights to the novel series were purchased by Paramount in 2013.
The novel is heavily based in, and extends concepts in the author Ramez Naam's 2007 non-fiction work "More Than Human: Embracing the promise of biological enhancement," in which the author argues for a technology like the fictional drug Nexus.
The genetic enhancements to boost strength, speed, and stamina, as described in "Nexus", are likely already possible, argued so by Ramez Naam.
The Nexus backdoor that is created by Kade and Rangan in the novel is based on the Karger and Schell Multics backdoor, implemented experimentally by Ken Thompson, co-inventor of the Unix operating system.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a 1965 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965. Like many of Dick's novels, it utilizes an array of science fiction concepts, explores the ambiguous slippage between reality and unreality. It is one of Dick's first works to explore religious themes.
The novel takes place in a future 2016 where humankind has colonized every habitable planet and moon in the Solar System. To cope with the difficult life away from Earth, colonists rely on the illegal hallucinogen Can-D, secretly distributed by corporate head Leo Bulero. New tensions arise with the rumor that merchant explorer Palmer Eldritch has returned from an expedition in possession of a new alien hallucinogen to compete with Can-D.
Up to the point where the novel begins, New York City-based Perky Pat (or P.P.) Layouts, Inc., has held a monopoly on this product, as well as on the illegal trade in the drug Can-D which makes the shared hallucinations possible.
The novel opens shortly after Barney Mayerson, P.P. Layouts' top precog, has received a "draft notice" from the UN for involuntary resettlement as a colonist on Mars. Mayerson is sleeping with his assistant, Roni Fugate, but remains conflicted about the divorce, which he himself initiated, from his first wife Emily, a ceramic pot artist. Meanwhile, Emily's second husband tries to sell her pot designs to P.P. Layouts as possible accessories for the Perky Pat virtual worlds—but Barney, recognizing them as Emily's, rejects them out of spite.
Under the guise of a reporter, Bulero travels to Eldritch's estate on the Moon, where Eldritch holds a press conference. Bulero is kidnapped and forced to take Chew-Z intravenously. He enters a psychic netherworld over which both he and Eldritch seemingly have some control. After wrangling about business with Eldritch, Bulero travels to what appears to be Earth at some time in the not-too-distant future. Evolved humans identify him as a ghost and show him a monument to himself commemorating his role in the death of Eldritch, an "enemy of the Sol System."
Bulero returns to Earth and fires Mayerson because Mayerson was afraid to travel to the Moon to rescue him. Mayerson, in despair, accepts his UN conscription to Mars but Bulero recruits him as a double agent. Mayerson is to inject himself with a toxin after taking Chew-Z in a plot to deceive the UN into thinking Chew-Z is harmful and cause them to ban it.
On Mars, Mayerson buys some Chew-Z from Eldritch, who appears in holographic form. Mayerson tries to hallucinate a world where he is still with Emily but finds that he does not control his apparent hallucination. Like Bulero, he finds himself in the future. Mayerson arrives in New York two years hence where he speaks with Bulero, Fugate and his future self about the death of Palmer Eldritch.
The novel has an ambiguous ending, with Bulero heading back toward Earth, and apparent proliferation of Eldritch's cyborg body 'stigmata', which may mean that Bulero is still trapped in Eldritch's hallucinatory domain, or that Chew-Z is becoming increasingly popular among Terrans and Martian colonists.
Algis Budrys of "Galaxy Science Fiction" described the novel as "an important, beautifully controlled, smoothly created book which will twist your mind if you give it the least chance to do so". He praised Dick's accomplishment, saying "the whole creation resonates to the touch of the only present science-fiction writer who could possibly have done it" and characterizes the result as "a witty, sometimes lighthearted, and always fascinating piece of fiction". Budrys later named the book the best science-fiction novel of his first year as reviewer for the magazine, reporting that others "are calling it some kind of half-conscious failure".
Weird fiction writer China Mieville listed this book in one of his top weird fiction books of all time, saying "It's infuriating to have to choose just one of Dick's works - he is the outstanding figure in SF. In the end I went for Stigmata because I remember how I felt when I put it down. Hollow and beaten. I kept thinking: "That's it. It's finished. Literature has been finished."
In a 2003 retrospective review, sci-fi and fantasy author Michael Moorcock criticized "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" as thematically "incoherent", complaining about Dick's lack of an "idiosyncratic structure or style".
Glamorama is a 1998 novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis. "Glamorama" is set in and satirizes the 1990s, specifically celebrity culture and consumerism. "Time" describes the novel as "a screed against models and celebrity."
Ellis wanted to write a Stephen King-style ghost story novel, which would eventually become "Lunar Park"; finding it difficult at the time, he began work on the other novel which he had in mind. This was a Robert Ludlum-style thriller, with the intention of using one of his own vapid characters who lack insight as the narrator.
Ellis composed the book between December 1989 and December 1997.
The novel is a satire of modern celebrity culture; this is reflected in its premise, which features models-turned-terrorists. A character remarks, "basically, everyone was a sociopath ... and all the girls' hair was chignoned." The novel plays upon the conspiracy thriller conceit of someone "behind all the awful events", to dramatize the revelation of a world of random horror. The lack of resolution contributes to Ellis' artistic effect. The obsession with beauty is reflected in consistent namedropping; this satirizes (the main character) Victor's obsession with looks, and perhaps is indicative of the author's own attraction to glamor.
"As much as celebrity itself, our collective celebrity worship becomes the real target of Ellis' satire", writes the "Star Tribune". Models in the novel act as a synecdoche of the larger culture. Reviewer Eric Hanson writes, "Their [models'] selfishness and brutality, he implies, are simply an extreme manifestation of what consumer culture encourages in everyone." Victor's own pursuit of being cool or too hip "destroys him". A CNN reviewer gives the example of Victor not wanting to explain his impersonator, "because the places he was seen were always hot spots he should have frequented."
In 1999, the contemporary Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero wrote a composition for chamber ensemble entitled "Glamorama Spies", which was inspired by the novel.
"Glitterati" is a 2004 film directed by Roger Avary assembled from the 70 hours of video footage shot for the European sequence of "The Rules of Attraction". It expands upon the minimally detailed and rapidly recapped story told by Victor Ward, portrayed by Kip Pardue, upon his return to the United States after having travelled extensively around Europe. In regard to expanding upon those events, the film acts as a connecting bridge between "The Rules of Attraction" and the upcoming film adaptation set to be directed by Avary. Avary has called "Glitterati" a "pencil sketch of what will ultimately be the oil painting of "Glamorama"."
In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of "Glamorama", narrated by Jonathan Davis, as part of its "Modern Vanguard" line of audiobooks.
In 2010, when a film adaptation of "Glamorama" was mentioned in an interview with Movieline.com, Bret Easton Ellis commented, "I think the days of being able to make that movie are over." From the same interview, Ellis mentioned that an idea for a mini-series adaptation was brought forth to HBO though it was ultimately declined and further stating the movie would be left in Roger Avary's hands if one was to be made.
On October 13, 2011, Bret Easton Ellis reported on Twitter the following:
Fans have noted similarities to the 2001 Ben Stiller comedy "Zoolander". Ellis stated that he is aware of the similarities, and went on to say that he considered and attempted to take legal action. Ellis was asked about the similarities in a 2005 BBC interview. In the response to the question, he said that he is unable to discuss the similarities due to an out-of-court settlement.
A.J. Jacobs of "Entertainment Weekly" did not enjoy the book's more "meta" conceits, and gives the novel a 'C'. Daniel Mendelsohn of the "New York Times" opines derisively that "Like its predecessors, "Glamorama" is meant to be a withering report on the soul-destroying emptiness of late-century American consumer culture, chichi downtown division; but the only lesson you're likely to take away from it is the even more depressing classic American morality tale about how premature stardom is more of a curse than a blessing for young writers." The CNN reviewer concludes "in the end, "Glamorama" is less than the sum of its parts".
Ellis himself has claimed that, as of 2018, the novel has failed to break even for its US publisher, Knopf.
Christodora is a novel by New York City–based journalist Tim Murphy which was first published on August 2, 2016 by Grove Press.
In "Christodora", Tim Murphy tells the story of diverse characters living in an iconic building in Manhattan's East Village, the Christodora.
Milly and Jared, with their adopted son Mateo, live unexpected experiences with their neighbor Hector, a former AIDS activist and a current addict.
There are radical changes that occur in their personal lives and community: first, the 2000s hipsters rising after the 1980s junkies and protestors, then the emergence of the wealthy residents of the 2020s.