Here’s another squirrelly description of the novel writing process:

You render a world, fall into it, and take a prose camera with you.

But enough about that! “Where’s the payoff?” You’re wondering. “Is this guy ever going to do anything but yammer about writing novels? I don’t write, so that last paragraph is meaningless! What’s in this post for me?”

…Ok, made up phantom reader of my mind, you have a point. This week, I’ll review an absolute masterpiece that as far as I can tell is horribly underappreciated. And—get this—it’s FRESH. We’re talking first half of the first decade of the twenty first century fresh. (You are thinking: “wait, doesn’t a book have to be really old to be a masterpiece?” Silly phantom reader.)

This book is… *drum roll*

Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis!!!

Yes yes, folks, one of the most talented American authors around today, albeit in prose at least a little demented. For those of you who heard about the hype and wrote him off, Ellis considers his biggest influence to be Hemingway, and it shows. Personally, I’d say Ellis is one of the few cases in which we see a love of Hemingway not transform into really boring prose: Hemingwaian writing is so stripped down, so raw, that if you aren’t telling one hell of a story you’re just might have a really dull work on your hands.

Because there’s no way you’re going to be better at Hemingway than Hemingway. Most times, its simply a futile pursuit with which my brethren can’t stop falling in love.

Well, our friend Mr. Ellis, he opened with fresh and shocking and interesting prose, at an embarrassingly young age, with “Less Than Zero.” In a time when cocaine use was even more taboo and frightening to our rabbitty little nation than today, Ellis crafted a story which on a narrative level mostly involved young rich producer’s children in LA taking large amounts of coke whilst drinking, smoking marijuana, and having gay, straight, and masochistic sex. On a topical level, I always believed this book to be about the unfortunate repercussions of a direction it could be argued America started going a while ago, and going there most intensely in Los Angeles. But most importantly, I always believed there was a topical level to Ellis, something his critics have long denied him. As his work descended in narrative into very, very dark narratives, often about or following the exploits of serial killers, Ellis was slammed repeatedly for his nihilistic approach, and it was assumed that this approach existed simply because the writer got off on it somehow. It was assumed Ellis was saying nothing.

While it is true that some of the scenes Ellis takes us into in his previous books have been so revolting that it can be hard to ask oneself “what does this mean?” It is certain in this writer’s mind that anyone who is brave enough to read Ellis and ask that question will get an answer. As we are talking about art, that answer may be different for every reader, but I don’t think it’s hard to imagine Ellis’s work as commentary on the world the way Ellis sees it. And in no other book is the relationship between the real and the commentary as beautifully clear and blurry as in Lunar Park.

It is a book that follows the exploits of it’s hero—Bret Easton Ellis himself, kinda— and his somewhat adoptive family through a surrealist narrative in which the impossible things that happen are twinged with horror. While the reviewers of this brilliant novel generally went: “Huh?” They did get one thing right, which was that they said as little about the narrative as possible. I will follow this, as in Lunar Park, the less you know about what is going to happen the better. But I can tell you this:

In as much as any book ever written can be said to be about a theme, and in that be immortal, Lunar Park is about the mistakes parents make. About how and why and how they feel.

Why does this make Lunar Park a masterpiece you say, phantom reader? Well, because to me a masterpiece is a book that illustrates a fundamental human truth in a visceral and real way, so that it is immediately resonant with the vast majority of people simply because we can all relate. And it does so in a way that is unique, specific, and beautifully rendered. With characters that are uniquely human and real, while at the same time beautifully designed in order to, on a different level, inform and elucidate the human truth which the master writer is illustrating. Points are also given for originality and cracklin’ prose.

Lunar Park does this all, and manages to be funny, to contain some brilliant asides on the nature of writing, to be incredibly interactive with both the reader and the world of literature, to be beautifully ruthless self-criticism of the author in a way that the reader can see but not necessarily understand, to be wrenchingly emotive, honest, to creatively and entertainingly mix genres, specifically classical literature and horror, to challenge the reader, to be ruthless and true and just all around awesome.

So go read it. If you don’t like it, write me and tell me why. I dare you.

And if you thought this critique was somewhat flat or just didn’t go far enough,

There is a light that never goes out.

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