I précis:

Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms (out now):

So I was watching the highly inaccurate movie of my life, drinking and talking in a desultory manner to an acquaintance we all thought was dead. That black jeep had followed me here and was parked out front. A Nameless Horror had happened in New York and I obliquely referred to it. I took a drink. We all avoided specifically mentioning any detail of our previous lives that would render the narrative easier to follow. I ignored thirty-four bewildering texts from my ex-girlfriend asking me when I was coming back to New York. The wife of another aquaintance appeared and we drove to a hotel and had desultory sex. She said ‘I thought you were dead’. Taking my drink to the window, I saw the black jeep parked out front. The phone rang and then went dead. I obliquely remembered the horrible death of another acquaintance, who might be the same acquaintance I was talking to on the first page. I drove to another party and the black jeep followed me. My ex-girlfriend sends another forty-two texts and things arbitrarily shift into the present tense. I have desultory sex with an acquaintance. I remember my ex-girlfriend is actually dead. ‘What’s happening to us?’ I say. She says, ‘I can’t tell you. Hey, what’s that black jeep doing here?’ Perhaps the Nameless Horror is the fact that we are all now middle-aged.

Oh Bret Easton Ellis, never change. Remain the Elvis of Existentialism.

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