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4.0 • 1 Rating
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Publisher Description
Bret Easton Ellis has wrestled with the double-edged sword of fame and notoriety for more than thirty years now, since Less Than Zero catapulted him into the limelight in 1985, earning him devoted fans and, perhaps, even fiercer enemies.
An enigmatic figure who has always gone against the grain and refused categorization, he captured the depravity of the eighties with one of contemporary literature's most polarizing characters, American Psycho's iconic, terrifying Patrick Bateman, and received plentiful death threats in the bargain.
In recent years, his candor and gallows humor on both Twitter and his podcast have continued his legacy as someone determined to speak the truth, however painful it might be, and whom people accordingly either love or love to hate. He encounters various positions and voices controversial opinions, more often than not fighting the status quo.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Political correctness is destroying America's mind and soul, according to this contentious manifesto. Novelist, screenwriter, and podcaster Ellis, whose American Psycho sparked a furor with its grisly rapes and murders, lambastes "the threatening groupthink of progressive ideology, which proposes universal inclusivity except for those who dare to ask any questions." He focuses on social-justice hysteria in the entertainment and media industries: critics of mediocre movies by or about women, gays, and minorities, he contends, get tagged with upholding white male privilege; social media platforms enforce "corporate conformism and censorship... stamping out passion and silencing the individual;" Trump Derangement Syndrome consumes Ellis's Hollywood associates and his boyfriend, who is obsessed with Russia-collusion theories. Ellis's loose-jointed essay weaves in scenes from his days as an alienated writer adrift in Manhattan, film criticism, and an impassioned defense of artistic transgression, arguing that "to be challenged... to get wiped out by the cruelty of someone's vision" promotes a mature understanding of life. Ellis's pop-culture preoccupations sometimes feel callow he paints Charlie Sheen and Kanye West as America's last free men and his critique of leftists as "haters" who "came across as anti-common sense, anti-rational and anti-American" is an unoriginal reprise of ideas commonplace to right-wing media outlets.Still, his vigorous, daring take on today's ideological wars will provoke much thought and more controversy.
