Everyone’s trying to out-Ellis Ellis. So what does Ellis do? He tries to out-Ells himself. That’s the result of Imperial Bedrooms, a curious novel that comes over twenty five years after its prequel, Less Than Zero, the blandly beautiful, minimalist, nihilist novel that catapulted him to stardom. And it almost works.

But not quite. More than a sequel, Imperial Bedrooms attempts to be a summation of Ellis’ entire oeuvre, and yes, that includes the graphic rape and murder bit, too. So Imperial Bedrooms functions more or less as a parody. Whether it’s an intentional parody or not, that’s the question.

We’re greeted to a quote from the master, Raymond Chandler, as soon as we open the book. Ellis’ LA is less than noir, it’s just relentlessly bleak. It’s not black and white, it’s faded and bleached and dried out in the sun, much like Ellis’ characters themselves. Remember Rip, Clay’s drug dealer when he was 18? Well, now Rip’s ‘face is unnaturally smooth, redone in such a way that the eyes are shocked open with perpetual surprise; it’s a face mimicking a face, and it looks agonized.’ Don’t worry, though. The kids are still blandly nondescript and beautiful. But this is a novel about growing up.

Ellis is, in many ways, returning to the scene of the crime. Clay notes that one of their friends “wrote a book about us” and is pretty pissed off about it, twenty five years later. But Clay is also a filmmaker and a scriptwriter and still bears more than a passing resemblance to Ellis himself. And that’s where the conceit comes in — and by conceit, I mean it in both senses of the word.

Unlike Less than Zero, there’s some kind of plot. Clay falls in love with some actress who’s only sleeping with him to get a part in his movie and she’s also dating the guy who used to be his best friend and (look away now if you don’t want to hear any more spoilers) she’s also dating Rip. Quite why Clay falls for her so hard is never explained, although a past history is mentioned — in passing. And that’s the problem. Less than Zero worked because it didn’t really have a plot. Imperial Bedrooms has a paper-thin plot that’s sub-Ellis, sub-Chandler. It’s as convoluted as Glamorama, albeit condensed into 170 pages, making it at least a little easier to swallow.

Imperial Bedrooms isn’t a bad book. It’s an experiment. It’s a novel where Ellis looks back on his career and tries to make some sense out of his changing focus. The fact that the-too-cool-for-school Clay is revealed to be as deranged as Patrick Bateman may be jarring to some, but, as Clay himself points out, the clues were always there. We just weren’t looking for them.

Ellis started getting all postmodern on us with Lunar Park, where a character called Bret Easton Ellis attends a fancy dress party where he attends as himself. ‘You do a pretty good impression of yourself,’ he’s told. Imperial Bedrooms is Ellis’ impression of himself carried out to its logical conclusion. It’s both brilliant and flawed and if you’ve read the original, it’s probably one of the must-read books of the year. Unfortunately, the novel doesn’t stand alone and that should give you more of an impression about the strength of the writing and the characterization and the plot than anything else. When a book functions solely as a coda to an earlier book, it’s not much of a novel.

By all means, buy this book, read it, laugh one more time as Ellis paints the stark, rich world in which his characters live in in black and white. But don’t expect a successor to Less than Zero. This is just the final chapter, the final punchline, delivered by a man who’s getting older, twenty five years too late.

The question is, why now? As ever — cui bono — who benefits?

The material used for this ‘scoop’ came out last summer. It’s been readily available for a long time. It’s possible that the Telegraph — which presumably has reservations about the Lib Dem — Conservative alliance — is behind this hatchet job. But somehow I doubt that.

The Telegraph alone doesn’t really benefit from this. It seems logical that, given the timing, they were given outside help — a source — pointed them in the direction of Laws expenses and told them what to look for. Otherwise this would have come out much sooner.

So who’s the source?

I can’t point fingers. I can only speculate. But just as the Tories are having trouble with their traditional, authoritarian right wing in this coalition, so to are the Lib Dems having trouble with their ‘social democratic’ left.

Vince Cable, a leader on the social democratic left, resigned as Deputy leader of the Lib Dems this week, to rampant speculation. At the very least, it’s an orchestrated attempt to put a left-leaning Lib Dem in the deputy position, whilst also being in a position to be able to be ‘outside the tent, pissing in.’

I’m not saying that Cable himself is responsible. There’s no evidence for that. But taking these events cumulatively, this is beginning to look like an orchestrated response by the Lib Dem left to reassert control of the party. Laws is a leading figure on the right of his party and a key member of the coalition. He has the guts — and the balls — to cut spending where it’s needed. And a lot of people in his own party don’t like that.

The timing of this scandal is just too convenient to be coincidence.

Someone wanted Laws out. I speculate that it’s the Lib Dem left. Cable is unhappy about being marginalized. And the wider Lib Dem left is unhappy about the right-of-centre direction their party in coalition is taking. It only takes one disgruntled staffer or activist who feels ‘betrayed’ by the coalition to rock the boat.

Laws has been caught out. And he is in the wrong. But he has done no worse than a vast number of MPs from all parties have done. The expenses scandal is old news. They were all at it. We know. In the wider context of things, the £40,000 he paid to his lover is a pretty small sum. In fact, had he been living alone, he would have been claiming more.

Laws is key to this coalition. It will be significantly weakened without him. Aside from having more than a whiff of prurience about his homosexuality, which is really nobody’s business, this scandal strikes me as being part of an orchestrated campaign to wreck the coalition from within.

Why call for Laws’ resignation when Michael Gove is allowed to sit on the front bench after much more serious evidence of home ‘flipping’ and abuse of parliamentary expenses?

I have been truly optimistic about this coalition. It’s a good thing. For the first time in two generations we have a truly classically liberal government dedicated to cutting taxes, starting with the poorest, to incentivise work.

Any attempt to remove Laws from his position is a calculated attack designed to weaken the coalition’s stance.

Laws should apologise and resist calls for his resignation. He has a job to do. And as a principled, intellectual, classical liberal, he’s a linchpin in the current coalition arrangement.

This is a smear campaign, no doubt about it. Whose? I’m not sure. Who benefits from seeing Laws’ name dragged through the dirt? Laws fucked up. But he should apologise and get on with his job.

I for one would rather judge him by his actions in government, by how many billions he’s able to save the British taxpayer, rather than by the paltry sum of £40,000 he’s taken at our expense.

Laws broke the rules in opposition. He’s been in government a couple of weeks. I say let’s give him a tabula rasa — a blank slate. Give the man the chance to redeem himself. Let his future actions amend for any past mistakes. Don’t take away one of the new government’s rising stars. The British people have a strong sense of fairness and to my mind giving David Laws a chance to redeem himself and do a service for his country is much better than letting him slink into the night in disgrace.

The man made a mistake. It shouldn’t cost him his career. And if we lose him, it may cost the country much, much more.

Richard Allday

• It’s a giant iPhone.
• It doesn’t have a camera.
• Or multitasking.
• Or USB.
• Or flash.
• It costs twice as much as a netbook,
• it does half as much,
• and it doesn’t have a keyboard.
• It’s got a 4:3 aspect ratio…
• and a 90s-tastic 1024×768 native resolution.

In other words, it’s a barrel of shite with a rather nice touchy-feely interface. But somehow every other reviewer in the land is being paid stacks of cash or freebies or blow jobs or whatever to rave about this overpriced digital doorstop. Lucky for you then that someone at apple forgot to grease ol’ Chad’s palm or spit-shine his cock, so I’m gonna tell it to you like it really is.

If you buy an iPad, you are buying into a fundamental power shift in the user / device paradigm.

You are no longer a creator. You are a consumer.

Apple founded its reputation on being the creative’s choice. Long before it became the machine to be seen posing with while sipping your non-fat latte and working on your god-awful rom-com screenplay lovingly based on your own life, Macs were machines for graphic designers and musicians and other creative types who wanted to get shit done.

Then Apple turned evil. It started out small, with the iPod. But make no bones about it, this is where it started. The iPod is solely a consumption device. It’s to consume media. More than that, it’s a feed to encourage you to buy media. Remember when everyone used to just share music on tape or CD or Napster or Soulseek? Well, now you’ve got the shiny Apple iTunes store selling tracks at a ridiculous price for something that isn’t even real, taking an enormous cut, and basically dictating the direction of the music industry.

The iPad is Apple’s attempt to dominate the publishing industry in exactly the same way. Think about it. These fuckers want you to consume your books and your magazines on the iPad. That’s what it’s been designed to do, supposedly, if you believe the reviews, more or less perfectly. But do we really want Apple controlling our digital futures?

People rail against Murdoch for being monopolistic and attempting to dominate markets. Doesn’t the iTunes store now have more or less a stranglehold on the music industry? Apple aren’t the good guys any more, folks. They’re the evil empire pushing the little guy around. Just because they make shiny quasi-futuristic devices that look great and are easy to snort coke off, doesn’t make them the nice guys.

Think about digital bookstores. No more sharing your favourite book with your friend. You can’t just lend them your dog eared paperback. How’d you lend a DRM protected, encrypted file? Heck, knowing Apple’s track history, you probably won’t even be able to cut and paste.

The iPad is a device designed to get you to spend more money.

Think about the “app store” and the “app” revolution. What a crock of shit. You’re all a bunch of fucking asswipe dummies. 90% of “apps” are just a repackaged way of requesting, receiving and displaying data from the internet. And you’re paying through the teeth for the “convenience” of it.

Apple is a closed platform, folks. That means they’re in control of it. They control what gets uploaded to the app store and what gets deleted — if it’s got questionable content, it’s gone. If Apple had a similar stranglehold on the publishing industry, what else might get deleted? Would Lady Chatterley’s Lover be facing a new obscenity trial in the digital age — with judge, jury and executioner being some faceless suit at Apple HQ?

Basically, the iPad is shit. It’s a shit expensive portable monitor designed to encourage you to buy more shit, like apps to view newspapers and magazines that are available for free right now online anyway. The iPad isn’t designed so you can create. It’s designed to encourage you to consume. It’s like having an advert in the palm of your hand all the time.

Oh, and it can’t do Flash.

Chad Fanstor

Further reading: http://ipadmakesmesad.blogspot.com/

]]> http://thethingis.co.uk/2010/04/08/apple-ipad-sucks/feed/ 3 http://thethingis.co.uk/2010/02/09/smoke-stacks-to-apple-macs-the-digital-landscape-is-a-vista-to-be-painted/ http://thethingis.co.uk/2010/02/09/smoke-stacks-to-apple-macs-the-digital-landscape-is-a-vista-to-be-painted/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:13:06 +0000 Jimmy http://thethingis.co.uk/?p=498 Zizek has summarised Marx as having said that the invention of steam engine has caused more social change than any revolution ever would. Marx himself doesn’t seem to have provided a useful soundbite to this effect (at least not one that I can find though Google), so I’m afraid it will have to remain second hand. It’s a powerful sentiment, whoever originated it – which philosopher’s views cannot be analyzed as the product of the social and technological novelties of his day?

It’s easy to see that the technology that is most salient in our age is the internet, as made possible by consumer electronics. Have our philosophers stepped forward to engage with the latest technological crop? Perhaps Wikipedia is proof of a consensus theory of truth? I’m sure many  theses are addressing concerns in this vein as you read.

But what of our artists? Will Gompertz recently posted to share an apparently widely held view that no piece of art has yet spoken eloquently from or about the internet. He cites Turner prize winning Jeremy Deller describing our era as “post-warholian”, presumably indicating that Warhol was last person to adequately reference technological change – meaning, in this instance, mass production and consumerism. I wonder if the more recent Saatchi-fueled crop of artists has  captured something of marketing landscape we currently inhabit, but whatever the last sufficient reflection on cultural change afforded by art was, I think we may be on safe ground in stating that the first widely acclaimed artistic portrait of the digital era is still to come.

Which is some surprise when you consider how engaged the news agenda is with technology: I was amazed to see that Google’s Wave technology (still barely incipient) got substantial coverage in the news, while a certain Cupertino based company recently received more than a sprinkling of press when it announced its tablet based computer….

Earning a living from the internet, as I happen to,  I’ve been curious about the Gompertz question for some time, and the  Kinetica Art Fair seemed like a good place to satisfy my pretensions at cultural engagement.   Kinetica is a museum which aims to ‘encourage convergence of art and technology’. The fair certainly captured one aspect of contemporary mood – a very reasonably priced bar was a welcome response to our collective (and my personal) financial deficit.

Standout pieces included a cleverly designed mechanical system for tracing the contours of plaster bust onto a piece of paper and a strangely terrifying triangular mirror with mechanically operated metal rods [Unfortunately I can't find the artists names in the catalog]. The mirror and rods looked like a Buck Rogers inspired torture device designed to inflict pain by a method so awful that you’d have to see it in operation before its evil would be comprehensible. The other works varied from the malfunctioning to a urinal which provided an opportunity for punters to simulate pan-global urination (sadly not with real urine) via Google maps [by Ric Carvalho]. I would defy anyone not to be entertained while wondering round the the fair, its certainly not boring art.

However, Will Gompertz’s challenge was not answered at Kinetica – the essence of the technological modernity was not distilled into any single work, or indeed represented collectively.

I’ve been mulling over various possible reasons for the difficulty of the problem, and quite a few suggestions spring to mind. Do computers naturally alienate artists? Is information technology to visually banal to be characterised succinctly?

My favorite theory is that the transitory nature of our electronic lives that makes them so hard to pin down. Mobile phones, web sites, computers and operating systems from a decade ago all look ludicrously dated – it’s almost impossible to capture the platonic form of these items because they have so little essential similarity between incarnations. Moreover, their form is almost an accident, and not connected with their more profound meaning in any way. The square riggers of the mercantile age and the smoke stacks of the industrial era seem to denote something broader -  how, for example, can communism be separated from its tractors? Yet the form factor of my computer is trivial. Form and functional significance are of necessity separated by digital goods, their flexibility is the source of their power.

In some way I think films give us tacit acknowledgment of the contingent nature of the digital environment that we spend much of our lives in: characters  are never seen using Windows on their computer, in films computer interfaces are always generic. And when we see a Mac in a movie it’s impossible to see it as anything other than product placement.

So, the Kinetica Art Fair may not have been able to help society understand its relationship with technology, but in fairness that might be a misunderstanding on my part. Really the fair was about works facilitated by technology, rather than about it.

I may have picked a straw man in Kinetica. However, the V&As ongoing exhibition Decode really does no better, though its failures and successes are another topic. In this case I think we can say that Decode exhibition does addresses itself to the Gompertz challenge, and it too fails.

As if to illustrate the perversity of the digital landscape the Gompertz post has become a de facto collection of net art, which is well worth checking out. In a still  keener illustration of the era of mass participation, despite the author’s instance that he is questioning the “eminence not of existence” of net art, commenters continue to post links in the belief that enough evidence of the existence of net art will somehow make it eminent.

Jimmy Tidey (Follow me on Twitter)

Thursday’s debate du jour was served wrapped in the rind of yet another debate. I spent the day leading up to Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time watching the socio-political fallout. With great interest I followed the story as it proliferated itself across the Internet and news outlets, rattling the doors of parliament and rousing the executive suites of the BBC. Watching again as I ate my lunch, I was again moved by just how incendiary an issue this has been. And not just in terms of the wider populous. I truly flit between opinions as to the morality amidst this issue with all its gloomy complexity. I felt as though I needed my own debate about the issue before Griffin even reached the television studio. There are too many things to be said about this issue, too many views I myself want to express. But here is just one. It is a troublesome one, but one I would love to see given the kind of intellectual currency afforded to such platforms as the Intelligence Squared debates.

I put forward the proposition that the BNP, distasteful and undemocratic though it is, is in fact a powerful force for the re-democratisation of the UK. If you can put to one side for a moment the controversy and scaremongering (not to downplay the importance of the bias and racism inherent in the what the BNP stands for), it is plain to see that the drafting of this party onto a highbrow political platform and therefore into the upper echelons of the political arena, has exorcised the populous in a manner practically unheard of in contemporary party-politics. Not since the expenses scandals have ordinary, grass-roots voters been motivated to comment on the functioning of politics and I would suggest that contrary to its outward appearance to have roused political interest, the expenses issue served mainly to cement widespread dislike of the political classes and apathy in the process of democracy and its ability to offer real options and real change.

The BNP’s appearance on prime-time television, however, is one which leaves the moral compass spinning. If pushed I think I find myself most in agreement with the ex-editor of the Sun who commented that the BBC cannot be blamed for simply fulfilling the mandate for which we pay our license fee. I am not sure I am happy about Griffin appearing on Q.T. but it’s worth noting that it is the fundamental bases and building blocks of our society – law, rules, codes of conduct – that keep the BNP and its followers from exerting a greater influence than they do in this country, and therefore we must adhere to these markers of civilisation, and follow the rules and codes in deciding whether to give the BNP this platform. This taken as a given, it is plain that the BBC had only one choice given the BNP’s six percent share of the vote and two seats in the European Elections.

In which case it is not the BBC who is responsible for my discomfort in seeing such a figure ascend the tiers of debate in which I could find at least some semblance of respect for the participants until now. It is in fact the voting public, my fellow countrymen and women.

Quite simply, I do not remember the last time such a divisive political debate lead so readily back to the grass-roots electorate. In my disgust at some of the issues coagulated within this row, I cannot help but take enjoyment from the barbed blade planted firmly into the torso of political apathy.

Ed Williams

Babylon Revisited

I’m reminded of that old F Scott Fitzgerald short story about the man who lost his family while everyone else was losing their money in the Wall Street Crash.

“I heard that you lost a lot in the crash.” a wily bartender says.
“I did,” Charlie replies, “but I lost everything I wanted in the boom.”

I was very fortunate, in a way, to come of age in the boom. I had an easy ride, and there was always a soft landing. Credit was easy and money was so simple to make you couldn’t fall over yourself without landing on a tenner. I spent high and I lived hard. Life was good, or so I thought.

I turned twenty five soon after the credit crisis. I was too busy to notice. My life had fallen into disarray. I was involved with two women, I was drinking too much, for all the wrong reasons, I was no longer able to command a decent salary, and the novel I’d been working on for the past four years had been rejected by pretty much every publisher going. Too commercial. Not commercial enough. The characters are too mean. But nobody will believe the story if you make them nice.

Ultimately, I only cared about one thing. One of the girls I was involved with. The rest of the world, I said, could burn.

Burn

It did. While I was busy falling apart, so was the world. I lost the girl. I quit my job. I left town. I started again.

It’s easy to look back, in retrospect, and say yes, this was my quarter life crisis. It was certainly the moment when I realized the dreams I had as a child weren’t necessarily the life I was going to have as an adult.

I had to do a lot of growing up, very fast.

I had dreams of being a great novelist. Then I woke up. As it turns out, I’m a rather good creative director. We can’t all be F Scott Fitzgerald. I’ll settle for being Don Draper. At least Don Draper can pay his bills on time, and he isn’t trying to drink himself to death.

I think I’ve smiled more in the last six months than I’ve smiled in the last five years. I’ve come to terms with who I am, and what I really want in life. (Hint: it’s not to be a great writer. I just did that to get girls into bed. It worked.) It seems as if everybody has a crisis of confidence in their twenties, when they realize how hard it really is out there. Some go running for cover. They hide in perpetual childhood, living with their parents, hanging out with old school friends. Others, a lot of girls, go the other way. They run straight into the arms of older men, father figures who’ll protect them and pay for them. Until, of course, the men get tired of the girls and change them in for a younger model. Then you’re fucked.

Don’t be a child

My point is, I guess, that you can’t put off having a quarter life crisis forever. It’ll only make your mid-life worse. You have to face up to the responsibilities of the world and sometimes, you have to do it alone. I’m  happier being single than I ever was trying to juggle all those girls. Women are a headache. Even when they’re not trying to have you duffed up. I’m running a business, I’m earning a living, and I answer to nobody. Life is hard, but I never really enjoyed it when it was easy.

Having to work, having to struggle, having to beat the odds — that’s what life’s about. We had it handed to us on a silver platter when times were good. Now I see all the quarter lifers running for cover, trying to get those times back. They’re just delaying the inevitable. Those of us who lost everything and had to start again from scratch will be the real winners.

I finally got round to washing my car today. I bring this up because it’s been at least six months. Since I moved here. Since I began my life again.

Six months of dirt and grime. It felt like I was washing away a lot more. It felt like a purification, of sorts. Sweeping the trash away. Seeing the sparkling underneath.

I spend a lot of time in that car, commuting as I do through town and country. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an adult, it’s that you’d better invest in a car you like. You’re going to be spending a lot of time in it.

Also: avoid mad women, don’t drink too much, put something by for a rainy day, no setback is ever permanent, no state of being lasts forever.

In fact, I’ve finally learned what my parents were trying to tell me all along.

Richard Allday