JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis is best read in one sitting. It’s fast, short (168 pages in 15-point type) and nasty, and though the author tells you how it will end, and it’s not exactly a surprising end if you’ve read the earlier book Less Than Zero, you still want to know how it could’ve gotten so horrific. I kept waiting for Patrick Bateman from American Psycho to turn up with a chainsaw and some Huey Lewis and the News CDs.

Imperial Bedrooms is a sordid tale of friendship gone bad. Plus drugs, sex, and the movies. Just to mess with our heads the narrator refers to Less Than Zero, which was purportedly written by another character, and the movie starring Robert Downey, Jr, which was substantially different from the book. In the movie Julian dies. Yet here he is at the start of Imperial Bedrooms, alive and allegedly sober.

Ellis’s prose matches the frantic, sweaty, paranoid lives of his characters. We don’t like them, we know we should be rid of them, but we have to know what happens to them. That’s an accomplishment.

* * * * *

I was just congratulating myself on having diminished the tower of unread books by one when I got word that my stash had arrived. So I begin October already behind in my reading. This is not a complaint.

First up: Lydia Davis’s new translation of Madame Bovary. I read Madame Bovary in high school and hated it. It was boring and I thought the main character was stupid. She marries a dolt, she has affairs with men who aren’t much better, she gets into debt for curtains and then she kills herself.

Why am I taking another crack at this book? Because Madame Bovary is still regarded as a masterpiece, and now that I’m older maybe I’ll see what the fuss is about. I read the Steegmuller book on Flaubert and liked it, so maybe I’ll like Flaubert. Think of it this way: a masterpiece set in the Napoleonic wars is not surprising, but a masterpiece about a bored housewife who has affairs, runs up a huge debt and kills herself? That takes work.

Also, I love Lydia Davis’s stories. They’re short and clean, like a punch. True, she can’t change Flaubert’s style, but maybe she can point out what I’d missed the first time.

Then Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, which the American critics are raving about. One usually gets suspicious at the chorus of hallelujahs, but I was suspicious of The Corrections and I admired it. Even if I can barely remember what it was about.

The back cover of Richard Yates by Tao Lin asks, “What constitutes illicit sex for a generation with no rules?”

The answer is, Not having sex.

The protagonists in this novel are called Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning, so the challenge is to not see Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning in your head while you’re reading it.

I read Gary Shteyngart because he’s funny. The cover of his new book reminded me of the cover of a Godard dvd. Voila.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert translated by Lydia Davis, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Richard Yates by Tao Lin and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart are available at National Bookstores.

Almost forgot to ask: What are you reading?

For about five seconds I missed the moshpits of my youth—everyone scrunched into a tiny space gasping fifth-hand oxygen and, yucch, drenched in other people’s sweat, the threat of violence present in every water bottle. Then my brain resumed normal programming.

Waiting for the iPhone in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Philippine Star.

Noel and I were talking about Bernal and Himala and I suddenly remembered this bit from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Ben Affleck, we should’ve done this right after we saw Gone Baby Gone but we had to make sure it wasn’t a fluke you know what we’re saying? Well we just saw the preview of The Town and now we have to say it.

We’re sorry, Ben Affleck. We’re sorry we laughed at you and said you had no talent. We’re sorry we called you the good-looking vapid boyfriend of Matt Damon. We’re sorry for all the horrible things we said about Daredevil, Gigli, Jersey Boy—actually we’re not sorry about those, they’re still true, but you’ve clearly moved on from there.

You have learned something from having been in the movies all these years. You do have talent. You’re a fine writer-director. Ben Affleck, your acting has also improved considerably, although you probably shouldn’t stand too close to Jeremy Renner because he’s the real thing, doesn’t even look like he’s acting. In The Town you would have us believe that in some kind of reverse Stockholm syndrome a ruthless bank robber would fall in love with the bank manager they held hostage two days earlier, and we believed. Good job, Ben Affleck.

We hereby retire the nickname Ben Assfleck and vow from hereon to address you by your proper name.

The Town opens in Metro Manila next week.

* * * * *

Raymond showed up for the screening carrying a giant upo. I said, “That’s subtle.” He said, “I was out of town and couldn’t resist fresh produce.”

We noted the large proportion of hotness in the cast of The Town. (The girls aren’t bad, either.) “Which one would you choose,” I asked, “Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, or Jeremy Renner?”

“Renner,” Raymond and I chorused.

“But Affleck and Hamm are handsome in that dark-haired, square-jawed, chiseled heroic way,” I pointed out.

“Renner,” we still chorused.

“They’re taller than he is.”

“Renner,” we still chorused.

“He’s kind of a doughboy.”

“Renner.” We would not be dissuaded.

“Jeremy Renner used to be a make-up artist,” Juan added helpfully.

“Renner.”

“Colin Farrell loves him.”

An endorsement from someone we love! That seals it. “Renner.”