Ive always been a big fan and defender of Brett Easton Ellis, but I can't quite decide if his new book Lunar Park is a hilarious, meaningful hoax or just a pile of self-absorbed bullshit.
Lunar Park is so steeped in the author's own mythology and referential to his preexisting texts that he might as well have sent it out as a newsletter to his fan club or just posted up on his website. Likely he and his publisher Random House are trying to create a sexy multimedia buzz that will appeal to postmodern audiences innured to print. The "controversy" over the book looks to be little more than preemptive marketing made to appear larger than "just a book". The author (who, as a reference, referred to the film version of the book "Fight Club" as a "wild orgiastic pop masterpiece") may be trying to override the traditional program of print to film to web content by creating a publicity bonfire which would engulf his public image and reputation as a writer of meaningful literature.
There's much (perhaps too much) more about this at the obessive "celeblog" Brett Easton Ellis- Not An Exit .
But the real strange stuff is at the official LUNAR PARK website , where you can read the divergent biographies of Ellis and the character of Brett Easton Ellis in the novel. There's a link on there to the website of Ellis' fictional wife in the novel, an actress named Jayne Dennis. The photos of her on the site are, on closer inspection, digital amalgamation of the physical features of a number of famous actresses (it looks like Penelope Cruz's body with Natalie Portman's cheekbones, etc).
Probably the most fun part of the EastonEllis site is the "Exquisite corpse" short story writing contest, where teams of Ellis fans compete in writing stories in his style, line by line, without reading the sentence before. The results are sometimes hilarious and about as cohesive as genuine Easton Ellis prose, stuff like "After i finished vomiting I thought about the sexy barrista down at Starbucks and reached in my pocket for my Colonopin. The Eagles' "Take it Easy" was playing as muzak as I passed the bloodstains on the hallway wall on my way into the kitchen and the pitcher of Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" brand Margaritas i had blended." or something.