Let’s begin with a question that maybe some of you might have for me.

Are there any other kinds of books that I like to read, aside from horror in general and more specifically stories that feature a good old fashioned haunted house? 

My answer: Hmmmm…….

Questioner: Come on Cheely, you must be open to other genres! 

Me: I am. 

Questioner: So, what are they?

Actually I like several genres that have no name. So I have taken the liberty to name them. I like “nostalgic tales of youth”.  That’s a bit long for a genre name. Oh well. I’m talking about stories that feature prepubescent kids on bikes enjoying those eternal summers. Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine is one of my favorites. These are stories that feature kids living by their own rules, seeing life unfold before their unsuspecting eyes. In a similar manner, I enjoy coming of age tales. The characters of these types of novels are a bit older than the ones that inhabit the stories of my “nostalgic” category . They are in their teens and the whirlwinds of adolescence disrupt their innocent lives. They experience joys and sorrows beyond any previous skills of comprehension. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is an example of such a novel and a fine novel it is!

Do you know what’s even better than stories about the coming of age? Well, I’ll tell you. These would be the stories that detail what happens where “the age” comes and then “the age”  goes and all hell breaks loose. Novels of this kind feature young adults caught in a world of debauchery, decadence, delinquency and drugs. Three of those four “D” words are used by author Jay McInerney in a fictional conversation about great words that begin with the fourth letter of the alphabet.. This conversation takes place between two night clubbers in his book Bright Lights Big City. McInerney is a member of what has been called the “literary Brat Pack.” 

These were young writers in the early 1980s that often wrote about young characters of the swanky urban milieu  that indulge in drugs. Among this group of authors is Bret Easton Ellis, the author of the book that is the subject of this review (I’ll get to Lunar Park in a moment, don’t you worry, just bear with me for a leeeeeetle bit longer).Ellis is the famed author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho.  Less Than Zero is a story about  Beverly Hills college kids that are home from  during Christmas break. In California, it is difficult to have the traditional “white” Christmas, but ahhh, they find something else that is “white” and flaky to enjoy – Cocaine!  And lots of it. Parties, music, cocaine, sex, and lots of addiction and all around emptiness. American Psycho is told from the first person perspective of Patrick Bateman is a Wall Street yuppie of the 80s that obsesses over designer dress codes  and dinner reservations by day while decapitating people in his luxurious apartment at night. Ohh the subjects in both Less Than Zero and American Psycho make me giddy with goosebumps!  I love them, don’t you??

I guess I’m bleeding into a genre that actually does have a name. (Earlier in this article I mentioned that “I like several genres that have no name”). In my defense, I didn’t know it existed as a defined genre until after I began work on this article. The genre  is known as Transgressive Fiction. This genre is similar to my made up “post adolescence chaos” genre, though I’m guessing that the characters within the stories of this literary category are not always young. Simply put, according to Wikipedia, Transgressive Fiction  “ focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways.”

Furthermore –

“Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressive fiction may seem mentally ill, anti-social, or nihilistic. The genre deals extensively with taboo subject matters such as drugs, sexual activity, violence, incest, pedophilia, and crime”.

So for the record, I love me some transgressive fiction. Now wouldn’t it be something if I could find a book that at least flirts with transgressive fiction  while giving me a precious haunted house! Impossible, you say. No, it’s not impossible. The two themes merge in Bret Easton Ellis’ book Lunar Park.

I now “transgress” from genre descriptions to the heart of Lunar Park

 

Bret Easton Ellis – What an interesting, albeit eccentric, perhaps downright weird guy. The first few chapters of Lunar Park read like an autobiography  of the author’s life, a life filled with more decadence than the characters of his book. Okay-okay, he’s not  morally depraved in the kind of way as Patrick Bateman, the Wall Street serial killer. To the best of my knowledge the author hasn’t killed anyone (yet)! But Ellis describes one of his book tours as a train wreck of drug abuse and tells of the craziness that ensues on account of his incessant  partying. Supposedly, these first few chapters are true, though some have contested the veracity of some of the details. The remaining chapters, the bulk of the book, is a fictional biography of himself and his unsuccessful attempt at normalcy. Giving up his philandering lifestyle made up of bachelor pads and a non-stop habit of pill popping and cocaine snorting, Ellis reinvents himself as a family man, he settles down with Jayne Davis, a famous actress who is the  mother of his only known child, Robby. Ellis had neglected Robby all throughout his young life. He is now a preteen and the father wants to make amends. They live in a house in Midland, a suburb of New York. with Jayne’s six-year-old daughter Sarah.. They have a maid, a dog, a pool; the whole works. All they are missing is the white picket fence,  Brett is trying for sobriety and fidelity, not really achieving those lofty goals, but he’s going through the motions anyway. His past behaviors haunt him, as does the dark inspiration behind several of his characters, along with the traumatic  relationship he had with his now dead father. This haunting takes center stage at his new home at Medford. Hence, Bret lives in a haunted house.

Ok everyone, who remembers my contribution to the analytics of haunted house film and literature – my precious projection theory? Simply stated, a disturbed protagonist “projects” his/her inner demons upon the house which in turn reflects those demons back, acting like a screen of sorts. What the protagonist  sees upon the screen (the house) will confuse him/her as well as frighten. I think I first made reference to this theory on my review of The Turn of the Screw where it is suggested by many analysts that the ghosts of the story are figments of the imagination of Miss Giddens the governess.  They are perhaps products of psycho-sexual guilt and take the form of a man and a woman, two deceased former servants that were in an adulterous relationship. Thus her  “mind churns out the spirits, and her eyes act as the projectors. The house is the screen on which she sets her spirits free.” (quote from the article).

So, what kind of ghosts project from the mind of Bret Easton Ellis’ protagonist, who just happens to be a Bret himself, albeit a fictionalized version of himself?  Don’t expect your typical semi-transparent wraith of some former living person. Instead expect some kind of demonic possession of a bird doll, a toy of his step daughter. Be prepared to try and make sense of Bret’s confusion as the furniture in his house rearranges itself overnight into a layout of a former date. Scratch your head and ponder what it might mean that decorations from his childhood home appear in his new house. But there are certain things that move about like ghosts. From his neighbor’s backyard he can see shadows and silhouettes on the shades of his upper windows when there is no one home.  Then there are the muddy tracks that lead away from a make-believe grave that stands in his yard, leftover from Halloween. The trackings suggest a corpse-like figure might have slid across the grass. And I can’t forget to mention the characters from his books that escape from his novels to stalk him. Patrick Bateman, the Wall Street psychopath with the Armani suit slashes his way out of the novel American Psycho and find his way to Lunar Park to fuck with Bret’s mind. 
What do Jayne and the children think of all this? They think he’s going crazy. He is using drugs again and has been having hangovers daily. Quite the unreliable narrator that Bret! What’s really happening here is up to suggestion, as if often the case in works of this nature. It’s a post-modern piece and similar to works such as The Grip of It and House of Leaves in that there is a lot of symbolism directed at households and relationships.  Yet real horrific things happen in this story. People are murdered. Children go missing.

Lunar Park succeeds in creating a tone of bitter confusion. It’s the story of a character in uncomfortable surroundings; how can a man be at peace in the fictionalized lifestyle of a family man when he’s not even comfortable in his own skin? This foreign environment of a house in the burbs is vastly different from the bachelor lifestyle in upper Manhattan. Readers sense this disparity by confronting the sense of unreality that the book lays out quite well. 

This is a good book to read at the beginning of the Halloween season. The story kicks off at a Halloween party that Bret and his wife throw at their house that will eventually be haunted. They spare no expense on decorations. Costumed folks fill their many rooms, and what a great place for one of Bret’s psychotic characters of previous books to disguise himself! This party launches the story and plants the seeds of derealization that grows and spreads across the pages. It’s a great book. I think you will enjoy it.