"Rules of Attraction" by Bret Easton Ellis

"The Rules of Attraction" by Bret Easton Ellis, although a great example of stream-of-consciousness writing and a shining example of an early-career work by a great author, is still just a college "fuck-drink" shocker novel.  It was probably the outlet of Ellis' college frustrations, where he wasn't exactly the coolest kid, coupled together with some naughty wishful thinking and fantasies.

The book can be summarized as "drink-fuck-drugs-fuck-drugs-drink-fuck-dostupidthings."  Towards the end it gets a bit more serious with Mary's suicide and Lauren's pregnancy and subsequent abortion, but the reader is so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of drugs, drinking and meaningless sex by that time, that he hardly can appreciate the gravity.

Ellis uses the expression "Terminally Numb" towards the last third of the book, and that expression by itself describes most of the characters, both male and female, including most of their interactions.  At times it seems that there's only one male and one female character, while all the different names seem to be like different moods of the same person.  Shawn and Paul and Rupert and Lauren and Mary and Victor and Jaimie, etc.

Ellis seems to be very adept at describing male homosexuality, as almost all male characters in the book are either bi-sexual or homosexual.  However, he lacks skill when describing female homosexuality, or female sexuality at all.  The one lesbian scene in the book is pretty unconvincing, and the author generally puts much more gusto into describing male sex perception , even if it is masturbation, than female-perceived sex. Mary's pre-suicide thinking is unconvincing, and Lauren comes across as too one-dimensional for what should be the leading female character. 

Ultimately, "The Rules of Attraction" is a wishful-thinking, of sorts, for all the debauchery and decadence (and the corresponding price to be paid) that one might have missed during one's undergrad days.  Fun, but no cigar.

"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

This is not an easy novel to read, and many critics are complaining that it is tedious and monotonous and consists only of walking, walking, walking.  The author, however, has a distinct intention to evoke the feeling of the post-apocalyptic world where everything is covered in ash, ash floating in the air, the skies are just ash, the sun is never to be seen and all carbon-based life has gone extinct except for small bands of human survivors who descended into the lowest form of barbarism and cannibalism. "First they're gonna rape you, then they're gonna eat you."

We never learn what the disaster was that destroyed much of the North American continent, and, presumably, much of the rest of the world.  The unnamed father and son are struggling to go south, following 'a road', small leftover pieces from the once mighty highways, reach the sea and maybe find some lost warmth.  The father is terminally ill with lung disease and is counting the days until his death.  The boy was born after the disaster, and is around 9 years old.  The mother is mentioned in few brief paragraphs, as having shot herself, to escape the ultimate and inescapable fate of being raped, killed, skinned and eaten.

On "The Road", the father and son see horrible things.  Bands of cannibals, murderers and rapists, organizing themselves in groups, hunting other humans for food.  Tribes of cannibals organized in classes: warriors with spears made of scrap metal, slaves to pull the carriages and used as food and women kept for sex.  They find city-cannibals fortified into old houses, with locked trapdoors in the floor underneath which horrors lurk of humans kept as animals for food, cutting off limbs from them, one at a time, for dinner or lunch, while keeping the rest of the human trunk alive in order for the meat to be fresh.  Human babies, gutted and skewered, roasted over coals.

They reach the sea, but only more gray ash and coldness.  They find a wreck where The Man swims and gets some more supplies to last them for a while more in their shopping cart.  But the cart gets stolen by a starving thief.  They catch the thief, and The Man is so Angry he makes him strip and stand naked in the freezing weather, while The Boy begs him to spare him.  But The Man doesn't spare him.  He tells the boy 'we're the good guys; we carry the fire' but the boy asks how can they be the good guys if they kill other people or let them die, even if they don't eat them.

The Man dies of the lung disease near a house on the shore.  The boy is alone, but someone followed them: a man with a shotgun, home-made bullets and a woman and two children with them.  He invites the boy to join them.  The Boy asks if he is one of the good guys, if he carries the fire.  The new man says 'sure' and shrugs.

Heavy book.