Overwhelming Blandness

One thing that jumped out at me as I began reading Less Than Zero was the unique style and tone of the book. Even the most ordinary of events is tinged with an overwhelming bleakness. Events that are less ordinary and more jarring are treated in the same offhand way as are the ordinary events. The ordinary and the extraordinary are bleak in the same way.

This overwhelming feeling is accomplished through Ellis’ unique style. One particular thing I noted was the use of long drawn out sentences, containing seemingly unimportant descriptions of events spliced into minuscule parts.

For example: “Kim gets lost and forgets the address and so we go, instead, to Barney’s Beanery and sit there in silence and Kim talks about her party and I shoot some pool and when Blair orders a drink, the waitress asks for I.D. and Blair shows her a fake one and the waitress brings her a drink and Blair gives it to Kim, who drinks it down fast and tells Blair to order another one” (99).

The sentence is broken up with “ands” instead of commas. This gives the sense that each small event holds a lot of weight, and the weight from each new event and “and” piles up to form a tone that is heavy and overwhelming. Yet the diction is quite bland and matter-of-fact. Thus, it seems that it is the bland meaninglessness and seeming feelings that Clay has of being trapped in an inevitably insufferable life that are so overwhelming and difficult to grapple with.