SOURCE: "Wishing for More," in Telos, No. 76, Summer, 1988, pp. 143-54.

In the following essay, Pan looks at the stylistic features of Less Than Zero in relationship to the visual media of television, video and film.

The first question which comes to mind in reading Ellis' bestseller, Less Than Zero, is "Is Los Angeles really like that?" This astonishment betrays not only the vague feeling that one has somehow missed out on all the action in Los Angeles, but also the compulsion to continue reading in order to experience, at least vicariously, all the sordid details of life in the American "elite." This voyeuristic query fits perfectly into the framework of a book in which the closest thing to a plot is the attempt of Clay, the first person narrator, "to see the worst" and in which the characters continually try to certify the authenticity of their experiences. After...