Born and raised in Los Angeles, writer Bret Easton Ellis belongs with novelists Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz to New York's literary "brat pack," writers who achieved early success with their portraits of lonely types isolated in sparkling 1980s New York. Ellis has published four books: the novels Less Than Zero (1985), The Rules of Attraction (1987), and American Psycho (1991), and the short story collection The Informers (1994). A rumored fourth novel on the world of fashion's top models remained unpublished in the late 1990s.

Published when Ellis was twenty-one years old, Less Than Zero narrates the sorry lives of a group of Los Angeles young people. No longer teenagers, these people epitomize what would later be known as "Generation X" in Douglas Coupland's popular phrase. The lives of the main character, Clay, and those of his well-to-do friends revolve around sex and drugs, in...