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''Imperial Bedrooms'' is a novel by American author Bret Easton Ellis. Released on June 15, 2010, it is the sequel to ''Less Than Zero'', Ellis' 1985 bestselling literary debut, which was shortly followed by a film adaptation in 1987. ''Imperial Bedrooms'' revisits ''Less Than Zero'' ''Imperial Bedrooms'', unlike ''Less Than Zero'', is plot-driven. The action of the novel takes place twenty-five years after ''Less Than Zero''. Its story follows Clay, a New York-based screenwriter, after he returns to Los Angeles to cast his new film. There, he becomes embroiled in the sinister world of his former friends and confronts the darker aspects of his own personality. The novel opens with a literary device that establishes the world of ''Imperial Bedrooms'' to be similar to but not exactly that of ''Less Than Zero''. In doing this, Ellis is able to comment on the earlier novel's style and on the development of its moralistic film adaptation. The device also allows Ellis to explore Clay's pathological narcissism, masochistic and sadistic tendencies, and the exploitative personality, none of which had been explicit in ''Less Than Zero''. Ellis chose to do this in part to dispel the sentimental reputation ''Less Than Zero'' has accrued over the years, that of "an artifact of the 1980s". ''Imperial Bedrooms'' retains Ellis' characteristic transgressive style and applies it to the 2000s (decade) and 2010s, covering amongst other things, the impact of new communication technologies on daily lives. Ellis began working on what would become ''Imperial Bedrooms'' during the development of his 2005 novel, ''Lunar Park''. As with his previous works, ''Imperial Bedrooms'' depicts scenes of sex, extreme violence and hedonism in a minimalist style devoid of emotion. Some commentators have noted however that unlike previous works, ''Imperial Bedrooms'' employs more of the conventional devices of popular fiction. Reviews were mixed and frequently polarized. Some reviewers felt the novel was a successful return to themes explored in ''Less Than Zero'', ''Lunar Park'' and ''American Psycho'' (1991), while others derided it as "boring" or self-indulgent. ==Background== The development of ''Imperial Bedrooms'' began after Ellis re-read ''Less Than Zero'' as part of the writing process for his 2005 novel, ''Lunar Park''. The novel takes its name from Elvis Costello's 1982 album ''Imperial Bedroom'', just as ''Less Than Zero'' had been named for a Costello single. After reading his first novel, Ellis began to reflect on what had become of the characters from ''Less Than Zero''. Soon, he found himself "overwhelm()" by the idea of what would become ''Imperial Bedrooms'' as it continually returned to him. After gestating the idea, and making "voluminous notes", his detailed outline became longer than the finished book. Ellis felt that this process of note-taking limited him to the novels that he genuinely wanted "to stay with for a couple of years". To this, he attributed having "written so few novels".〔 Ellis's biggest influence in the course of writing ''Imperial Bedrooms'' was American novelist Raymond Chandler, "and that kind of pulpy noir fiction".〔 He found inspiration in Chandler because "He didn't even know how some of his books ended. That's part of what makes those books existentialist masterpieces." To Ellis, "It's about a journey and a tone and style and this worldview he created."〔 In terms of his own plotting, however, he opined that "plots really don't matter", nor solutions to mysteries, because it's "the mood that's so enthralling... () kind of universal, this idea of a man searching for something or moving through this moral landscape and trying to protect himself from it, and yet he's still forced to investigate it." Part of the "impetus" behind ''Imperial Bedrooms'', which Ellis "wrestled with", was to try and dispel the "sentimental view of ''Less Than Zero''" that made it, to some, "an artifact of the 80s" alongside "John Hughes movies and Ray-Bans and ''Fast Times at Ridgemont High''"; he felt he began assessing audience's reactions to his work when working on ''Lunar Park''.〔 On April 14, 2009, MTV News announced that Ellis had nearly finished the novel and it would be published in May 2010. At the time, Ellis revealed that all the novel's main characters would return. Prior to publication, Ellis had been convinced by his persuasive editor to remove some of the more graphic lines from ''Imperial Bedrooms'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Imperial Bedrooms」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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