Shards of a Great American Novel

During a recent discussion with other parents (Millennial and Gen-X) we mentioned the freedom some of us had as kids in the 1980s. For example, even in the decades before cell phones, my parents allowed me to roam freely all summer long.

They trusted that my friends and I would hit baseballs, not hit each other with bats. They trusted we would shoot baskets, not guns. They trusted us, but we earned the trust by behaving and by being home at a decent hour. It worked for everyone.

But there were other parenting styles in those days. The new novel from Gen-X chronicler Bret Easton Ellis (Less than Zero, American Psycho) highlights one style.

First, an admission: I wanted to like The Shards, and I think maybe I did like it. But I’m also confused by the book. I can’t possibly give spoilers, because I’m still not sure exactly what happened in it. There are a number of characters killed in the book, but I don’t know who killed them. Also, I don’t know how other characters managed to survive, when their deaths seemed eminent.

Maybe the LAPD can go back and use DNA evidence to catch all the serial killers that Ellis says were haunting Southern California in that period. But as of now, as a murder mystery, The Shards falls apart. Yet I still liked the book as a window on the lives of upper-class California teenagers in 1981. Perhaps it’s meant to be a time capsule (I remember my elementary school building one of those in the 1970s, but I don’t remember where we buried it), and perhaps it’s meant to serve as a warning.

The book is far from perfect. At almost 600 pages, The Shards is too long by half. All the action happens in three months. It could have been covered in 300 pages. There is far too much explanation: Ellis spends pages and pages telling what and where the characters ate, what roads they drove on to get around, what tunes they listened to. The early 80s pop music was important in setting the mood, of course, but it was vastly overdone in the book. We don’t need to know that he listened to “Our Lips are Sealed” while driving down the 401 on the way to La Scalia.  

So too with the sex scenes. Bret was having more gay sex as a high school senior in 1981 than I had straight sex in the entirety of the 1980s (not that this is a high bar, but still). But the graphic descriptions of who put what where and how often seemed meant to repel rather than to reveal. “Matt and I had wild sex in the pool house” would have made the point and replaced pages of exposition. Every writer needs an editor. My version of editing was to decide there were entire paragraphs I could simply skip past. I don’t think I ended up missing anything important.

With those quibbles aside, I think the book accomplishes two things: It highlights the trouble with coming out gay in 1981, and it spotlights the poor parenting that was, effectively, child neglect. First, the idea of being gay, or even bisexual, in the 1980s. In the three months covered by The Shards, Bret has extensive gay sex with two different classmates. One spends the weekend at Bret’s house.

But he does not think he can come out.

Bret is in love with both a boy and a girl: Class jock Thom, and class president Susan. She understands he is gay, but nobody else seems to. He acts the part of dutiful boyfriend to the beautiful Debbie, Susan’s best friend. Bret’s plan is to live out his senior year as a straight man, then go to college and become whatever he wants to be. The fact that this is unfair to himself and to Debbie (she is under the impression that because he has sex with her, he cares for her) never seems to occur to him. The honesty around sexuality that we enjoy today is a better policy, and let’s celebrate how far we’ve come.

Debbie never figures out Bret is gay until he (this isn’t a spoiler, as the reader sees it coming from early on) has sex (graphically depicted) with Debbie’s father. She blames Bret, but it’s really a case of statutory rape. Her father Terry is a movie executive who invites Bret to discuss an idea for a script (which will be something like the book and movie Less Than Zero). The discussion is a waste of time; Bret hasn’t thought the plot through yet. But Terry pounces. “You took up half an hour of my time, now I want half an hour of yours.” A photographer hired by Terry’s wife catches the tryst on film.

Terry’s parenting style is pretty bad; hitting on your daughter’s teenaged friends should be frowned on whether they are boys or girls. But at least he is there, even if that means sitting stoned by the pool while his daughter and her friends have a party.

Bret’s own parents literally don’t appear during the events in the book. They have already left for Europe when the book begins on Labor Day weekend in 1981, and they are still overseas when the final action happens in November. It takes them days to get home when they finally need to do so. Bret lives in an otherwise empty home with a dog and a housekeeper who comes on weekdays to do laundry, stock the fridge and prep food. Otherwise, he is left to his own devices.

Virtually all the other adults are non-existent or alcoholic. Debbie’s mother is alcoholic. Thom’s parents are divorced, his father in New York and his mother never mentioned until the final chapters of the book. Susan’s parents are uninvolved in her life. The private school kids Bret hangs with all use dangerous hard drugs: cocaine (I’ve seen it used once in my life; they used it daily), quaaludes, other drugs. Bret can’t seem to get through the day without valium.        

At one point, a character’s aunt (he lives with his aunt, because his father wants nothing to do with him) sets up a meeting with Bret. While she gets drunk on wine, she asks Bret to leave her nephew alone. “He has no one. He has no one but me,” she says. Ellis writes: “But a sudden pang expanded in my chest when she said this because I felt the same way about myself: You have no one either.”

That sums up the book. He has no one, partly because of his hidden sexuality but mostly because his parents are gone. They’ve left him a great house, three cars, a maid, a pool, seemingly unlimited money. And he is miserable.

Parents are always going to wonder, “am I doing this wrong?” Read The Shards and you’ll see examples of rich people who are, indeed, “doing this wrong.” As for the rest of us, here in 2023? The past is a foreign land, and the message is more positive: We’re very involved in their lives, and the kids are all right.