CODA: The Politics of Exposure: Unsafe Lines and Narratives of Conflict in Imperial Bedrooms

Abstract

Imperial Bedrooms, published in 2010 on the cusp of a new decade, ushers the reader into an uneasy narrative and cultural space. Ellis’s second novel of the twenty-first century was written and marketed as a sequel to his first novel, Less Than Zero. Imperial Bedrooms does not, however, function straightforwardly as a literary continuation. Rather, it is a complex remake of the original book. Structural similarities to the first book point to this complicated fusion of sequel and remake. Set two decades after Less Than Zero, Clay has returned from New York to Los Angeles for four months. The characters are indeed older. Yet the names of the characters, the Los Angeles setting, and the architecture of the novel (short sections written in minimalist prose); function to create a narrative that appears to be a self-reflexive echo of Less Than Zero. The architecture of the novel constitutes a reconstructive narratological framework. For Ellis, this reconstructive technique is one aspect of the novel that is fundamental to his act of underwriting the politics of America in the period 2003 to 2009.