De wetten van de aantrekkingskracht

Reading The Rules of Attraction felt like being dropped into a party that never ends—one where the music is loud, the alcohol endless, and everyone is both searching and utterly lost. Ellis constructs his novel through shifting voices, fragmented perspectives, and overlapping narratives. At first, the style unsettled me, but soon I realized it mirrored the confusion and alienation of his characters.

The story unfolds at a liberal arts college in the 1980s, where students drift through affairs, drugs, and half-hearted philosophies. What struck me most was how every character speaks, yet almost no one truly listens. Sean, Paul, Lauren—they circle one another in a haze of desire and misunderstanding. I felt a strange tension reading their confessions: on the surface, they seemed confident, rebellious, even careless, but underneath, I sensed a profound emptiness.

Ellis’s prose is sharp, ironic, and relentless. As I turned the pages, I often felt complicit, like an eavesdropper overhearing conversations I wasn’t meant to hear. The humor is biting, but the laughter is hollow, echoing against loneliness that no party can mask.

What lingered with me after finishing was not any single storyline—since most are left unresolved—but the mood: a portrait of a generation intoxicated and adrift. It made me reflect uneasily on how disconnection can masquerade as freedom, and how desire, when detached from meaning, leaves only a gnawing void.

The Rules of Attraction didn’t comfort me; it unsettled me. Yet in that discomfort lay its power: a reminder that sometimes literature holds up a mirror to the chaos we’d rather not see.

1) "It was beginning to dawn on her then that she didn't know which one she had (technically) lost her virginity to (though odds were good that it was the film student from N.Y.U. and not the townie), even though that seemed to be beside the point for some reason on this post-virginal morning. She was vaguely aware that she was bleeding, but only a little. The guy from N.Y.U. burped in his sleep. There was vomit (whose?) all over Lorna's trashcan. The townie was still laughing, doubled up naked with laughter. Her bra was still on. And she said to no one, though she had wanted to say it to Daniel Miller, 'I always knew it would be like this.'"

2) "We start making out but she forgets her diaphragm so she tries to put it in, squeezing the foam all over her hand but not getting any into it and she's too drunk to know where to put it. I try to fuck her anyway but she keeps moaning 'Peter, Peter' so I stop. I'm thinking about throwing up but do some bong hits instead, then flee. Deal with it. Rock'n'roll."

3) "Tonight. I've spent all afternoon in a bath full of scented water, preparing, cleansing, soaping, shaving, oiling myself for You. I have not eaten in two days. I wait. I am good at that. I listen to old soon-to-be-forgotten songs and wait for Tonight and for You. Wait for that final moment. A moment so filled with such expectance and longing that I almost do not want to witness its occurrence. But I'm ready. One fine day you'll want me for your girl, my radio cries. That's right. Tonight."

4) "There was a dour lunch at Mortimer's with friends of his from Washington. A somber birthday dinner at Lutece with a girl I'd met at The Blue and Gold, Patrick and his girlfriend, Evelyn, who was a junior executive at American Express, and my father. This was two months after he had mother committed to Sandstone and the thing I most remember about that birthday was the fact that no one mentioned it. No one ever mentioned it except for Patrick, who, in confidence to me, whispered, 'It was about time.' Patrick gave me a tie that night."