Word: victors
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Altered photos of Victor supposedly at various parties and photo shoots appear, and he is threatened with edited photos of him ostensibly in the act of murder. It's the ultimate payback for someone obsessed with looks. This 'real truth' is less shallow than the original world of glitz we are used to--and at the same time purely superficial...
...Still, Victor's sense of terror in being unable to distinguish the true from the false is unmistakable. The world of celebrity in Glamorama really is inescapable, not just because Victor is too shallow to comprehend anything beyond it, but because everything--from the public spheres of politics and religion to the private sphere of sex--is part of this world. The plot twists more often than Chubby Checker on speed. Reality alternates with the constructed so often that the constructed becomes real: "everything is altered... everyone will believe this". Even the novel itself borrows Jay McInerney's Alison Poole...
Glamorama is a book that reads like a movie, and its constant references to Victor's life being filmed ("I think the look they exchange is over-done; the director, surprisingly, does not") without any specific motive is a tidy commentary on the creeping increase of observation. After all, when we put down the book, we can return to the 'real' world and watch When Animals Attack and Cops on prime time television...
...describes--one of sheen and brands? The temptation is to respond to Glamorama in a superficial way, merely enjoying the great lines and the action, not seeing it as real. And Ellis, for all his critique of style, is a master of it, using especially cutting lines to describe Victor's shallowness. As one character says, Victor thinks the "Gaza Strip is a particularly lascivious move an erotic dancer makes", while Alison tells him "the only pet you ever owned was the Armani Eagle...
...standard gender bender fare: Victoria Grant, an Alabama soprano penniless in 1930s Paris, is persuaded by the gay Toddy (Jamie Ross) to pretend that she is really a man playing a woman. Who better, after all, to play a woman than a real woman? Victoria thus becomes 'Count Victor Grazinsky, Europe's greatest female impersonator and soon finds herself the reception of much acclaim. However, as she achieves success, she finds herself falling for King Marchan (Dennis Cole), a Chicago businessman/gangster, who in turn is anguished by his attraction to this 'man.' In this happy world, of course, King eventually...