A star of 1980s fiction tries for a comeback

Most writers have, at one time or another, been asked the dreaded question: "Is so-and-so supposed to be you?" Few, though, have faced the question as relentlessly as has Bret Easton Ellis.

Heck, people assumed he was writing about himself even when his main character was one of the creepier serial killers to stalk modern fiction. After 20 years of this, it's perhaps not surprising that Ellis finally gave up and just named his main character after himself. (You've got to admit, the name does roll off the tongue.)

Ellis isn't the first writer to look in the mirror and find a hero (or antihero) staring back at him. Philip Roth traded in his Zuckerman alter ego for one named "Philip Roth" in several books - and then threw in an impostor for good measure in "Operation Shylock." Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman wrote himself and his writer's block, and a fictional twin into 2002's "Adaptation." And Kinky Friedman, country singer and Texas gubernatorial candidate, has penned 17 mysteries starring a country singer named Kinky Friedman. (Ellis also indulges in a second alter ego, "the writer," who likes to point out nifty touches to the main character, "Bret." Still following me?)

"Lunar Park" opens with a recap of "Bret's" life up until October 2003. Only Ellis knows how closely this mirrors his own. It is, however, a fact that his first novel, "Less Than Zero," made him famous before he was out of college.

While readers may wonder if all the excesses "Bret" catalogs in the first chapter occurred (did he really crash a Ferrari naked? did the cast of "St. Elmo's Fire" come to his graduation party?) the real story doesn't require any hyperbole.

"I found myself being labeled by just about everyone as the voice of this new generation. The fact that I was only twenty-one and there were no other voices yet seemed not to matter." According to "Bret," he, writer Jay McInerney (who makes a guest appearance in "Lunar Park"), and the rest of the Brat Pack spent the 1980s indulging in the Reagan-era excesses their books lampooned.

Then came Ellis's third book, "American Psycho," the tale of a Wall Street serial killer released in 1991. The graphic material kicked up a firestorm, with The New York Times reviewing it under the headline "Don't Buy This Book," and the National Organization of Women organizing a boycott.

Other critics have defended it as a brilliant satire, but Ellis himself has recently stepped back from the extreme violence. "When I got to the violence sequences I was incredibly upset and shocked," Ellis told the New York Times recently. "I can't believe that I wrote that."

In "Lunar Park," an exhausted "Bret" has come to the same conclusion about his heroin- and cocaine-fueled existence. He's married an actress named Jayne Dennis, and taken refuge in the suburbs. (Despite the existence of a fan website, Dennis is pretty definitely a figment of the unmarried Ellis's imagination.)

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