• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho

B

book'em

New Member
Hey everyone.
Has anyone read American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis? I just finished it and I enjoyed it for the most part, although it was more graphic than I anticipated. More graphic than the other novels of his I have read. But I had a question: does anyone have any idea why he spent a entire chapter discussind Whitney Huston and another chapter discussing Huey Lewis and the News? If anyone has any ideas, I'd like to hear them, because since I've finished I've been thinking about this.
 
book'em said:
But I had a question: does anyone have any idea why he spent a entire chapter discussind Whitney Huston and another chapter discussing Huey Lewis and the News?
Click to expand...

Because it's the 80s. He's a parody of the shallowness of the 80s. He's a man who thinks he finds depth and meaning in ditzy pop music with happy videos. It goes with his obsession with skin-care products, clothes and business cards, and how every single character in the book is so faceless they get mistaken for someone else; it's hip to be square, and learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.
 
The music essays were hilarious. They were probably my favorite part of the book. I found the rest of the book to be shocking and grotesque just for the sake of it. Personally I prefer the film version--keeps the satirical elements but does away with many of the more graphic murders.
 
Beer good - yeah, totally, however another aspect I like about AmPsy is how performative the book is of the conditions faced by the character, by the end of the book, you can read through a music essay with the same half interested detachment as when you read through a gory murder scene, the excess of the time and the character kind of washes over you ( as does the endless 80s. consumerism, crime etc excess for bateman.... ) and rather than learning anything or discovering anything it just regresses into a spiral of diminishing returns and ultimately nihilism.

The film version is very good but really doesnt keep this "nihilsm through excess" motive like the book does.
 
1985viv said:
Beer good - yeah, totally, however another aspect I like about AmPsy is how performative the book is of the conditions faced by the character, by the end of the book, you can read through a music essay with the same half interested detachment as when you read through a gory murder scene, the excess of the time and the character kind of washes over you ( as does the endless 80s. consumerism, crime etc excess for bateman.... ) and rather than learning anything or discovering anything it just regresses into a spiral of diminishing returns and ultimately nihilism.

The film version is very good but really doesnt keep this "nihilsm through excess" motive like the book does.
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly. Also, I found one of the greatest problems with the movie (which I really need to re-watch) that... the movie itself never questioned Bateman's story. (Much like Adrian Lyne's Lolita in that way.) In the book, he's the very definition of an unreliable narrator - especially when he really starts to become unravelled; we don't know if all of what he tells us is the truth or just his imagination. In the movie, his story is presented as fact.
 
beer good - Ive watched the film many times, its a good film but really is a seperate piece from the book. Maybe i didnt express myself quite clearly, what I mean about the "nihilism through abundance and excess" is that this notion is in the story and in the book ( the reader holds ) a leitmotive, the nihilistic/excess hues can only really be seen in book because of its paragraphs about music, endless suit essays and gore scenes all rolling into each other. The film is about 90mins long and so this leitmotiv never really makes its self felt, yeah, the film tells you hes rich and that he has everything and that hes obsessive but it doesn' t quite convey the apathy and cold distance bateman aquires from inhabiting such an excessive/opulent etc etc life. social position.... Unless the film could be three hours long and much less entertaining then I dont think it could really convey the notion im talking about..

I recently went back and read his debut, "less than zero" very similar themes however emotional apathy and cold hearted nihilism are approached through excess and a isolated "holden caulfield" damaged and numbed by the 80s sort of thing. The performative meta-example is very clear in this one though. You start reading with zest about this apathetic and zombie like man, and by the end you read with apathy and plough through the characters horrors like a half interested zombie yourself.......

Just my thoughts really.

The movie falls short in many areas however does do very well in some areas too, I still consider it an above average film.

DOSTOEVSKY SPOILER>>>>Speaking of unreliable narrators, I read Dostoevskys the "double" great book and wonderful use of the unreliable narrator.

P.s. Perec, Pynchon and Vonnegut are three authors im very interested in reading, I read SH5 and found it amazed me, I have Mason and Dixon waiting for me now....
 
WOW 1985viv...you have some great insight on Ellison's books. I have read a few of his other books, including "Less than Zero" and the male characters do seem "zombie like". That holden caulfield comparison was great too. It does seem very true the more that I thik aboout it.
 
beer good said:
In the book, he's the very definition of an unreliable narrator - especially when he really starts to become unravelled; we don't know if all of what he tells us is the truth or just his imagination. In the movie, his story is presented as fact.
Click to expand...
I didn't really get that from watching the movie, but then again I draw new insight each time I watch it.

Still haven't read the book yet. I'll get around to it eventually.
 
the book, he's the very definition of an unreliable narrator - especially when he really starts to become unravelled; we don't know if all of what he tells us is the truth or just his imagination
Click to expand...

I think some of that was kept in. In the end, I recall someone laughing off Patrick's claims that he's a serial killer since Patrick is normally so eager to please and a kiss-ass (I believe this scene is also in the novel). I dunno . . . I didn't think the filmmakers did away with that element of the story completely.
 
Beer good, well late on this one, have to excuse me, I forgot this thread was around still!

In reference to my earlier post about reading through a paragraph of Ellis with a sense of indifference I read somewhere that the feminist/writer ( and general uber-critical person around town ) Germaine Greer said of Glamorama : "boredom is not a literary device". - !!!!

I really think this comment is altogether too simplistic with regard to the mechanics within Ellis' work but there is a certain feeling of indifference that he conjures up in the reader, perhaps not dissimilar to certain W G Sebald books - although for a totally different end goal.

One feeling I get with certain Ellis texts is that I never know if im supposed to be reading it as a caper or just a monotonous proceeding....
 
I just finished this the other day. I think there was probably one or two too many grisly murder scenes which seemed to lessen the impact as the book went on, but overall I loved it. Great great dialog and I was laughing out loud at several moments in the book. :star4:
 
In response to the chapters in which Bateman discusses music (Genesis, Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis), I feel this is just the narrator in love with himself. He is the epitome of greed and vanity, always worrying about his outward appearance. Here, he is in love with the sound of his own voice and he seems to get off on being a know-it-all, as he is with fashion etiquette. That's kind of what I picked up at least. I really liked how the movie used these chapters ("Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?")


My question is... during the "Chase" chapter where Bateman goes on his shooting "rampage" of sorts, why does the author switch to a third person narration? The rest of the book is from Patrick's perspective, constantly using the pronouns "I," "me," and "we." However, in this chapter Ellis begins using the third person, with "Patrick" replacing the first-person pronouns seen throughout the rest of the book. Because the rest of the book was written in the first person, it seemed to me that this portion of the book was entirely imagined by Bateman, with him imagining the scenes in his head (as watching a movie) and referring to himself as Patrick. Anyone else have any insight into this?
 
malonestar said:
My question is... during the "Chase" chapter where Bateman goes on his shooting "rampage" of sorts, why does the author switch to a third person narration? The rest of the book is from Patrick's perspective, constantly using the pronouns "I," "me," and "we." However, in this chapter Ellis begins using the third person, with "Patrick" replacing the first-person pronouns seen throughout the rest of the book. Because the rest of the book was written in the first person, it seemed to me that this portion of the book was entirely imagined by Bateman, with him imagining the scenes in his head (as watching a movie) and referring to himself as Patrick. Anyone else have any insight into this?
Click to expand...

Or he's trying to add some objectivity to show that it really happens by describing the action from another POV.

And even I don't know if by "he" I mean Bateman or Ellis.
 
beer good said:
Or he's trying to add some objectivity to show that it really happens by describing the action from another POV.

And even I don't know if by "he" I mean Bateman or Ellis.
Click to expand...

This is a good point, in light of the discussion of Bateman as the unreliable narrator. Having a different perspective could mean that this was actually not in his imagination.
 
This is my favourite book ever and I think it's one of the best books ever written.

Plus it has an utterly unique construction.

A must read!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top