Ben Braithwaite Braithwaite itibaren Union
Although often described as a meditation on the vacuity of the 1980s, it's probably important to realise that an era cannot by itself create a state of vacuity, but only acts as a trapping. In this case, the 80s represents a sticky glut of technology, fashion, and media (does it sound very different to today?) that ultimately confuses and paralyses, eliminating feeling - and thereby the possibility of redemption - through sheer saturation. But psychotic behaviour is not new; it exists in everyone (in general), or at the very least in every man. It's more a question of those who indulge in it and those who suppress it. The reader should therefore not be surprised at the ease with which Patrick Bateman (the villain and narrator) seduces us. He is as classical a gothic figure as any that Poe created, and has all the darkness and all the comedy, without quite the campiness and more wit, of a young Vincent Price. He is so beau that he is often asked if he is a model or an actor. This makes him more of an act of a gothic character than the real thing, but the artificiality here is appropriate. We abhor him, yet he resonates nonetheless. More secretly American Psycho probably also raises the occasional hard-on, which as the delineation between sex then rape then murder dissolves - and really, murder is just another form of pornography - makes us question whether not being consciously shameful of this, at least until after the chapter is over, is a natural reaction or not. Patrick's hatred is born of a surprisingly touching fear of everything that is not a part of his own construction; anything with the possibility of gentle or joyous emotion by its nature cannot exist for him, and must be destroyed. Tossing a handful of coins into a seal pool in an attempt to choke them, he tells us that "[i]t's not the seals I hate - it's the audience's enjoyment of them that bothers me". Shortly after he stabs a five-year-old child in the throat and is not satisfied; the child had "no real history, no worthwhile past" and the killing leaves him empty. By conflating the extreme opposites we see not only the boundaries of human abbhorence - apparently limitless, there is little that Patrick would not do in the mutilation and annihilation of a human - but also, in our own sympathy to him, the extreme lengths humans are willing to go to to forgive one of their own, to abstract the blame into something larger and ambiguous. Or perhaps we should be more cynical, and suggest that our sympathy for him is merely of our own inclinations towards such darkness - again, classical gothic. There is more to pick up here, much more, that distinguishes it in many ways as a product of the modern era, but I feel the main lesson here is not in the story but in our reactions to it, of our own following self-analysis. That's what I got anyway. For some it may simply result in a deadening of certain senses, disgust or paranoia; for me it was all good for self-awareness. Damn, out of space - I'll have to try to post the rest of the review in comments!
Read it with Alexia, very cute in a Beverly Cleary sort of way.
I watched the movie of this book. Then I read the book. Then I watched the movie. In three experiences with this story, I have yet to discern a plot. Also, it was difficult for me to imagine that the author didn't pick Egypt and Italy as locations for the story after putting his hand over his eyes and randomly pointing at a map of the world. The knowledge of these areas which is so sensually expounded on the page feels, well, faked. Regardless, he's good with tableaus.