Did anyone else get filtered by pic related? I didn’t even get to the violent parts because I got tired of reading shit like multiple paragraph descriptions of people’s outfits. I think that just the description of Patrick’s apartment was like 3+ pages
movie is better at conveying the very same things
I'm one third in and the book is very enjoyable, hilarious even at times.
The way I went between laughing out loud and feeling despair as he described how he enjoyed the suffering of grieving parents was something else. Great book.
t. didn't read the book
The descriptions of violence in the book are much more gruesome and interesting than the violence in the movie.
They don't even mention Patrick's brother in the movie, even though they keep the ending where Patrick quotes him.
I actually found that very reason to be exactly why I liked the book so much. It reads like a vlog hypebeast telling everyone how great it is, only to suddenly get serious, and then back to that hypebeast personality. I think the part where he leaves New York is my favorite segment of any book. It's just such a comfy read.
I recommend the audiobook if you really can't get through it. The narrator on Audible does his best Christian Bale impression and it works.
It conveys things very directly, cutting out all the nuance and filler, that arguably is what makes the book so good in the first place. The movie plays more like a "best moments" compilation. It's good in its own right, but I think the book is better purely due to the mundanity of it all.
>It conveys things very directly, cutting out all the nuance and filler, that arguably is what makes the book so good in the first place. The movie plays more like a "best moments" compilation. It's good in its own right, but I think the book is better purely due to the mundanity of it all.
The book was good, but too artsy. I prefer her later film, it was more commercial and accessible. People really don't like people who like the film, but they should, because its not just a statement about the pleasures of conformity, but a real insight into the artist.
>because its not just a statement about the pleasures of conformity, but a real insight into the artist.
Eeeeey
>its better because its more commercial and accessible
get your head out of corporate ass
The movie was a poor cliff notes version of the book
i actually found it very easy to read because of how he describes everything. am i autistic?
Yeah probably so. I don’t need detailed descriptions of every article of clothing and brand to picture the story in my head. I know that’s kind of the point because it’s about materialism and fitting in, but still, I thought it was a difficult read
>descriptions of clothes
Yes and probably gay
I unironically found it easy to read as well. All of descriptions of what he or smn else wore or just bought was compelling for me to read
ellis said in an interview that if you actually read those sections through you're wasting your time, which is what he set out to do
The fashion and upholstery and music reviews are good for establishing him as off but not much more; the Phil Collins & Huey Lewis stuff reads like AI review music magazine copy you could find anywhere-- doesn't bear second reading patience ... it's about catching him/them slipping the mask anyways.
This more or less. Originally passed the violence off as the yuppie/capitalism blah blah critique on his corporate saleman father, but more recently disavowed that as an easy PR cop out -- it's personal and inspired by his post Rules of Attraction ennui in New York, inanity and ennui being there as a yung gun successful author.
The importance is that Bateman is a mask stolen from NYT review sections, trying to fit in, pretending to be straight, merely executive managerial, and not homicidal.
Really he's a haute bourgeois gay homicidal maniac who has the capacity for real taste in art, but chooses not to. He is liberally restraining his power level constantly. He is ready to frick you in the arse while murdering a dog and appreciating classical art, but he chooses to limit himself in order to fit in.
Also authorial statement is meta text, frick off pomoscum.
You didn't get filtered you just realized redundancy as a literary device is moronic and that American Psycho is just Redundancy-core garbage like The Naked and the Dead
I agree with this anon, the movie's pacing is a lot better than the book. I get why Ellis wrote it the way he did but the redundant descriptions of materialistic items over and over again makes it not fun or engaging to read.
it works for me. i see how competitive and sad is his mind. but i was not too bored with it. i think is vital to understand the autistic he is with clothing brands or restaurants. there is something even chilidish. i feel the ennui of it all even when he not talk about it directly. without it i think it would be almost a shitty thriller. it works the redundancy to me, just want to say it.
I thought this was a great book, a truly great book.
The odd style was why it was great.
It was like Moby Dick.
And the writer was doing his best.
He pulled it off.
Wasn’t the whole point of Moby Dick to be boring as hell, to be like life at sea?
it's meant to bring you into that world and live vicariously, sailing used to be way more important to society and fascinating to people
I can't think of a single boring moment in Moby-Dick
the entire cetology section didn't bore you to tears?
No?
You missed the point then. The Book is literally meant to be boring, it's supposed to mimic the feeling of being a whaler, with long periods of droning nothingness and short moments of excitement. That's literally why the book is a classic. It flopped when it came out because it was intentionally boring, it only found critical success later when people appreciated that aspect of it.
good warm friendly post
Phenomenal book and a really great movie. I just despise how certain people look up to Bateman unironically. It makes normal people who love the book and movie be perceived as alt-right or conservative freaks due to the association the character has now
yeah shit sucks, the sigma male meme is just this gen's Tyler Durden, but worse, terrorist to full blown psycho
I went on a date with a chick and we ended up in a record store - which had DVDs. I pulled American Psycho off the shelf and she said "incel movie"
Shit is so moronic, people can't just enjoy media anymore without being boxed into a fricking Reddit Starter Pack meme. Same shit with music like Radiohead/Weezer - everyone who admits enjoying it is seen as a sad virgin for some reason. Fricking zoomers can't enjoy anything without ironic detachment
Funny, I snorted cocaine off of my copy with my date 2 weeks ago lmao
I read it in high school before it was a meme. I did have a teacher who recognized it and asked me what I thought about it. I can't remember what I said, but probably nothing edgy since I didn't think of it like that, probably that it was just extreme, and she said she thought the book was misogynist. The irony is that it was a "criminal justice" class and she liked to show us Law and Order episodes of women being strangled. I didn't get a very good education.
Maybe she had a point though.
>Same shit with music like Radiohead/Weezer - everyone who admits enjoying it is seen as a sad virgin for some reason.
That's rather weird. I don't know if Weezer has aged well at all, but I remember them being pretty popular when I was a teenager among the other middle-class white kids I grew up around, and people didn't seem to have too much trouble getting laid. I knew guys who liked them who joined the military.
>Fricking zoomers can't enjoy anything without ironic detachment
Yeah maybe. I dunno. We might've been the same way. I think this is what getting old feels like.
I was recommending the book to someone once and then, half way through my recommendation, I remembered the part where he nails a woman's hands to a 2x4, pepper sprays her face repeatedly, beats the shit out of her, cuts off her hands, iirc drills out the inside of her mouth, and then describes fricking what is left of her mouth and the resulting viscosity of his cum mixed with her blood and tissue. I just kinda trailed off and changed subjects.
That's honestly, not even the top 5 worst fantasies Bateman did or thought about. I think the kid in the zoo or the rat are the worst
imagine letting homos on tiktok ruin something for you
at least theyre having fun.
I never said it was ruined for me. It just sucks to talk about in irl because of the association it has now. Plus, 99% of the memes people make with Bateman are dogshit
It’s because Bateman is the poster boy for modern day man. Devoid of meaning, purpose, hopes and dreams. I agree it’s excessive sometimes with the memery but it fits. BEE is brilliant for this shit.
You're half right. But, Bateman does have dreams and desires though, its because of his upbringing, terrible mental health, the shitty lifestyle he hates but also maintains, the fakeness of the people around him, fakeness he feels for himself, and the rigid society that loves and adores people like him, make him unable to truly leave it behind. Hes trapped and he doesnt know how to get out because everything is the way it is
>Bateman does have dreams and desires
The entire point is that he’s a hollow man with little to no sense of his “self.” Any insight into Batemans character is muddled and not really taken anywhere conclusive, the reader is left as clueless and unsure as Bateman himself is. At its core the book is about an era where there is a crisis of the self.
Im not completely saying your interpretation is wrong, but their's a subtext of him having a dream. A man can be hollow but still have desires. He's clearly either a really repressed gay man or bisexual but represses it, and all the insanely fricked up things he thinks about or does shows that repression, from what he cant have. He wants his secretary since he views her as a some type of escape of the fakeness of his fiance, a relative outsider from his world of no identity, and a companion when he leaves his that world of yuppies forever. I can think of a few more. Some are, like you said are not fully conclusive, but they're still there, and they make up a vague and not fully unclear picture of who he is
A 1980s haute bourgeois failure gay slumming it by cruising mere executives is the poster boy for 2020s man? The more you know.
>Bateman
>gay
>
Your (You) was sufficient.
I ended up reading almost all of Ellis's work years ago when Lunar Park was his most recent novel.
The biggest take away is that any deeper symbolism is probably accidental. Ellis wrote all of his books as self insert fantasies first and foremost and Lunar park and his later novels simply dropped the facade.
American Psycho isn't actually that special since he can only write books like it and his "uber rich people are morally bankrupt" theme/shtick is an okay sentiment but is lost after he insists on having his self insert characters be gay psychopaths like himself.
I'm actually re-reading it, it takes about 80-90 pages to finally get to the fricked up violence (Tuesday), and boy does it deliver.
It made me laugh a couple of times up to that point.
This book is an absolute riot. There are moments of pure brilliance scattered throughout that the long mundane descriptions don't prepare you for. It's hilarious, grotesque and intensely vivid in a way very few stories are
i know how you feel op, i loved the movie, so i bought the book and all the brands and list of things is just exhausting, i understand its supposed to be cause he is mental but it gets annoying
The violent parts were the least interesting sections of the book to me. His intricate description of details of his life or the little essays about cultural phenomena like Genesis were far more interesting. I think at some point I started skimming or outright skipping the violent bits. They are so grotesque and over-the-top.
Didn't get filtered.
But I want to ask BEE why he included the Zoo scene with the kid when even he felt it didn't add verisimilitude to Bateman's character.
Yeah I didn't like it that much. I might try again cause I read it when I was 16. I just remember it being very boring mundane activities interspersed with "I should cut off the waitress' head later". I don't think I finished it, I gave up near the end where it switches to a third person pov. I liked the movie better.
Is this really the extent of satisfaction IQfy got out of AP? To me it was more interesting and tragic. Far from boring.
I did my senior thesis on this book, it's definitely not for everyone, the droning banal tone of the non violent parts sets up the shock of the violent scenes within the book, the sections cause the reader to question how much of the book is a delusion and how much is reality. There's a lot hidden within those scenes that will come out upon multiple readings, and it allows the reader a window into Pat's mind. I wouldn't feel bad if I got filtered by the book though, it was really a slog to finish.
american pedo.
No, if you got filtered by this book you probably have a severe case of zoomer brain rot.