I only read American Pyscho. Are his other books any good?
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I only read American Pyscho. Are his other books any good?
I only read American Pyscho. Are his other books any good?
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They're pretty shitty actually. Even Amerisycho is kinda meh
Need a flow chart for where to go based on how you interpret American Psycho.
If the solipsism and cultural rot stuff hit you check out Glamorama. It's long af but more gross and more postmodern. But it has even more of the woah society man stuff. The recurring theme is: The better you look, the more you see.
If you picked up on the desperate humanity behind Ellis' Bateman mask in AP, then go with The Rules of Attraction. It's funny and "shallow" and about Bennington college in VT and a pseudo love triangle with the only genuine Ellis self-insert character, Paul.
And if you found AP to be a comedy it's a comedy then read Lunar Park. The book falls apart at the end when Ellis shifts gears into trying to imitate Philiip Roth. But the first 9/10s are some of the funniest stuff I've read in any book. The muh spooky horror aspects suck, though there's a good strain of creepy af AP references.
Lmfao
They are better, generally. Depends what you're after per The short story collection is worth checking out for low time investment.
Yeah good point. I wasn't sure how to recommend The Informers based off American Psycho. The story "In The Islands" is a masterful short story up there with Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place". The first 'story' in the book starts off so wrong footed it might turn people off, but the rest of them set the bar for flashy minimalism. One of the stories goes somewhere not even AP dared to go. As an Ellis fanboy, I actually really enjoyed the movie too. It does a good job capturing the chapters it bothers to depict. If the stupid studio/director (whoever fricked it up) actually did the book as intended it'd have been a classic. Ah well.
Thanks. Reading Rules of Attraction now.
In my view it is American Psycho > Glamorama > Less Than Zero > Rules of Attraction > Lunar Park. Haven't read The Shards, The Informers or Imperial Bedrooms, am currently reading Glamorama but I already know I'll place it in that way. I actually really like the way Ellis writes and dig many of his recurring obsessions, but I can't really stand his "public" side as it is a bit cringe
Imperial Bedrooms sucks, and i liked LTZ a lot
Imagine having a mature hairline and clearly being in your 40s and wearing those oversized sleeves under a black hoodie holy cringe. People are frozen in the era that that peaked is an understatement
He's wealthy and gay I don't think he cares.
TRoA is definitely better than LTZ. You're probably going to place Glamorama lower, it has a gigantic falloff in a similar manner of Lunar Park.
His public side on his podcast is great. Def rec if you want to hear from good authors / actors that are relatively unknown or forgotten.
I could agree that TRoA is objectively a better novel, I just think that LTZ is more iconic and maybe more important. For Glamorama's placement I'll see as I liked very little about Lunar Park, wasn't really convinced even about the first half. Regarding his public persona I just find that him getting involved with Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan, defending pornography, recommending a biography about Robbie Williams like it is some sort of great work of art or other similar activities just doesn't seem to make him a serious author in my view. Won't change the fact that I enjoyed some of his work though
Yesterday I read the first chapters of American Psycho, A Confederate of Dunces, and The Master and Margarita to decide which I'd read next, and I'm not going to lie bros, BEE came off like a rank amateur in the competition
I thought the April Fool's chapter of AP was excellent tbh. The shit the book is notorious for doesn't start until past the halfway point.
I thought its repetition of the same "name the brand" technique to drive home the same cynical point over and over again got boring quickly. With Toole, I felt like he really loved the people of New Orleans, and so their vices served to make them as human as their virtues. With Bulgakov, I could see that these were really people he had quarreled with over and over again, and his hatred for them gave them life. With Ellis, I just feel like he's taking shots at lazy caricatures.
I don't see shots being taken w/ Ellis esp not the 1st chapter
It's literally the only thing he does in the first chapter. "look at these banal people, isn't it pathetic how they pretend to care about the word salad that pours from their mouth? but really the only things that drive their actions are drugs and sex and an overwhelming obsession for the approval of others that compels their conformity"
I think it may have went over your head
>Bateman's friend drones unceasingly about societal issues. His rhetoric is shallow and dull, but he at least seems to genuinely feel passionate until he reveals that his emotions are being driven by the steroids he's taking
>Bateman's girlfriend hosts yadda yadda until revealed it's the depressants
>Both have little appetite which might mean something, except Bateman says it's probably just the cocaine
Etc etc
Read the christmas chapter
No read the zoo chapter
Sorry frens, I'm picked Master and Margarita from the trio instead, and it's very very good
The rest of his books are very hit or miss. I guess AP sorta is too but for a diffrent reason then his other works.
>His most controversial work is the graphically violent American Psycho (1991) which Ellis has said "came out of a place of severe alienation and loneliness and self-loathing. I was pursuing a life—you could call it the Gentlemen's Quarterly way of living—that I knew was bullshit, and yet I couldn't seem to help it."[36] The book was intended to be published by Simon & Schuster, but they withdrew after external protests from groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and many others due to its alleged misogyny. It was later published by Vintage. Some consider this novel, whose protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is a cartoonishly materialistic yuppie and serial killer, an example of transgressive art. American Psycho has achieved considerable cult status.
In what ways is the book misogynistic? I have only watched the movie.
The book is much more graphic than the film and it contains long descriptions of torture and dismemberment of predominantly female characters, but the outcry was far disproportionate as there aren’t misogynistic statements
Ah I see, and the author is homosexual? Interesting.
>In what ways is the book misogynistic?
It's not. Patrick Bateman is (by today's standards), but the book is not
The Rules of Attraction is good as a kind of glib college novel if you wanted to read that kind of thing. One of the main characters is literally Bateman's younger brother as a guitar-playing art school kid. Less Than Zero is by far my personal fave. Arguably a little rough around the edges (he wrote it at age 20) but that also means it's very unpretentious. The things Ellis hits you over the head with in AP are, although still not exactly subtle, toned down significantly. The vibe is dreamy and tinged with paranoia. From what I've heard about his later works it seems like he fell off and became more interested in metafiction and his own celebrity.
he also dislikes DFW
The vibe of what, American psycho or less than zero?
Is his new book Shards worth reading? I'm a bit turned off by the idea of him doing "80's rich kids do drugs and murders are happening" again.
Yes, I thought it was pretty good, and especially the last third is almost hypnotic and haunting in a way. Definitely recommend to people who enjoy Brets work.
Why is he doing the Wakanda salute? What does this picture say about the author?
"His second name will be Easton!"
"But... but Honey, Brett was already a stretch, but Easton is not even a real nam--"
"WE WILL CALL HIM EASTON!"
It really pisses me off that you chose to cutoff the word name in your imaginary dialogue when it's already been pronounced, you egg.
probably a family name
where tf are you from that this doesnt happen
Finished Glamorama and I have to say that I really enjoyed it, although I admit that there are chapters where it falls apart and the style is sometimes inconsistent. But the plot, while a bit confusing, is actually gripping and I liked how it manages to remain mysterious and many elements are never explained. I can totally understand why some people didn’t like it though
I read Less Than Zero years ago and remember very little of it. Something about a bunch of teenaged gays in Hollywood and how much the protag misses his grandparents. They're looking for a friend of theirs the entire time and I can't remember what happened.