/lit/ - Literature

all of everything is in the head

>>5020535
It's all in your head because it's a book

>>5020543
Let me rephrase for all the deep people here

The events that occur to him, do they occur to others as well? And I mean literally everything. Not just his verbal outbursts.

>>5020547
The events of the novel occur, but society that he lives in is too self obsessed to care about it.

>>5020566
I'm glad someone else shares this interpretation. The whole point of the book is that awful stuff happens and no one cares. It's not just, "HURR DURR HE'S INSANE HE FANTASIZED HE WOKE UP AT THE END HURR DURR."

Is this book worth reading?

>>5020719
I'm about 100pg in and I'm really liking it so far. If he can pull off the visceral, intense parts I as well as he's pulling off the 80's business culture satire, it'll be one of the best books I've read this year.

>>5020753
I just downloaded it and I plan to read it, I just wanted to be sure it was worth it

>>5020535
pretty disturbing stuff but I enjoyed it. told the story better than the movie (obviously), some of the scenes in the book make the movie look like high school musical

Read Glamorama after. I'm reading it right now and it's pretty good. Same style, but more talky.

>>5020566
/this

in the end, no one knows who is who and bateman has no fucking clue who he's killed.

personally enjoyed the book as a casual read.

i will, however, in no way praise it as anything above mediocre.

>>5020535

I've come to the conclusion that with most such questions, asking it is missing the point. I'd offer the movie Blade Runner as a comparison - it doesn't matter if Deckard is or isn't a replicant, in fact, hoping for a definitive answer is missing the point. What's important is that it's ambiguous. And if Deckard might be a replicant, well then - mightn't the replicants be human?

Similarly, is Bateman somehow less morally reprehensible if it's all in his head? Somehow saner if it isn't? Is the mentality, the zeitgeist, that he's intended to embody less objectionable if his narration is veridical? More so? Surely not.

I'm your Wittgenstein, OP, I want to shew you the way out of the bottle you're trapped in. What say you?

>>5021565
Thank you for posting, anon.

>>5020713
>>5020566
I feel so stupid now. I thought it was hurr dur fantasizes.

>>5020719
>>5020753

> I'm about 100pg in

the problem is that it's a 400 page book, and the last 3/4 of it are just the same shit as the first 1/4, happening over and over again. You might as well just skip to the ending before you get sick of reading about sound systems and restaurant menus.

>>5021565
The cut I watched made it brobingly obvious that Deckard was a replicant.

>>5020566
I really don't know. After reading Glamorama, I felt something else about Ellis, that went beyond that. If it has happened or not, that's not the question; if someone's there to say it's happened, there's the difference; confettis.

yes

None of it actually happened, it's a novel, a work of fiction.

It's a satire first and foremost so if he didn't really kill people it would undermine the whole point of the book. Yes, he killed those people.

Clearly.

BEE actually ripped off a Nick Cage movie to make this book. The flick's called "Vampire's Kiss".

IT'S ALL SUICIDE IT'S ALL SUICIDE

>>5023204
Austism alert

>>5020535
The Book takes place during Wall Street Crash of 87.

It's never mentioned in the book.

>>5020566
>American Psycho thread
>anon gets dublès and no one cares

You guys are truly a top tier board

>>5020719
Listen to the audiobook. You don't really need to pay close attention. Just let it flow over you, and feel the brands and names blurr together. The book has a weird trance-like quality to it, and it gets almost lyrical at times.

>>5023462
get out of /lit/, grips

>implying there isn't anything outside of your head.

>>5023723
You ruined it by even pointing it out, you worthless shitstain.

>>5023723
>there being an American Psycho thread at all
>top-tier board

pls

>>5021306
but didn't the taxi driver know?

>>5025168
>implying a taxi driver would be considered part of Bateman's societal world

>>5024570
/thread

>>5025168

And possibly also the estate agent. Or maybe he was just paranoid etc. It doesn't matter which is the case, it's the ambiguity itself that's important.

>>5025168
Yes, Bateman killed a taxi driver and in some later chapter another taxi driver recognized him from a wanted poster. Here's the bit:


“Man, your face is on a wanted poster downtown,” he says, unflinching.
“I think I would like to stop here,” I manage to croak out.
“You’re the guy, right?” He’s looking at me like I’m some kind of viper.
Another cab, its light on, empty, cruises past ours, going at least eighty. I’m not saying
anything, just shaking my head. “I am going to take”—I swallow, trembling, open my
leather datebook, pull out a Mount Blanc pen from my Bottega Veneta briefcase—“your
license number down...” "American Psycho" By Bret Easton Ellis 209
“You kill Solly,” he says, definitely recognizing me from somewhere, cutting another

>all this retards thinking the murderers had to actually happen in reality to make clear the point of the book

>>5025323
they, the murders, didn't have to happen but it gives the incessantly nonsensical diatribe depth as opposed to something that is blatantly trying to not be literal.

>i'm drunk, if this doesn't make sense try to get the gist of what you think i was trying to say.

This thread has reminded me that I must reread the book, it was one of my favourites as a teenager. I expect to be slightly disappointed, but aren't we always?

Bateman says it; he's the logical extent of this society; so are the murders -- a selfish and materialist society denying individual value is basically "murdering" the human aspect of people; Bateman accomplishes this, and thus cannot be caught nor hated (this is one particular aspect of the book; who hates Bateman? he's nice as fuck.), as he is everything society adores, brought to absurd extremities.

>>5020547
>>5020566
>>5020713
>>5021306
>>5022083
>>5023408
>>5025168
No. Let's set the record straight please. The other people saying "the reality of the murders aren't the point" are doing better, but still sorta missing the point, if Ellis had any in mind.

>>5025226
Thats unreliable, Bateman has delusions/hallucinations about what other people say and things he sees. The taxi driver said that is as reliable as the ATM really saying "FEED ME A STRAY CAT"

I really thought /lit/ would be better at this by now, this is like the hundredth time we've had this thread and thisll be the hundredth time I'll give my conclusion, which is based not only on actually reading the novel carefully where you'll notice how impossible nearly everything happening in the book is.

Other stuff that happened in the book that is unbelievable:
- He bumps into a korean grocer's stand, knocking over a lot of the fruit. bBteman attempts to give the grocer his credit card, but the grocer just bursts into song in response.
- Several minutes of walking later, Bateman buys five vials of crack and swallows them whole.
- In the same chapter, he goes to a hardware store and buys butcher knives. Butcher knives aren't carried in hardware stores, especially not any store you'd find on Broadway ST in Manhattan, where the chapter takes place.
- He drags a corpse past his apartment doorman, leaving a trail of blood. The doorman doesn't notice this. Similar things happen throughout like his maid cleaning up his bloody newspapers.

more generally:
- Bateman is already of unsound mind and is taking a lot of drugs throughout the novel making him in the first place an unreliable narrator
- The logistics of his murders outstrip his ability to do anything else--he doesn't work, and he can't even get reservations to his most desired restaurant over the entire novel's length (again, more clever/wry hints at bateman's impotence).

The only reason there is any ambiguity about the reality of the murders is because of the movie. This conclusion is generously supported by an interview with Ellis as well.

>But the murder sequences are so over the top, so baroque in their violence, it seems hard to take them in a literal context. And there are dozens more hints that direct the reader toward the realization that for all the book's surface reality, it is still satirical, semi-comic and -- dare I say it? -- playful in a way.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/06/books/bret-easton-ellis-answers-critics-of-american-psycho.html

>>5020566
Dubs confirm that someone actually understands the fucking book for once.

>>5025612
>The only reason there is any ambiguity about the reality of the murders is because of the movie.

This is flatly contradicted by the very interview you linked to. It's a discussion I was having with people before the movie ever came out.

More to the point, though, to say that the depiction of the acts is 'satirical' is not to say that they are not veridical within their fictional world. Catch-22 is satirical and nobody suggests that Heller intends us to envision WWII as not taking place or the USAF as not existing, etc. We aren't called upon to suppose that Major Major Major Major doesn't exist or that Milo Minderbinder doesn't really come to control a vast business empire.

Bateman's impunity is as ambiguous as the acts themselves - does he get away time and again because the acts are all in his head, or because the satirical tilt of the novel demands that the world he occupies be largely indifferent to them? How would AP work as satire if he were constantly a fugitive and eventually captured or killed? How COULD it?

No, it's all in the author's head.

>>5023723
This is one of the creepiest posts I've seen on /lit/, because it seems this Anon actually thinks caring about doubles and other /b/-tier trash makes for a "top tier board".

It's disturbing. Like watching someone eat a bowl of shit and say it tastes better than caviar.

>>5027274
>Like watching someone eat a bowl of shit and say it tastes better than caviar.

Can I nominate this for the worst piece of writing I've ever seen?

>>5027278
sure, print it out and tack it up on your wall, among all the other shit nobody else cares about

>>5027274
Bro, you're too self-obsessed to understand that guy's meta-circular joke.

>>5027284
If only I could save your butthurt.

>>5027274
>it seems this Anon actually thinks caring about doubles and other /b/-tier trash makes for a "top tier board"

It seemed to me that he was commenting favourably on the absence of comment.

>It's disturbing. Like watching someone eat a bowl of shit and say it tastes better than caviar.

I think what actually happened is that you saw someone eating caviar who mentioned that it tasted better than shit, and then you got confused.

>>5027278
>Can I nominate this for the worst piece of writing I've ever seen?

Jesus, you must not read much. Don't glorify mediocrity with overstatement, just let it die on the vine.

>>5027334
>Jesus, you must not read much. Don't glorify mediocrity with overstatement, just let it die on the vine.

>American Psycho thread
>advice to not glorify violence

kek

>>5027336
>advice to not glorify violence

>>5027334
>Don't glorify mediocrity

>>5027375
>trying to be logical

kek

Ok. I'm doing a summer easy for uni which will give me 6 credits if it's good enough. Its a literally analysis essay and needs to be 2 pages long which isn't that bad but keep in mind i want these credits. Id like to do the essay on Infinite Jest but theres so much content in it it's hard to decide what thesis to make. Any Ideas /litl/? Other books I've read i'v been considering: Wittgenstiens Mistress, House of Leaves,The brother k,portrait of the artist, blood meridian, and stoner. I can't even mention the rest but any ideas? I was going to do a literary comparison of IJ to Hamlet and the role it plays in the novel but that would probably take more than 2 pages. Please only respond if you've read any of the novels and have good ideas or theories on Ij i can blow the english department away with.

>>5030031
Theres a rule against asking us to do your homework you miserable dishonest piece of shit