/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2006916]

>You will never read American Psycho for the first time again.

[Anonymous No.2006922]

I've never read it.

[Anonymous No.2006923]

>>2006922
You must do so. It's one of the best books I've ever had the pleasure of indulging in.

[Anonymous No.2006943]

;_;

[Anonymous No.2006954]

>You will never read American Psycho without imagining Doubles Guy doing all the stuff described in the book.

[Anonymous No.2006958]

You know this really doesn't bother me. Will be just as good the second if I run out of other books to read a first time.

[Anonymous No.2006965]

>>2006954
This.
I made the mistake of seeing the movie first.

[Anonymous No.2006967]

You like Bret Easton Ellis?

His early work was a little too "Binky" for my tastes, but when "American Psycho" came out in 1991, I think he really came into his own, commercially and artistically. And I stress the word "artistically". The whole book has a really plodding, blugeoning variety of crass irony, and at the same time managed to perfect the surprise "it was all a dream" ending in a way that makes you understand why it's so darn popular in thrilling Hollywood movies. Now he's been compared to Chuck Palahniuk, but I think Bret has a far more bitter cynical sense of how to appeal to the reader's inherent consumerism while also invoking the reader's disgust with that consumerism. In '87, Bret released "Rules of Attraction", a genuinely informational navelgazing roman-a-clef about a bunch of tedious rich kids who go to Bennington. All that remained for him to discover was a truly Capote-esque sense of product placement-cum-snobbery, which would result in chart-toppers like "Glamorama" (1999).

I didn't really understand his early work----too nihilistic, too "angst-y". But I think "American Psycho" is Bret's undisputed masterpiece. Because Bret's shtick is not just about the pleasures of consumerism, it's about a basic underlying anhedonic worldview illuminated only by chemical intoxication. Even the sex in his books is utterly joyless! At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of his early novels, but brings with it a consummate professionalism that really gives the irony a ham fist.

Here, let me play another one for you....

[Anonymous No.2006980]

>mfw reading American Psycho for the first time

[Anonymous No.2006976]

>>2006967
I cracked a smile.

[Anonymous No.2006987]

>>2006967
Very nice, very nice. Except the students in Rules of Attraction went to Camden...

[Ziggy Stardust !LrtpfUHOC. No.2007090]

I love the fact that he wrote the book after yuppies were dead and neoliberalism started showing his even darker monsters.

Bateman, real or false, was going to change.

[Anonymous No.2007092]

i'm rereading it for the first time

[Anonymous No.2007114]

>>2006967

Awesome. "File > Save Page As..." that post.

[Anonymous No.2007567]

>my face when the movie was better anyway

[Anonymous No.2007576]

But I already saw the movie...

[Anonymous No.2007578]

>>2007090

Little known fact: Patrick Bateman was, in fact, appointed by George W. Bush to replace Bill Donaldson as Chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2005.

Unfortunately nobody gives a damn when you gut, castrate and disembowel regulatory oversight of hedge funds, subprime mortgages, and quants at Goldman Sachs.

I'm sure that President Bachmann will appoint him Secretary of the Treasury.

[Anonymous No.2007579]

>>2007576
I dont think bee is even the type of writer whose merit would be lost in translation to film so this is not as good a troll as you think.

[Anonymous No.2007591]

ive only seen the movie a couple dozen times, and ive fallen in love with it.

am i missing out on not reading the book?