What does American Psycho get right?

What does American Psycho get right?

The toxic patriarchal sub culture that is wallstreet greed and corruption

And how!

These digits

Plebeist way to read the book.

The clothes make the man

Did he really kill all those people?

The scene where he stabs the homeless man's eyes out and stomps on his dog's neck genuinely made me feel sick.

>All of the male characters are closet gay
>Patrick's fantasies of violence are triggered by a reaction to the hollowness and misdeeds around him and a desire to lash out
>All that fucking self-medication people are doing for their various mental health issues

Right. The way the smell of that homeless man is described makes me ill.

So glad bateman stomps him out

The zeitgeist of 80s yuppie culture. Also, it's hilarious. BEE is sort of the author that got me into literature when I was younger, but I haven't read any of his books in years and my taste has changed dramatically, so I'm not sure I'd like him as much as I once did.

lol

Oh Nixon.

What made it so hilarious to you?

Not that user, but what's funny to me is the absurdity of the subculture and batemans frenzied, fragmented sense of self that causes him to act in silly ways, his occasional serial killer references and off-hand remarks about wanting to bash someones brains in with a pipe that his collegues take to be nothing more than random banter. The irony and utter hopelessness of the situation in which these people, who have lost too much of themselves to escape their own social reality, find themselves.

All of BEEs work portrays a hopelessness and nihilism that is so total that it stops being frightening and all you can do is laugh as you watch people burn in the hell they have created for themselves.

I think the distinction between drama and comedy comes from whether or not there is hope for the characters. I felt disgust while reading 1984, but Bateman is actually pretty relateable in a screwed up way.

Does Lunar Park have that same vibe to you?

.

I bingeread all of BEEs major works a few years ago, and I thought Lunar Park was pretty fun at the time, but more because it stylizes the absurdity of upperclass social dynamics to a new extreme and because BEE has some remarkably silly ideas this time around, like having the protagonist, a fictionalized version of himself, face off against a demonic kirby toy.

It's a meme book, somewhere between b-movie tier horror, magical realism and social satire. If that's what you feel your life is missing right now go pick it up. Otherwise you should go for less than zero or imperial bedrooms.

It wasn't less than zero.

The culture of virtue signalling swipples. Taking the chainsaw to gated suburban community.

What do you mean by Virtue Signalling?

I've already read it, and I thought it wasn't great, even for BEE. Imperial Bedrooms is his worst work.

He means anyone that doesn't agree with his opinions of what is "right and wrong"

>Implying BEE knows the difference between right and wrong

Really captured the feeling of overwhelming insecurity and besides that is one of the funniest books I've read

Why is it funny to you?

Bump