This is literally just a list of brands and products

Stick with Ready Player One.

>"but you can't read heidegger without aristotle of course"
This is literally true though

Pretty much, yeah. The author literally said he wanted it to be boring, just to make it even more contrasty with the edgy Bateman, also it's a critique of yuppies. Still tho, a boring book, I never finished it though. What a boring shitshow.

that's the thing you remember from reading this? I feel like if you're not disturbed by some of the scenes in this book, there's something seriously wrong with you

I usually skip the descriptions of lists of brands.

>just imagine instead of clothes he's Veeky Forums saying "but you can't read heidegger without aristotle of course"
kek perfect analogy

It's stylistically designed to be that way.
It broke new ground.

Let me bite.

Those wardrobe descriptions were usually the first thing the writter points out as he sees someone. That's his first thought. The idea here is to show how shallow those poeple are : It's not about personality or character, only material things. He does it always to really make it clear. It is intended to be this way. I do agree it is tiringsome as you read it, but its a vital part of the whole upper-class golden generation America he is trying to portrait.

Daily reminder that The Force Awakens is much much worse than Rogue One.

It's deeper than that, though. Bateman's not supposed to be a normal yuppie. He's an inconceivably wealthy old-money creature. This is only hinted at--his father's power and wealth which are way beyond the generic white-boy finance-major assholes he hangs with--but it's a super-important hint to understanding the book.

Bateman is obsessed with "fitting in" and being a person but he has no idea what a person is. His descriptions of clothes and music (which are intentionally ridiculous, Ellis says) are his perception of the culture around him.

The people he hangs with aren't Bateman, he's a singular creature in this book, and he's trying to fit into an empty culture and the verbal diarrhea is his only way of grasping it. The old-money wealthy lifestyle doesn't work for him so he's trying the consumption-driven-asshole lifestyle because it's the closest thing he can find to what a person is, what a life is. The only other alternative is the life of the poor/homeless/prostitutes which utterly repulse him. When none of these options satisfy him, over time, you see the cracks and that's where the violence comes in. (Unlike in the movie, it's very obvious in the book that the violence is not real, it's just cartoonish nonsense.)

The point is he can't find an exit (see the final paragraph). Culture is all there is. Even the violent fantasies, being as inhuman as possible, don't let him escape from the soul-crushing drudgery of having to embrace society in one way or another.

American Psycho is not about "wealth makes you a dirtbag", it's "we all barely exist as individuals because we can only exist through society or as a reaction to society". The criticism of corporate/finance types is just part of it because of the era the book was written in. It's not the real point of the book.

The movie misses all of this, by the way, and just treats it as a black comedy, which is totally fine. I do like the movie, but it's completely different from the book despite having all the same scenes (directed by Pierre Menard, basically)

One of the funny things about the book is that in the gore scenes bateman often still cataloges the clothing that everyone is wearing including the victims

Could you point me to the part where it's hinted at that he comes from old money? I completely missed that.

And I don't agree on how the violence doesn't seem real in the book. Plus, when he meets the real estate agent she seems spooked, implying that she's aware of the atrocities he has committed.

yeah at least it's coherent

AND THERE IS NO EXIT!

This is the one part that sticks in my memory, although it's probably touched on elsewhere. On my first readthrough this page really caught my attention. It comes pretty late in the book too.

I think this was meant to be a twist that changes your reading of the book. But it's hard to say for sure. Even Ellis doesn't seem to care about this book, and in interviews he just goes along with the surface reading of "Wall Street people are assholes". I'm probably alone in reading AP the way I do, but I really like my interpretation of it.

In the movie, this exchange is moved to the beginning, which totally neuters it in my opinion.

>they're not even the right brands and products. they're a list a pseud would check off.
that's the whole fucking point. are you sure you read the right book?

oh, wow I feel stupid to have missed this now. I agree with your interpretation aswell, I think you nailed it

>Even Ellis doesn't seem to care about this book
Yeah, the end really proved it. I enjoyed the book, but the last 20 pages or so are basically unreadable. I understand the whole breakdown of his reality thing, but it's so abrubt and hamfisted that I honestly think he just got bored with writing it, and farted out the ending in half an hour to get it over with.

so's your life
get it?

Dat's da joke.

I really like the book, but it drags on too long. It didn't need 400 or whatever pages to achieve what it was trying to do. Some of those chapters are very tedious. Some are brilliant, like the one called something like "a normal thursday" or something like that is a wonderful mess.
Pretty sure he says something similiar in the last few pages.
I think his quote from Dosto's notes from underground at the beginning is very interesting. It says something along the lines of "this is not based on a real person, but people like this exist." The key difference between the characters is that the underground man in NFU almost is a competely withdrawn from the world, while bateman is obsessed with performativity and social minutiae (clothing, fitness, and so on). They have almost polar opposite approaches to socialization.

This is legitimately the best defense of this book I have ever read.

>he thinks the violence wasn't real
surfacereading/10

>This is literally just a list of brands and products

Like what makes up Batemen. There's nothing inside him, no soul, he's just a walking effigy or consumerism.

So I've heard. That's why I've avoided the book. I love the movie for the style but I struggle to find a whole lot of meaning in it.

definitively stating that the "violence was or wasn't real" is surface level.

why can't some of the violence have been real even if Bateman is an unreliable narrator?

and does it matter if the violence was real? Bateman suffers no repercussions from it which seems to reinforce his mental state as being utterly trapped in the life he has found himself in. So if it is shallow to read into the violence either being a figment of his imagination, another outer layer projected to the reader (in the same way Bateman projects sophistication and well-adjusted neoliberal attitude). Why lie to himself about the murder? or to the narrator he presumably is "honest" with?

the hyper-rational crescendo of the violence (as if it were another vertical to master and refine like his workout routine) doesn't require the violence to be real

i loved the third-person narration that went for a page or so

The descriptions are impressive and serve a function at first but they get tedious quickly, too much exhibition, we get it, that's how he sees the world, move on.

good post

>this shit is better than this turd

Rogue One is a pretty good blockbuster.
The Force Awakens is an unbelievably awful train wreck.

The fact that he stubbornly stays true to the theme throughout the 400 page novel makes it tedious to the point of hilarity

I have a hard time believing that all of the violence was real. He goes on a rampage in the middle of broad daylight, howling like a madman while foaming green ichor from his mouth, and gets into a violent police chase in which he blows a fucking car up and then views the scene in 3rd person, as if in a movie.

>(directed by Pierre Menard, basically)

yep

Girls! Girls! They're both awful.

not just a movie user

A video tape