"I am creative, I'm young, [...] highly motivated and extremely efficient. In other words, I am fundamentally essential to society. "
With his predatory smile and chic suits, Patrick Bateman is the typical profile of a young Yuppie Trump for years. As his associates in the Chemical Bank, he is a ruthless ambition. Like his friends, his pace evenings cocktails breaks cocaine. The only difference is that Patrick Bateman violates torture and kill. At night, he reveals his dual personality by assaulting bystanders, tramps, or even a friend. But it never feels anything. Just a slight annoyance when his scripts are not going exactly as planned ...
"Abandon all hope, you who enter here" is not saying, quite rightly, that begins American Psycho, a novel shock years 90. Indeed, American Psycho is a thriller, cynical, desperate, who speaks of an America, that of the 80's, that of money, stock market, the Reagan years, symbolized by Patrick Bateman, a young Golden Boy working in a bank near Wall Street. It is rich, greedy and materialistic, obsessed with his physical appearance. He spends hours each day in sports clubs, spends a fortune on designer clothes and beauty treatments, dine every evening in the best restaurants, most exclusive, most popular, along with his friends, all of the same medium . And at night he turns into bloodthirsty psychopath. He kills, he violates it torture. He chose his victims randomly and give free rein to his impulses, more and more violent, more and more extreme.
The book, written almost entirely in first person, we plunged into the deepest thoughts of his hero. A cold be obsessed with sex and serial killers like Ted Bundy or Charles Bronson, he is able to call in the middle of the most innocuous conversations. He has no friends, just relationships, from the same social and professional, he meets every day without being able to name them. He has a girlfriend, Evelyn, but they do not like each other and stay together only for questions social status. Patrick Bateman is incapable of feeling any emotion for anyone. Individuals not interested, they do not exist. Moreover, nowhere in the book there are physical descriptions of people alongside Patrick Bateman. The only thing we know about them is the luxury brands of clothes that lists Bateman tirelessly at each meeting.
"Price sees Ted Madison, leaning against the railing at the back of the room, dressed in a tuxedo wool twill, with a collar shirt Paul Smith, with a bow tie and cummerbund to home Rainbow Neckwear, cufflinks Trianon diamond, shoes and leather grosgrain Ferragamo, and an antique watch, Hamilton, at Saks. "
At first, Patrick Bateman does not seem different from his friends. It is a caricature of American yuppies, neither better nor worse than them. But as and when his dark side broke, gently at first, turning a remark, a thought. Then, over Patrick abusing drugs and alcohol, the more dark side is growing in importance. Bateman quickly proves to be racist, homophobic and misogynistic. And when the murders begin climbing it to the bloody horror of absolute. The killings are becoming more violent, more and more excessive. Bateman kills anyone, tramps, prostitutes, friends, even a child. It engages in rape, torture of a sadistic extreme acts of cannibalism. All these horrors are described coldly, without emotion, in the same manner as described in closets of his friends. At last we come to doubt the reality. Bateman is in such a schizophrenic delusion that it is impossible to differentiate between the real and fantasized.
"Back in the room. Christie was lying on the bed Japanese, attached to the feet of the bed, tied up with rope, arms above the head of the pages of Vanity Fair last month pushed into the mouth. Two electrical cables, connected to a battery, are fixed on her breasts, which took a brown tint. "
This book is that of all the excesses of all scandals. It is the novel that earned its author, Bret Easton Ellis, his bad reputation and many death threats at the same time. It is a visceral novel takes the reader by the throat and plunges into the madness of his main character, is forced to watch America the money straight in the eye, in all its most despicable and inhuman. It's gory, it's vulgar, even pornographic. And at the same time, it is a deeply funny book, full of humor, of course black and cynical.
"While selling records purchases of Charles I play with the baby that Nancy is in her arms, handing him my American Express platinum card that tries to catch a greedy little hand, but I shake head, taking a high-pitched voice and pinched his chin, waving the card in front of his face chirping: "But yes, I am a murderer, and I'm a psychopath, but yes, You see, I like to kill people, oh yes, I like that, my love, my little smart, oh I like it ... ""
is a humor-based comic repetition, absurd situations, shifts between a situation and the perception of Patrick Bateman. Such as permanent confusion of identities that appear regularly throughout the book. All these bankers know coexist but can not remember their names. It matter anyway, they are all identical. Or as this little cruel games which are engaged Patrick and his friends and that is to humiliate them bums holding out a ticket or by throwing a remark meant to funny. Or as the excuse to bring in video tapes club that Patrick uses whenever it wants to slip away. Of course, in fact tape is that it is murder. Or the Patty Winters Show that Patrick Bateman look every morning. Show touting dubious subjects. "Rambo is, I met him," Possibility of nuclear war, "" Big Breasts "...
" There was a woman who had breast reduction because she was too Important - this poor fool. Immediately I called McDermott, who also watched the show, and we spent the rest of the sequence to make fun of the woman. "
American Psycho is a novel one, a UFO literature. This is not an easy reading and it can easily offend some sensibilities. It is a novel that takes effort from the reader, effort rewarded a hundredfold. This is a novel of incredible wealth that has much more to offer than sex and violence. It's funny and cruel. Making fun of what is vile is not an easy art, but Bret Easton Ellis proficiently. It's a look acid and some concessions on America, over a company that puts money before human beings, who think those who have no Rolex or fifty years have not succeeded in life. And if we had to find a moral to all this, it could be best summarized by two words that conclude the book. "Hopeless."
This book was read as part of a common reading organized by Vozrozhdenyie. You can read the notes of other participants.
Vozrozhdenyie , Jana , Lisalor , Nanet , Petitepom
0 comments:
Post a Comment