Reid About It

"American Psycho" Bret Easton Ellis
I haven't felt this sick since that Ronald Reagan film festival. A horrible, disgusting, wretched book, written from the viewpoint of insanity. Whereas the movie allowed the Patrick Bateman character to at least have a sense of irony and black humor, it's all carefully kept negative in the original text, with no humor or redeeming characteristics whatsoever.

The book is four hundred pages. The first hundred serve almost no purpose, save to describe Bateman's clothes, friends, habits, skin regimen, stereo choices, and other surface level characteristics. The final hundred describe acts of depraved torture that also serve no purpose.

I get transgressional fiction, but this book just made me feel dirty for reading it. No good guys. No heroes. Not even any normal people. Just villains and monsters.