Here Today... Gone To Hell!

I was reading "American Psycho" by Brett Easton Ellison and Axl was quoted in it ( for real or fictionary?). And he was mentioned in the same sentence as Ted Bundy. Funny, surreal and pretty ironic after all that's happended since that book came out. :hihi:

never knew that, thats pretty cool

American pyscho and Axl both get bashed by the feminazis, they have something in common.

well its more than quoted
they have like page about how Pt. bateman watched a show on Guns n Roses'  frontman and all.
the book is amazing. i need to read it in english now.
the torture scenes are... intense ?_?.

I saw the film years ago, can't remeber anything about Axl in there. And just finished reading the book today. The Axl part is at the end. The funny thing is how both Axl and the book is bashed for all the wrong reasons. You've got to read between the lines...(Don't damn me) The book is about violence against women an d uncle Axl is a looney? Who's insane? ;D

The book includes alot of violence against women AND men.

Yes it includes violence but is it ABOUT violence? I'm not so sure...

Haven't read the book myself, but having seen the film I can say that the film is certainly about the "fantasy" of violence and the line we all walk between these fantasies versus actions we take.

I did find some reviews on the net:

Review I
?Ellis, however, is not completely hopeless. It takes him until page 131 of his 399-page book to get to the first major act of violence, and until page 166 to get to his first actual killing (both of which, by the way, are men, apparently a deliberate ploy to make the book look even-handed in its treatment of the sexes.) Before that first killing and in between the subsequent ones, there is some very funny parody of 80s culture, and Ellis is dead on target. The call-waiting/answering machine culture takes its share of shots, as well as trash television: A running joke in the book is Bateman's favorite talk show, which discusses topics as diverse as dwarf tossing and home abortion kits.

There is a marvelous, if unappetizing, scene where Bateman steals a urinal cake from a restaurant bathroom, coats it in chocolate, wraps it in a Godiva box, and has it delivered to his girlfriend as they dine together in a fancy restaurant. She eats it, refusing to admit how awful it is because it came in a Godiva box. "I adore Godiva," she says, not understanding why Bateman won't join in. It's a very funny and shocking jab at people who see the label rather than the product. She gags, forcing it down, saying, "It's just so minty."

The funniest three chapters in the book are the "musical group" chapters, in which the narrator suddenly spends a few pages discussing one of his favorite singers or bands. Being a vapid soul, he likes only the most vapid bands; Huey Lewis and the News, Whitney Houston and Genesis are the three bands he discusses in the book. By taking these pop bands so seriously, so analytically, Ellis succeeds in showing just how soulless and transparent these bands are.

Bateman is constantly telling his friends what he does, but they are all so wrapped up in themselves that they don't hear him or don't believe what he's saying. After feeding his girlfriend the urinal cake, he tells her quite openly that "My need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale cannot be, um, corrected." She responds to his admission by saying "Patrick, if you're going to start in again on why I should have breast implants, I'm leaving." Bateman calls another character and leaves a long, detailed admission of guilt on his answering machine. The man responds, "Bateman killing Owen and the escort girl? Oh that's bloody marvelous," forgetting about the "joke" immediately. It's black humor, and pretty funny at that.


Review II
To call this novel a thriller wouldn't be right. Yet it wouldn't be right to call it high class either. In truth it sinks lower than anything ever written, and that is what makes American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis, one of the most intelligent books I've ever read (and I read Pynchon). The book follows: and makes you grow to love and hate, New York 26 year old Patrick Bateman, psychotic murderer and brother of Sean Bateman, who, during the 80s, went on a coke fueled killing spree... or so you think. The sadness of the book lies not in its murder victims, its rising body count, ritualistic murders, torturous, gratutious sex, or overabundant profanity, but instead in the fact that you are faced with a man who you feel such sympathy for. Horrified as you may be by his actions, you can't deny the charisma of Bateman, nor can you deny Ellis' use of Bateman as a metaphor for the yuppie himself. Bateman, the metaphor, the yuppie, the hyperbole, and the satire, is our worst nightmare of a human being, yet it embodied a society that could not afford to lose him, that paid him $200,000 a year despite adultry, cocaine addiction, homophobia, and claims of murdering people. You sympathize with him because they tell him that he's not a bad person, when you know that he is. He is the hyperbole of the yuppie stereotype because he, like the yuppie norm, would go to any length to get the next rush, even at the length of murder.
It's also, oddly, a satire on American Values all in all. As said in the book by Bateman's CEO fiance, "Patrick's the Boy Next Door, aren't you Patrick?" "No I'm not, I'm a fucking evil psychopath and you know it." he mutters. He has the values that Ellis thinks, and that, upon close consideration, are the American values. He's a homophobe, a Republican, a businessman, an investor, engaged, he cooks, cleans. In truth he is the All American Boy except for the tiny fact that he butchers innocent people.
Throughout the streets of Manhattan (which, have you not been there, you may need a guidemap to survive), Ellis' Psycho takes you on a tour of a horrific American Elite, making you wonder who is truely the monster. He lives his own sick American Dream, which, in the chaos of his world, almost makes sense, and you grow to like him more and more... and then the graphic violence begins. Horriffied by it, you can't help but read, mystified, as the world passes you by. All of it drawing to the true crescendo, in which you are left, afriad, in the dust, wondering if it was all real or not.