No more votes so American Psycho wins by default. Have at it idiots. I'm going to pick this up later, but I'm curious for those that have read it. How does the book stack up with the movie in terms of quality?
This book rocked the world when it came out, it has fantastic jabs at pointless materialism and how the Yuppie movement was so obsessed with presentation. It's also, at times, unspeakable. The atrocities Bateman commits when he turns into his true self make the mind reel and stomach churn. ...but did it happen? Much like Gone Girl this book uses the method of the unreliable narrator, and it's closing dialogue-heavy moments leave you with only questions and not one true answer. The movie was ok, but not nearly hardcore enough. Bale was a revelation and Oscar-worthy, but most of the cast was wasted and the film itself was turgid. Toronto does NOT look like New York.
I actually think this is a case where the movie adaptation is better than the book. The book is so heavy on exposition, as is the style of Bret Easton Ellis, but a lot of it doesnt add anything. Ive read it a few times and its probably Ellis' best work after Rules of Attraction, which is the prequel to this one (kind of).
I agree with Juice, the movie was ultimately better. It focused the narrative better and was more cohesive. Though I tend to like the book version of Bateman better than Bale's take. In the book he's almost entirely run on emotions and spends a lot of the time he's not murdering on the verge of tears for one reason or another. Bale made him more of a dangerous snake waiting to strike at any moment. In the book he really just couldn't control his emotions while the movie he focused almost entirely on his blood lust. I think the side characters were treated just about the same in each, which is to say they are basically non existent. They are paper thin because Bateman doesn't really care about them at all.
Bingo, they extend this point in the movie when no one really knows who anyone else is outside of Bateman's crew. The entire point is that everyone is so self-absorbed, people barely care that Paul Allen (Paul Owen in the book) goes missing or even realize it, because they keep confusing him with other people.
Another point that leaves you with questions: if Paul isn't Paul, and everyone confuses Patrick with Marcus...is Patrick even Patrick? Is he so psychotic with delusion that Bateman is a murderous fantasy character that he daydreams about, and is everybody in this story so cardboard and superficial they simply can't be differed from one another?
The only two instances in which I have liked the movie better than the book are Fight Club and American Psycho. This is true, the book is a lot more hardcore with the violence, but what I liked with the movie over the book is the dark humor element. The ATM machine saying "Feed me a stray cat" and Bateman holding a cat up to the machine and putting a gun to its head? Gold. Also, when I read books more than once I have a tendency to skip over parts I find tedious. With this book I was skipping the chapter openings describing peoples clothes on the first reading. I get that it was trying to point out the superficiality of the era/lifestyle, but I think it was way too overused. Despite my complaints, I did like this book and am glad I read it, but for me I enjoyed "Lunar Park" the most out Ellis' books.
At the risk of turning this thread into "Why I like the movie better", the Huey Lewis and the news scene in the movie was another great piece of comedy: Spoiler: NSFW - Language, Violence
I actually read both American Psycho and Less Than Zero very recently. I've discovered that I hate Bret Easton Ellis' writing. Jesus fucking christ, his characters are godawful one note pieces of shit. I'd say the 20% number is low when it comes to the amount of the book dedicated to what people are wearing and where things are from. More like 35%. I get it, the book is all about the surface level, and the superficiality of the 80s. But that writing technique is like double spacing your papers, fucking with the margins and writing the the twice every time in a term paper. It's filler, not content. Once you get past that horrible writing style, Bateman himself is kind of interesting. Like was said above, when he's not barely restraining rage at some perceived slight, he's nearly crying because of... anything. And when he's not doing those things, he's either gleefully or calmly committing horrible atrocities, and the writing there is so matter of fact it illustrates pretty well how broken this guy's brain is. He describes electrifying a girls breasts with a car battery until the burst into flames and then eating her charred vagina later (eating as in food, not sex) in the same tone that someone else would describe ordering starbucks. I liked the fact that everyone in the book kept calling each other by the wrong names, being very unsure of who each other was. I agree, it makes you wonder if Bateman is just one phase of his psychosis.
There are a ton of ways to interpret the book. I try to find the most literal one, not necessarily as the writer may have intended, but according to what's on the page. Does that make any sense? No? Whatever. This one is hard. Reality and fantasy are completely blended, the narrator useless for facts. I think it is a mish mash of fantasy and reality for Bateman. Towards the end a park bench follows him, but you don't know if that's all the drugs he's taking. The blood spree he went on would bring a ton of scrutiny on him, but it never really does. Even considering the character misidentifications, it is totally implausible in scope. Ellis doesn't even really set it up to allow us to believe Bateman could get away with it. The less intense murders, towards the beginning, seemed feasible. The rest, most done in his apartment, play out like impractical, sick fantasies. Does it really matter if Bateman has actually perpetrated the killings? Does that ruin the enjoyment for the reader, or is that the reader trying to make the story more palatable? Either way, this was my favorite book when I was 20-ish. The pure insanity of it is nothing like any other popular book. I had never read anything so chaotic. Writers were allowed to do this? AND get published? As I got older and better read, the thing didn't stand up at all, but at the time it was exciting as hell. Let's face it, AP is juvenile, sick, and kind of ham fisted. But for a kid looking to read more than the usual bestseller fare, it was a revelation. AP was a gateway drug to Palahniuk, Robbins, Vonnegut before him. It's interesting to compare the book and movie. Christ, the book. It is a word salad. Just a steady stream of bullshit conscious for 400 pages. Which was the point. Though, it was still tedious. It reads like it was written by either an insane person or the most narcissistic person ever. The movie took the best parts, the best satire, and presented it in a great way. The director was the editor Ellis so badly needed. It is actually kind of interesting that someone with Ellis' talent could ever get published and receive the notoriety he did. Both Less Than Zero and Rules of Attraction are very mediocre, even with the subject matter at the time. As ridiculous as it sounds, AP is Ellis honing his craft. Even funnier, to great success. Non Sequitir: Lunar Park is his best work. It is a self indulgent, fake semi-autobiographical horror story. Ellis casted himself as the protagonist alongside a family he never had. Sounds like a mess, but the remarkable thing is it was actually scary. It's weird as fuck, tense, clever, and he tones down his usual narration. Worth a library check out.