Neo

My favorite book. What do you think?

Sock

A very great, very dark, black comedy. A really in depth look into the mind of a serial killer. It has a very deep, well developed character who seems to be boasting about all of the people he has killed. I love how he describes in exact detail all of the items in his house, usually adding that they are top of line, or the best you can find. Great book, with a great adaptation.

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At least I think... so...

Anarkos

I'm fighting my way through The Informers at present.

Bret Easton Ellis is quite the bastard.

Backed.

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My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

Neo

The morally nihilistic tone of the novel complements it's bleakness and as a whole, as a detached narrative on consumerism, vanity and greed, uses it's implicit mysoginy and graphic violence and sex is an appropriate and necassary manner.

Now did THAT sound all professional or what!

strangedaze

i love it. especially when he tries to feed the cat to the bank machine. i remember laughing out loud on the bus whilst reading it. bret is a writer i love, whose style totally captures an era.

and i dont think the misogyny is implicit lol the book is pretty up-front about it all.

i second, or third, the choice for AP as a swanky book.

and as for the informers, theres a short story in it, one of the last three i think, when reality starts to show beneath the glitz and glam of hollow LA. with the chick who has cancer. WOW. why didnt he finish the collection with that? unreal.

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His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

deviger

I have been wanting to read AP for quite some time. It's been on my list, but somehow I keep forgetting to pick it up.

Kane

I'm reading this now. I started it yesterday, and it's been a struggle just to get through the first 150 pages. I'm so sick of reading about what everyone is wearing, or reading about the shallow little world of the well-to-do they live in. I realizze the author is doing this to flesh out Bateman's character, but the more I read, the less I give to pence about Bateman, or his journey through this tale. I'm willing to bet that if you removed the description and brand-name dropping of clothes, the book would be at least 33% smaller, if not more. Earlier this morning I read a chapter where the sole topic was Genesis/Phil Collins... bleh. I'll keep going, cause I paid $15 for the damn book, but I'm feeling like I should have just paid $15 for a used copy of the DVD.

coral

I thought the book was pretty good, but not my favourite by a long shot. Some parts were so grim that I had to put the book down and some parts even worse where I had to re-read to see if I had just read what I thought I read and then put the book down.

I think that all that bullocks about what everyone is wearing and such, needs to be there though.

I didn't really get the chapter on Genesis either. He does that again with another group too. I remember being a bit disappointed by the ending though...but I also remember thinking that it worked with the theme of the book.

Kane

I don't know if it needs to be there or not. Maybe... It's not just that Bateman absolutely CANNOT see ANYBODY without describing the color, style, brand and sometimes price of each piece of clothing, but a good 25% of the dialogue is the different characters sitting around, drinking expensive wine, eating expensive food, and talking about clothes, and when it's fashionable to wear them. And almost nobody knows who anybody is in this book. Everyone calls everyone else by the wrong name... Are these Wall Street socialites really like that? If so, I'm glad I'm just an average Joe. The sex scenes belong in a porno magazine. When you remove all of this, the book is left with very little substance.

Jolly McJollyson

You do realize that the book is about the dehumanizing, depraved mania of greed in 80s corporate culture, right?

If so, you should understand the importance of those passages in shaping the idea of the cultural mentality. Sure, if you remove the MAIN POINT of any book, it'll be left with very little substance.

That said, I'm not that big a fan of minimalism, and Palahniuk is far from the cream of the crop in that genre.

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Critique my writing.

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Jolly McJollyson

Up until the point when you spelled "misogyny," "necessary,"
"compliments," and "its" wrong, yes.

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Critique my writing.

Or my lyrics.

Kane

Well, if that's what he's trying to convey, I think a short essay would have been better, or if fiction is really his thing, a short story. I got the point in the first segment... to have to put up with it through 400+ pages is repetitive overkill.

Jolly McJollyson

Obviously you didn't, since you just had to have it explained to you.

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I'm not a writer.

Critique my writing.

Or my lyrics.

Kane

I didn't need anything explained to me... I know what he's trying to do and it's overkill. Understand?

skitz

If one were around the yuppie scene in the eighties, then one would realize that the author caught the essence of the useless existence yuppies held on the planet to a tee. He furthered the uselessness to include a yuppie with no conscience and a humorously murderous personality. There was a bit too much description of food and clothing as most have stated. I skipped over alot of the description to get to the juicy stuff. The author is warped and talented. I loved it.