what are you reading now?
version
Well-known member
😆
This book is TRUE. I live on an island of bankers, investment brokers and trust company lawyers and all of them are drunken, mad psychopaths with Jack Nicholson laughs and a propensity for getting into a lot of trouble at weekends.
They drink and they snort and they screw and they sail and they make loads of money and every now and again some of them disappear never to be heard of again. The women, the secretaries and admin staff come out from the UK husband-hunting but quickly find they are the rare prey of these mad psycho partiers and they too tend to disappear.
Deported or murdered? YOU decide!
The investment bankers from the Swiss VP Bank were by far the worst. Going drinking with them usually ended up with some of the guys diving naked off the side of someone's yacht and then screaming they've lost their Rolexes. Several local divers made quite a good living diving close to the party boats and recovering watches, wallets and rings on Monday mornings. If they knew who owned the property, they'd get a reward, if they didn't they sold it. I used to enjoy all that. Now I have a bookshop, but then I had a bar. I kind of wish I had a bar, that kind of bar again.
Oh, book review. I did enjoy the book and later the film. So true to life... except for the murders, I think.
This book is TRUE. I live on an island of bankers, investment brokers and trust company lawyers and all of them are drunken, mad psychopaths with Jack Nicholson laughs and a propensity for getting into a lot of trouble at weekends.
They drink and they snort and they screw and they sail and they make loads of money and every now and again some of them disappear never to be heard of again. The women, the secretaries and admin staff come out from the UK husband-hunting but quickly find they are the rare prey of these mad psycho partiers and they too tend to disappear.
Deported or murdered? YOU decide!
The investment bankers from the Swiss VP Bank were by far the worst. Going drinking with them usually ended up with some of the guys diving naked off the side of someone's yacht and then screaming they've lost their Rolexes. Several local divers made quite a good living diving close to the party boats and recovering watches, wallets and rings on Monday mornings. If they knew who owned the property, they'd get a reward, if they didn't they sold it. I used to enjoy all that. Now I have a bookshop, but then I had a bar. I kind of wish I had a bar, that kind of bar again.
Oh, book review. I did enjoy the book and later the film. So true to life... except for the murders, I think.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
there are only a couple big set piece violence scenes iirc - Paul Owen, aftermath of the second threesome
but there are a few other scenes where he casually (maybe) kills people, and he pretty consistently fantasizes about violence
if anything the frequency pushes it toward unreality, as it's hard to suspend disbelief that he could get away with that much casual, ongoing violence
whereas in the film that doesn't really became clear until the end where he's having shootouts with helicopters and so on
and there are a surprising number of passages of I guess philosophical derangement, speculation on notions of self, personhood, existence, etc
have to imagine Doestoyevski is a notable influence
IdleRich
IdleRich
I read The Secret History when it came out and really enjoyed it a lot. It's about university life, an extremely precocious Greek class who go too far in their Dionysian experiments I seem to recall. Her next one I really didn't like and I stopped there I guess.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
he's a Trump fanatic, tho even Bateman wouldn't have predicted a Trump presidency I have to think, real life stranger than fiction as always
and I think the whole point is that it's true besides the murders, i.e. why the literal truth of the murders - in the context of the text - doesn't matter
IdleRich
IdleRich
Isn't that all books or narratives more than (I dunno) three hundred years old?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
agree 100% with this (at least about Catch-22, never read Something Happened)
they're too long in the way the Old Testament is too long, all the endless lists of genealogy etc as I mentioned
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I'd never thought about it but I guess, yeah. I remember it as a key point in the introduction to a collection of sagas that I own.
American Psycho does have the rhythm/feel of a saga, and/or a Greek tragedy, to me - albeit in either case perverted/inverted
the protagonist goes forth, does battle with monsters (both internal and external), descends into the underworld
obv it's in a modern/postmodern context so his narration is overtly unreliable/slippery. also he never returns from the underworld, and doesn't achieve or learn anything.
version
Well-known member
One of the three epigraphs in my edition's from Notes from Underground.
IdleRich
IdleRich
My understanding is that Princess of Cleves is normally seen as the book that introduced that (although I'm sure some clever clogs will find something earlier that might fit the bill)
La Princesse de Clèves - Wikipedia
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
on the topic of self, personhood etc, my copy (first edition, too beatup to sell) is the famous closeup of Ellis's face with title and name superimposed in white
it's also a self-satire as he's acknowledged, of himself having slipped into a consumerist void of artifice in place of intrinsic self-worth
I guess I find that angle the least interesting
whether or not he meant to write a, and possibly the, great satire of the American empire's heart of darkness, he did
one of the things I've been doing on quarantine is slogging through Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series
the decline of the Republic starting with Gaius Marius and Sulla through to the end of the civil wars and the beginning of the Empire
definitely not a satire,nor was she much of a stylist, though she did have the gifts of directness, attention to deal, keeping the pages turning
it does a great job of reading between the lines of ancient sources to convey the power structures and contradictions at heart of the late Republic
I mentioned Juvenal above, but he was writing in the late first century AD, by which time the rot had long set in
whereas in the late Republic there was still a powerful conflict between the mos maiorum and the demands (and rewards) of empire
there's a similar feeling to the time/place of American Psycho in both in literal (proscriptions, massacres, heads mounted on the rostra) and symbolic (venality, obsession with status, hypermasculinity) senses
I could go on but idk if anyone else finds this is interesting as I do
it's also a self-satire as he's acknowledged, of himself having slipped into a consumerist void of artifice in place of intrinsic self-worth
I guess I find that angle the least interesting
whether or not he meant to write a, and possibly the, great satire of the American empire's heart of darkness, he did
one of the things I've been doing on quarantine is slogging through Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series
the decline of the Republic starting with Gaius Marius and Sulla through to the end of the civil wars and the beginning of the Empire
definitely not a satire,nor was she much of a stylist, though she did have the gifts of directness, attention to deal, keeping the pages turning
it does a great job of reading between the lines of ancient sources to convey the power structures and contradictions at heart of the late Republic
I mentioned Juvenal above, but he was writing in the late first century AD, by which time the rot had long set in
whereas in the late Republic there was still a powerful conflict between the mos maiorum and the demands (and rewards) of empire
there's a similar feeling to the time/place of American Psycho in both in literal (proscriptions, massacres, heads mounted on the rostra) and symbolic (venality, obsession with status, hypermasculinity) senses
I could go on but idk if anyone else finds this is interesting as I do
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
no idea. I know Tristram Shandy gets mentioned as postmodern avant la lettre, but I'm no expert.
the only premodern literature I've closely read besides the Scandinavian saga stuff is more on the order of primary source history (or philosophy, if that counts)
Herodotus, Thucydides, De Bello Gallico, as well as the truly astounding True History of the Conquest of New Spain. and the Old Testament.
none of which properly features internal dialogues, only what you can draw out from how the narrator chooses to narrate events.
I'd be open to suggestions. Beowulf is definitely on my to-read list, not much else I can think of rn.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
or that's not true, there's a bunch of other Roman stuff I want to get to, especially Sallust
it's very easy to make Rome/America comparisons, what's harder is to specify them in ways that are accurate/useful
it's very easy to make Rome/America comparisons, what's harder is to specify them in ways that are accurate/useful
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
ask some questions maybe? anything you/anyone is particularly interested in
it's a broad topic that I could talk about pretty much endlessly but as I say what's hard is to be actually incisive in a useful manner
version
Well-known member
It came up in the Spengler thread re: Trump, iirc. Trump being a "Caesar".
version
Well-known member
I don't have any. I'm just enjoying reading your thoughts on it.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I'd have to read the actual posts but just offhand I don't like that comparison at all
Caesar for one was infinitely shrewder. whatever else one thinks of him, he is universally acknowledged to have been extraordinarily capable.
he was also fundamentally self-made in a way Trump is not. certainly his background was impeccably noble - tho not wealthy by Roman elite standards - but given that his career rests largely on his own merits comparative to his peers (and a large measure of fortune).
I don't like using "Caesar" as synonymous with populist.
I don't want to whitewash Caesar, who waged the quasi-genocidal Gallic Wars largely for his own benefit (tho tbf he was furthering a time-honored tradition of Roman provincial governors; what was unusual was the scale, rather than the wars themselves)
but when dealing with Roman enemies he was, unlike Marius and Sulla, repeatedly compassionate to a fault
and unlike Trump, he did a great deal of concrete good for the Roman poor and working-class
Trump as a Caesar, unless heavily qualified, is exactly the kind of lazy Rome/US comparison I would want to avoid
IdleRich
IdleRich
Me either... and that is certainly a weird book, but I thought its (debated) post-modernity rested on the conversational style with the reader (and no doubt some other stylistic tics (or tricks)) rather than the self-awareness thing particularly.
I would like to hear more about Rome... I've read some stuff about the Ceasar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero era but before that it's pretty much a closed book to me. Though I guess it's not for your to completely educate me on a huge period of ancient history now I come to read that back...
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
if you want a Trump comparison, I think Pompey is much better - or better yet combination of Pompey and Crassus
the main difference is that he was an extraordinarily competent soldier
but Pompey was a powerful man's son, his family was noveau riche, he - very much unlike Caesar - completely disdained education, politics, law, etc
there's an amazing quote that I can't quite remember that goes something like "will you cease speaking of law to us men who possess swords"
Crassus meanwhile embodies the venality and obsession with personal status, and wealth as a measure of that status
he came from a noble family but his father and brothers were murdered by Marius so he started off without much (again, by Roman elite standards)
he then spent his adult life amassing a vast fortune, often in ways so unsavory and grasping that even other Roman senators and plutocrats found it distasteful
then very famously got himself and his son killed in Parthia trying to replicate Caesar's success in Gaul, to enhance his auctoritas
the main difference is that he was an extraordinarily competent soldier
but Pompey was a powerful man's son, his family was noveau riche, he - very much unlike Caesar - completely disdained education, politics, law, etc
there's an amazing quote that I can't quite remember that goes something like "will you cease speaking of law to us men who possess swords"
Crassus meanwhile embodies the venality and obsession with personal status, and wealth as a measure of that status
he came from a noble family but his father and brothers were murdered by Marius so he started off without much (again, by Roman elite standards)
he then spent his adult life amassing a vast fortune, often in ways so unsavory and grasping that even other Roman senators and plutocrats found it distasteful
then very famously got himself and his son killed in Parthia trying to replicate Caesar's success in Gaul, to enhance his auctoritas