Patrick Bateman Was A Killer
I just finished reading Julian Murphet's Reader's Guide to American Psycho. Overall, its quite a good guide - and had enough items that I didn't catch in my initial readings of American Psycho, that I'm going to have to go back and read it yet again. One major point that I take issue with is the Guide's suggestion that Patrick Bateman didn't actually murder anybody during the course of the novel - it was all in his mind.
I've heard this argument before, and thought it was bogus, but this was the first time I've had it explained thoroughly - and I still think its bogus. Murphet's assertion that the murders are imaginary rests heavily on one exchange [others are mentioned, but this is supposed to be the biggie]. The exchange referenced is between Bateman and Harold Carnes - whom Bateman confessed to thirty, forty, a hundred murders on his answering machine. When the two finally meet, Carnes laughes off the confession as a joke saying that Bateman is such a bloddy ass-kisser, such a brown-nosing goody-goody, that I couldn't fully appreciate it. And that Bateman could barely pick up an escort girl, let alone chop her up. Carnes goes on to say that Bateman couldn't have killed Paul Owens because he just had dinner with him in London, twice, last week.
Murphet would have us believe Carnes opinion of Bateman as incapable of murder, and take Carnes statement about Paul Owens at face value despite the fact that Carnes said all of this to Bateman only because he confused him with 'Davis'.
I find it hard to beleive Carnes could be so sure about the identity of who he dined with last week across an ocean when he doesn't even know who he's talking to. A large theme of the book is that these characters are so self-involved that they consistently misidentify one another, even when they are involved in direct conversation with a person. What each of the characters say about one another is entirely unreliable precisely because of this intense self-involvment. They don't care enough about other people to bother getting the facts about them correct.
Why believe Carnes about dinner with Paul Owens when he doesn't even recognize Bateman? Its just as likely that he simply misidentified whomever he was having dinner with as Owens, just as he misidentifies Bateman as Davis. Also, if Carnes knows Bateman so little that he can't even recognize him while the two are in direct conversation, why should we believe his assessment of Bateman's ability to pick up or cut up a prostitute? The whole theory just doesn't work very well for me.
UPDATE: I've now started a whole weblog devoted to Bret Easton Ellis
I've heard this argument before, and thought it was bogus, but this was the first time I've had it explained thoroughly - and I still think its bogus. Murphet's assertion that the murders are imaginary rests heavily on one exchange [others are mentioned, but this is supposed to be the biggie]. The exchange referenced is between Bateman and Harold Carnes - whom Bateman confessed to thirty, forty, a hundred murders on his answering machine. When the two finally meet, Carnes laughes off the confession as a joke saying that Bateman is such a bloddy ass-kisser, such a brown-nosing goody-goody, that I couldn't fully appreciate it. And that Bateman could barely pick up an escort girl, let alone chop her up. Carnes goes on to say that Bateman couldn't have killed Paul Owens because he just had dinner with him in London, twice, last week.
Murphet would have us believe Carnes opinion of Bateman as incapable of murder, and take Carnes statement about Paul Owens at face value despite the fact that Carnes said all of this to Bateman only because he confused him with 'Davis'.
I find it hard to beleive Carnes could be so sure about the identity of who he dined with last week across an ocean when he doesn't even know who he's talking to. A large theme of the book is that these characters are so self-involved that they consistently misidentify one another, even when they are involved in direct conversation with a person. What each of the characters say about one another is entirely unreliable precisely because of this intense self-involvment. They don't care enough about other people to bother getting the facts about them correct.
Why believe Carnes about dinner with Paul Owens when he doesn't even recognize Bateman? Its just as likely that he simply misidentified whomever he was having dinner with as Owens, just as he misidentifies Bateman as Davis. Also, if Carnes knows Bateman so little that he can't even recognize him while the two are in direct conversation, why should we believe his assessment of Bateman's ability to pick up or cut up a prostitute? The whole theory just doesn't work very well for me.
UPDATE: I've now started a whole weblog devoted to Bret Easton Ellis
# | April 04, 2002