Chapter Summaries 5: Lunch, Concert, A Glimpse of a Thursday Afternoon, Yale Club

Wow. These were an eventful set of chapters. Let's start with lunch, the least exciting of the bunch. Patrick meets a man named Christian Armstrong for lunch at DuPlex, where Bateman, he would later describe as regretfully, asks Armstrong about his recent trip to the Bahamas. Armstrong launches into a never-ending sermon about all of the slightest details about the trip, attempting to convince Patrick to go as well. Also, a few different men come up to Bateman and great him with separate names that are not his own, which has happened before in the book too. This still hasn't been explained, and it's starting to slightly bother me. What's worse is that he doesn't correct them and goes along with it, which makes me think he introduced himself using these pseudonyms. In 'Concert,' a gang of 6 go to a U2 concert where they have front row seats. Nothing too eventful happens until Bateman truly turns his attention to the stage. Bono, the lead singer, comes down to the front stage, and locks eyes with Bateman, or so he says Bono does. He is then lost in this trance where everything else fades away, and Bono relays him the message "I am the Devil and I'm just like you." Next thing, he turns back to the audience and continues his performance, and Bateman immediately turns and asks one of his party of 6, Paul Owen, litigating questions about him handling the Fisher account for no apparent reason. Weird stuff, if I do say so myself. The next chapter is where Ellis makes it apparent to the reader that Bateman is suffering from a much more serious mental illness than previously believed. In this chapter, Bateman stumbles around the streets of New York suffering from a full scale anxiety attack, which I examine more closely in my previous post, Patrick's Analysis 4. And in the last of this set of chapters, what might be the strangest turn of events of all, Bateman debates whether or not he wants to kill Luis, and if this will have a positive or negative impact on his own life. They are in the bathroom at the Yale Club, and Luis is turned around peeing in a stall. He decides that he will go ahead and do it, for no other reason than he thinks it'll make his world run more smoothly. He begins to strangle him, but Luis Carruthers, thinking he's coming onto him, thoroughly enjoys it and admits that he's wanted Patrick for a very long while now. Patrick, stunned, and unable to finish his act of murder, quickly vacates the bathroom and attempts to get as far away from Carruthers as possible. This book seems to just get stranger and stranger.