Image Study 3: The Mask of Sanity

"I felt lethal, on the verge of a frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage." (pg. 279)

Chapter Summaries 7: Paul Smith, Birthday Brothers, Lunch with Bethany, Thursdsay, Dinner with Secretary

These chapter summaries begin with Luis coming onto Patrick again, but this time, before escaping Carruthers in a cab, he flashes a knife at him while hissing. This takes Luis of guard, and he backs off, leaving Patrick somewhat victorious. In the next chapter, birthday Brothers, Patrick has dinner with his brother, Sean, at Dorsia, a place Sean effortlessly made reservations at while Bateman has been attempting for months. I didn't think we'd be introduced to a character that was more influential and known as Patrick, but sure enough, we met Sean. They only seemed to just compete with each other the entire time, subtly trying to one-up the other's remarks, Patrick with lies, Sean probably not.  In the following chapter, Patrick has lunch with an old girlfriend of his at Harvard, where he is for some reason extremely nervous. He acts strangely, writes her a terrible poem, and says some very off-kilter stuff. But even after all that, Bethany agrees to come up to his apartment where he proceeds to torture and rape her. She finally dies the next morning. The grotesque detail at which this is described is analyzed more closely in my post titled "Random Thought 4." In Thursday, he talks about many different types of water at length in a cab ride with McDermott and Courtney, and later goes home and beats Bethany's dead body with her own severed arm. And finally, in Dinner with Secretary, Patrick cancels a reservation with friends when he discovers Luis will be joining them, and instead asks his secretary, Jean, to join him. He lies about having reservations at Dorsia, they get kicked out, and have dinner somewhere else instead. When the evening ends, she invites Bateman up to her room but he refuses, but she hugs and kisses him anyways, which leaves him feeling a real sense of warmth towards her. He later thinks about him and her holding hands and laughing and buying balloons. This leads me to believe that he might have some type of intimate feelings for her, and I feel that if he does end up with her, she could do him some real good.

Random Thought 4

This is almost unbearable. The extreme way in which Patrick's grotesque murdering and raping is describe is almost too much for me. Bret Easton Ellis is a genius for writing this book, but a sick one. The length at which he describes every detail of every murder is sickening, and it's not surprising that you must be 18 to buy it in some places of the world. The book was first rejected when Ellis sent it to be publicized, but after much discussion and pressing from Ellis, it was accepted with a limited publication. you really can do nothing but marvel at the expertise in writing this novel, but if you have a weak stomach or don't prefer to read entire chapters about sex and murder, then this is not the novel for you. Fair warning.

Patrick's Analysis 6

Page 226, lines 7-20 talk about something interesting. Bateman is staring at a crack in a wall, and says that if he somehow disappeared into that crack that nobody would even notice his absence. He says that nobody would even care, and that the theory that all people are interconnected is false and that the truth is some people just aren't needed. The world would be better off without them, he says. This could be the sign of an entirely new disease I hadn't even guessed Patrick would be suffering from: depression. Which totally makes sense. He's depressed, so he doesn't get any real thrill or satisfaction out of daily life, so what does he do? Turns to a life of murdering and violence to add some edge to life. Slowly but surely I'm starting to piece together the mystery that is Patrick Bateman.

Chapter Summaries 6: Killing Dog, Shopping, Christmas Party, Nell's, Paul Owen

Bateman's senseless need for violence continues when he travels to the park on a cold and windy night. He has a suitcase with two knives and a gun inside, and fully intends to use them, he just doesn't know who will be on the recieving end. He finally decides on an old man and his dog. After he slices and shoots them, we learn that the only time Bateman feels any real thrill or passion is when he's killing, which is another reason why he does it so much. In the next chapter, he goes shopping and has a severe panic attack at the mall, which seem to be occurring more frequently than before. Maybe his mental condition is worsening? In Christmas Party, he attends Evelyn's party reluctantly but ends up forcing her to leave so he can do drugs. I'm suprised Evelyn doesn't notice how much Patrick despises her. Or maybe she just doesn't care. Either way it's very strange. In Nell's, Patrick has dinner at Nell's with a few friends and a few models, one of whom he takes back to his apartment to have sex with. Nothing new, essentially. But then Patrick did something he's never done before. He told the model she should leave before he ended up hurting her. He actually gave one of his potential victims a warning! He said he would hurt her because he says "I think I'm loosing control." This tells us two things. One is that he does have the mental capacity to stop. Two is that he recognizes that he has a problem, which is a lot more than most other insane people. In the final chapter of these summaries, he attends a not-so high end restaurant with Paul Owen, where Owen gets beligerantly drunk and doesn't answer any of Bateman's questions about the Fisher account. They go back to his apartment where he slices his head open with an ax and puts the dead body in his room in an abandon building uptown. He had paper laid out on the floor so Owen wouldn't stain it with his blood, which shows that he intended to kill Owen before the dinner even started. Why he killed the a man I thought he admired, I don't know. But I'm assuming this will be followed by much more killing shortly after.

Image Study 2: The Food of New York

An extremely large portion of the book describes Bateman at some of New York's finest restaurants, where he orders a different dish every time, each one more extravagant than the last. Because of this tasting of a plethora of foods and the restaurant's prominent role in the book, I thought it just to include a small collage of different types of food you would find in New York.

Patrick's Analysis 5

What I previously thought was just bad hearing on the people Patrick was talking to's part, I now realize it's something else entirely. Everything crazy that Patrick "says" or "does" while in public places that get no reaction from those around him are really figments of his imagination. They are things he wants to do, but doesn't because of public indecency. Since Bateman is the unreliable narrator of the story, he could possibly think that he has done all of these things, when in reality he has not. "I then call back to him, 'Hey asshole, I want to watch you die motherfuck-aaahhhhh,' and then started running around 58th screaming like a banshee. (pg. 179)" This shows how wild his imagination can run. For him to believe he actually committed these acts of insanity shows that his psychiatric issues run deep into his brain. I'm assuming that many more things like this will continue to happen in the book, which makes me wonder if he'll ever grasp a clear separation from fantasy and reality.