I haven’t read American Psycho, but I’ve read Glamorama and Less than Zero.
Glamorama was like going through some drug fueled trance or schizophrenic’s wild nightmare. Some guy I used to know from the writing course who wrote some stories evocative of Bret Easton Ellis in its violent and erotic style was a schizophrenic, and I'm an epileptic and I'm sort of used to my brain going off and back on leaving me feel hazy and dreamy and sick, and I kind of wonder how drug addicts feel like when they're under the influence. The book didn't make much sense, but reading it was a full-on experience, it reminds me of the film "Lost Highway" by David Linch a little bit in its crazy, weird and outlandish feel.
Reality morphs into dream and dreams morph into reality and its borderline blurs in the middle and leaves you completely lost.
I guess Less than Zero is a bit more sentimental and still has the faint trace of adolescence angst in it, but I don’t know, I didn’t even know that the guy Julian was Clay’s best friend. Yeah reading back I see Clay sort of cares for the guy, or maybe he’s just nostalgic about the good-old days they two shared, I don’t know.
The utter boredom and apathy float through the entire book, even at the most dramatic moment, and that leaves the really sad undertone.
People are afraid to merge. Blair said to Clay at the start of the novel and the words stuck in my mind, with the image of blood merging (with drug) in the cylinge (even though it's cocaine not heroine they were using in the story).
Everyone’s into drugs, everyone’s just as bad as one another, they don’t care much about each other, but at least they’re in the same in-crowd with shared habits.
Sad real world of rich and cool where drugs and gossip-ping are the socializing tools - they are bored, unhappy and wonder where the hell this vast nothingness ends.
Julian’s in huge debt, selling drugs to young kids and even selling himself to pay off the debt, he’s so fucked up, like, he’s so low. Friends gossip about other friends, like I remember someone told me the other day about a guy who he used to know got murdered mysteriously, and he was dealing drugs or something, I don’t know him personally, but it’s like just another casualty in the modern world, and at the end of the day, how many people die of drug overdose or drug-related crimes these days anyway?
All Clay can do is to not getting involved.
But when Julian hit the lowest (or just the beginning or the worst), he chose to get involved, not just to help his old friend?. (This bit is funny. When Clay lends this big money to Julian and asks him what the money is for, Julian asks him why he offers him the money if Clay doesn’t believe what Julian says or something to that effect, and Clay says, “Because you are my friend?” Clay is no longer sure if Julian is his friend anymore.)
Clay realizes that money is not much of the issue but the thing is, he needs to see just how bad it is.
He knows by then it’s too late anyway, Julian’s dug himself too deep into the grave and can’t get out of the mess he's in anymore. Meanwhile, his model friend Trent ends up raping 12-year-old girl.
Clay doesn’t want to care, because if he does, it’ll just be worse, it’ll just be another thing to worry about, and even if he cares, it doesn’t make much difference.
People are afraid to merge, afraid to care about each other, his family don’t care what he does, do you care? - Sort of.
Clay can pretend not to care, it’s safer to just play cool and don’t show any emotion so at least he can protect himself from getting hurt.
He leaves the past behind and never goes back.
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