A Pilgrim’s Digression

As promised, I published two more chapters to “Rented Space” today, chapter 14 and chapter 15. Actually, what I’ve published was one long chapter, but I broke it up into two chapters because it seemed so much longer than any others I have written.

At some point I am going to have to reconsider my choice of categorization for it as well. It may have begun life as a “short story” but it is no short story any longer. I suppose I have to start calling it a “novella.” That puts it squarely in the same field as Epic Poems, Short Story Collections, Diaries, and other unpublishable pieces of literary effluvia.

Novellas are always published after the writer has died. Have you ever noticed?

Lately I have been reading a couple novellas by Nathaniel West, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust. I read these long ago, back in college, and my New Directions paperback copy is marked up with marginal notations in red ink. I vaguely remember preferring at that time to use a red, fine tip pen to add my marginalia to books. Then I discovered pencil works much better. The red ink has faded over the years, as have my brilliant insights.

Next to a passage in which West describes a monument in a park as a column quivering as if about to explode “granite seed,” I wrote “phallic symbol.” Gee, what perspicacity I possessed in those days.

I am less impressed by a rereading of West than I was when I first read him ten or twelve years ago. The symbolism seems heavy-handed, especially the “Waste Land” motifs. However, readers might say the same about my work.

I am also reading another story of the modern waste land, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I read this when it was first published in late 1991, and I thought highly of it then. It has only increased in my estimation. It was made into a bad movie a few years ago. Hollywood had to turn it into a generic cop/killer detective story, however.

It’s a fascinating book. One hardly knows which is worse, the scenes in which the protagonist tortures and kills women, or his obsessive cataloging of his possessions and his detailing of his hygiene habits.

Here are Patrick Bateman’s tips for a smooth shave, some of which practices I have adopted in my own life. They really work.

Once out of the shower and toweled dry I put the Ralph Lauren boxers back on and before applying the Mousse a Raiser, a shaving cream by Pour Hommes, I press a hot towel against my face for two minutes to soften abrasive beard hair. Then I always slather on a moisturizer (to my taste, Clinique) and let it soak in for a minute. You can rinse it off or keep it on and apply a shaving cream over it—preferably with a brush, which softens the beard as it lifts the whiskers—which I’ve found makes removing the hair easier. It also helps prevent water from evaporating and reduces friction between your skin and the blade.

Bateman goes on like that for another page or so. It’s not boring reading at all. It’s a chance to look into the warped mind of a complete psychopath. Fascinating stuff.

Almost as fascinating is the utter vacuity of Ellis’ upper-class, youthful characters. Conversations revolve around money, sex, clothing. At lunch one day, Bateman and his wealthy buddies discuss what questions about dress they might submit to GQ magazine. One sample question they come up with is, “When wearing a tuxedo, how do you keep the front of your shirt from riding up?” (Bateman has the answer: you have your tailor sew a button hole in the front of your pants, a button on your shirt, and you fasten your shirt to your pants).

Then Bateman goes home and slaughters a woman he picks up.

American Psycho was controversial when it was first published. Ellis was accused of misogyny because of the detailed descriptions Bateman provides of his torture murders of women. I thought the book was brilliant when I first read it, and I wrote a term paper on it, much to my English teacher’s chagrin. I still think this novel is brilliant, maybe the best novel of the nineteen-nineties.

There is no resolution to the story. Bateman is never caught; no one even comes close to catching him, despite what Hollywood tries to make of this story. No one even suspects that he is a psychopath. The very last words of the story sum up exactly what Ellis is trying to say about his novel:

“…and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry’s is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes’ colors are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.”

American Psycho was only published in a paperback Vintage Contemporaries edition; there was no hard cover edition. Ellis has published one other novel since “Psycho,” the rather dull Glamorama. The satirical plot, revolving around Super Models, and even a terrorist group run by a super model, sounds too much Zoolander, and it is not as biting as the dead pan of American Psycho.

Glamorama was also published by Vintage Contemporaries. It’s interesting to look at the list of “contemporaries” in the back of “Psycho.” Besides Ellis, there aren’t many names on there I would recognize. Nicholson Baker, Don DeLillo, Alice Munro, Cormac McCarthy, Jerzy Kosinski, Roddy Doyle. That’s about it out of a list of probably a hundred authors.

It’s like looking at the catalog in the back of an old Modern Library edition from the thirties. One is left wondering “who were these people?”