After the book ended with a big boring splat of existential vacuity (Sartre did that nausea so much more poetically), I decided to see the film again as it did seduce me into reading the book.

Now the movie does extract the best lines from the book... there is no doubt observing those 80s-style fatuous yuppies ruling the universe is weirdly exciting. It's a ruling class, after all, and sadistically joyous. He details them very well. Christian Bale is a great cast and when he cracks up and confesses into the answering machine, that sweaty mess he becomes, the hysteria... "I had to kill alot of people..." just stunning.

Seeing shots of World Trade in the background, it came to me this material could now be viewed as a very mordant political satire. That Patrick Bateman's self-indulgent, homicidal, shallow soul = America, and his many victims could be boiled down (hmm?) to aspects of the rest of the world -if anyone was up to analyzing the variety of mutilations. And the expensive eating habits are so revolting as compared to famines the world over, etc. (Now you see where JT got some ideas, possibly, for the high-faluten Doves Diner in "Sarah"!)

In other words, I don't think the forms the murders and sadism take are just random 'filth'... An American Psycho: a paradigm obsessor over details, uber-consumer, fuelled by cocaine, who cares only for appearances, who destroys others unfeelingly... actually 'American Psyche.'

Totally agog at the reviews on the back of the book where Norman Mailer compares ha' to Dostoyevsky. Please. The style is jerky, unwieldy, emotionally gawky, and I too would have ditched the book after the third description of what the fuck couture they were wearing, if I hadn't had the gorgeous Bale in my head as an activator... But there ARE people who read couture the way the 'Psycho' does, and base entire value judgements on an outfit. In your opinion: are they insane?

Yes, the book is disgustingly misogynistic, but alot of American men are. The detailing of this 'horror of the female' is pretty total. Bret is very conversant with evil-mindedness, and could himself be cruel, e.g. the torturing of the bums. But I don't think that matters... because he's revealed to us some of the secrets of his sick brotherhood.

Alas I have not seen the film version of American Psycho and so I can't comment on it. However your political take on it is very interesting, and an example of how time does things to movies and the way we interpret them and feel about them.
Films that were flopped or received tepid enthusiasm from viewers initially can be hailed as classics twenty years later, etc. Sept 11th certainly cast much of the 90s in a different light than was possible for us to see before. And films are a whole separate art form anyway.

Getting back to the written version of Psycho, I don't have a problem with the endless couture descriptions in and of itself. And audience fascination with the workings of the ruling class is certainly a time-honored tradition to which I also subscribe. In fact I enjoy it, so long as there is soul behind it. I actually am drawn to authors who give their readers a king-size bed of description regarding characters clothing choices, personal appearance, hairstyles, etc (one of my favorite books of all time is Scruples by Judith Krantz, a perfect example of Good Trash and a high-fashion bible to boot). But if there is no passion, then the work reads flat, dull, uninspiring and vacuous. Of course one could retort that the coldness and vacuousness is Miss Ellis's entire point, but I felt that point was already well struck in Less Than Zero. Perhaps American Psycho was his attempt at representing the more monstrous side of that vacuous scale, but whatever.

Granted as authors we are repeatedly drawn to portray the same themes and subjects over and over. Will Miss Leroy have anything else to talk about besides child abuse and prostitution, now that she's already run us into the ground with it in two novels? Time will tell. And granted also that versatility as an author is far less important than quality -- better to write five really great books about one subject or theme than to write five so-so books about totally divergent topics. Miss Leroy, at her young age, has already written Literature. I guess the difference between her and Miss Ellis is that the former's style triumphs over everything else. Not so with Miss Ellis.

I will lend you the DVD if you don't rent it. And I agree on the comparison. I compulsively began reading "Sarah" again last night, and with total pleasure because of the language.

I wouldn't venture back into "A. Psycho" because it's just ramshackle and boring. B.E.E. inches towards literature in the last pages, with moody rambles about the vacuousness and meaningless of it all, but as you say, grand meaninglessness is not enough. You have to say it very well, so there's pathos.

The only Dostoyevskian aspect of his work I see is the confession that no-one believes. That was almost Raskolnikov's fate in "Crime & Punishment"... ALMOST. He had to force the police et al to believe him - and at last THEY DID. That book ends in a gorgeous frisson of redemption that Bateman only writhes towards on a cocaine hangover.

But again, my take on "A.Psycho" as a political satire would view that lack of punishment, the moral dead zone, as the reality Amerika now inhabits. No matter how brutal we are as a warmonger or a culture-tyrant, no one punishes us because we're just too important. We buy our way out of every crime we commit.

yeah, Lex, interesting to see what Mlle. LeRoy serves up next. Makes me wonder: is he the son of Sylvia? His laid-bare exposure and brain-sizzling bluntness is not altogether unlike that of the Plaths and Lowells. And the past year has certainly seen him, in Plath's words, "Overexposed/ Like an X-ray." So what happens after the lot lizards? Will he try his hand at totally fiction fiction, or like Sivvy, find he writes best as a narcissist? Though S'tan, as you said early on, maybe we just shouldn't care what's next… he's given us two gorgeous books. Do we deserve more?

We should not ask writers to be product - we have no right. To be compelled to produce creates bloated nightmare like Mailer and Anne Rice. (Sorry Chi.) Only in modern Amerika.

Do you think "Sarah" proves she can abstract herself out of the subject... that she can become fictive? Seems so, compared to Heart/Deceitful.

Usually (they say) novelists take a while to evolve... She has alot of living to do yet. The next works could be some sort of reflection on the Hollywood scene and celebrity. I hope it will have that blunt and cruel way about it... Or less prosaically, she might implode/explode her entire thematic in some "Ulysses"-like orgasm of beauty.

But right now if I was her I would be loungin' around daydreamin' while I could.

Now we have to go see "ELEPHANT" which JT wrote with Gus Van Sant. When it won the Croix d'Or or whatever it is they cop at Cannes, GVS called up JT and said, "We won." JT I believe is given no writing credits, and she didn't think she deserved that phone call. (You see I've memorized alot of her press.)

I hope they show some version of that S'tan moment when Trenchcoat Mafia asked the kids, "Do you believe in God?" And when they said "Yes" they got blown away.

[This message was edited by S'tan on 11-03-03 at 12:28 PM.]

I think S'tan is right and more..I think Ms. LeRoi will serve us up big time just as soon as she can get and stay in touch with her deepest heart. I can understand the double edged sword of feeling accomplished and a failure at the same time. Let her swim her way outta that and we may yet see a great novel about the whole human condition. I believe that JC has what it takes. He should run away from Hollywood just as fast as those little legs will carry him and move to NYC where they help scrape the shit from you while planting your seed in the manuer to grow. And there are so many good teachers there.
I just started Sarah again for the third time and it is still fresh. A rarity.

You live for ha.

Anne Rice = another fave example of Good Trash. At some point I need to resume the Vampire Chronicles. Sorry to say I only got through the first three. For shame. But my list of "To Read"s keeps growing and growing .....

6 train, uptown this a.m.: I'd literally just finished reading the last word of the heart/deceitful chapter, "foolishness is bound in the heart of a child," when I stood up to exit the train and a man beside me shoved past by putting his New York Post in my face. The headline: "PASTOR: I GAVE BOYS 'HOLY SPANKINGS'" I'd forgotten how upsetting this particular section of the book is. So fucking fucked. And then to see this...

Here's the clip. Spooky. It's right out of JTL.

web page

November 3, 2003 -- NEW HAVEN, Conn. - The Rev. Walter Oliver believes that God is on his side.
If not, Oliver could face up to 30 years in prison.

Oliver is charged with two counts each of assault and risk of injury to a minor for beating two child parishioners of his former church in New Haven. Jury selection in his trial is scheduled to begin this week.

He freely admits he beat the boys, who were 11 and 12 at the time. They were beatings in Jesus' name, he said, and carried out with love according to the adage, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

"I call it a 'Holy Spanking' - that's God's mandate to keep law and order," Oliver said in an interview last week.

He said he was acting with the permission of their mother in his official capacity as the children's pastor.

He hit the boys several times on the bare buttocks with a black leather belt. The boys were not bloodied or seriously injured; prosecutors said the beatings left marks, an allegation Oliver denies.

Prosecutor Brian Sibley said religious freedom is "an outside issue" and not a legitimate defense for Oliver.

It also doesn't matter that Oliver was their minister, Sibley said. Oliver would face charges if he were the boys' father, he said.

"We're treating this like any other child abuse case," Sibley said.

Oliver, 66, is a native of New Haven and comes from a family of religious leaders. He said his parents were strict and pushed him and his two brothers to hard work. When the boys misbehaved at home or at school, they were spanked.

Spanking is widely discouraged by doctors and child-care experts. The practice hurts and humiliates children and teaches them to use violence to solve their problems, said Dr. Kyle Pruett, professor of child psychology and nursing at the Yale Child Study Center.


AP

I AM obsessed. But what is life without a good fixation? I too am reading "Sarah" for the 3rd time, it's absolutely pure. And better than waiting for Fyodor D.'s next novel.

I don't know about JTL moving to NY, Bobby. Why don't you get her to move up to PP-Town with you? For some of those lessons you are famous for.

HOLY SPANKINGS!!! When are they going to outlaw the Catholics?

On this very subject I used some quotes from Quintilian (Roman orator & educator, first century A.D.) in my essay 'Who Becomes a Sadomasochist':

"Quintilian denounced sadistic usages in education... Cruelty as an educative tool disgusts him, 'First because it is odious and slavish and dishonouring at any age; next, because anyone who is so base that he could not be improved by kindly persuasiveness and affectionate admonition, will also be insensible to blows.' This makes a powerful statement for the [sadomasochistic ] predeliction as a temperamental condition.

"Furthermore, 'it cannot be stated, without blushing for shame, to what disgusting orgies unworthy persons abuse the right to chastise.'

'Beating trains only slavish natures, embitters the child, and destroys his joy in his task.' "

Info on Quintilian:
http://www.msu.edu/user/lewisbr4/980/websites.html]http://www.msu.edu/user/lewisbr4/980/websites.html

[This message was edited by S'tan on 11-05-03 at 04:15 PM.]

Still, 30 years in prison for a different idea on discipline is a bit too much... Much as I hate those fuckers, I do NOT want to pay for their private masturbation rooms aka the jail-cell!

Whatever happened to the stocks and pillory?

Aside from how wrong or right whipping and spanking is... I love how Mlle. Le Roi describes her pleasure in bending over and getting walloped.

"How can you crave something your whole body rejects, and even increase the cravings the greater the protest from the body?"

"How can I explain the pain that burns like torture but soothes and excites more than a caress or kiss."

And those last two paragraphs of "Natoma Street" are absolutely ecstatic. Through the words some kind of orgasm rushes through me - strangely heightened by that insane last slash of:

"...even though my thing has long been cured of its ability to have erections..."

WHAT ????

[This message was edited by S'tan on 11-05-03 at 04:18 PM.]

So I'm reading it. In some ways I prefer it to The Heart is Deceitful, it's somewhat brighter. (so far, that is) "She-ra" has some independence and gets some validation, even if it is only from a truck stop pimp.

She-ra. I'm glad he left Sarah's bubble bath on the lawn.

Developing .....

I finished reading Sarah for the 3rd time last night and
I can't wait for the movie now... The truck chase when they
rescue ha from Le Loup is so well-written, how often do you read a book that just races to its end?

JT where are you? More more more!!!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Turn to Evil,see how light-hearted you will feel." Genet

Sarah was great. I guess my experience differs from others in that I read The Heart is Deceitful first, then Sarah. So I got the back story before getting the main story. But for me after reading Heart, Sarah seemed almost like a comedy by comparison. Of course the characters are again reprehensible and really disgusting (the child molester with pictures of little girls all over walls, mumbling about his stepdaughter? yeeesh -- and that atrocious Le Loup!) but the work in general was so much brighter and funnier when held up next to Heart. Where Heart seemed all darkness except for the very ending chapter, Sarah had light and dark walking hand in hand throughout. Before reading either work my friends who had read Ms. Leroy told me about Sarah and called it "harrowing" but I felt Heart was much more so. The truck chase/rescue scene in Sarah is genius and wonderful, the whores who liberate Sam coming off as even heroic. Really racing to the finish with a Deliverance quality, escaping the hillbillys. Ms. Leroy gives the characters a kind of nobility that is missing from Heart, which was such an exquisitely written torture chamber. Pooh ("not like shit, like Pooh Bear") braving adversity and continous beatings while becoming the most famous ho in the state, her jealousy getting the best of her, but ultimately you see she's good inside and see she's really a tragic figure as she heads off to Hollywood. And the bond she shares with Sam, wanting fist kisses from Le Loup, their bargain basement Stanley Kowalski.

The whole Saint Sarah scenario is completely ludicrous and really, really funny while also depraved and sick!

I just got back from vacation in Seattle and Vancouver and what a following Ms.LeRoi has out there. I saw people reading it in cafes.
Just read Sarah a third time and still find more in each reading. I understand Lex , how it must seem reading "Heart.." first, and then "Sarah". But I love your insights into the
charecters.
Sat next to Ryan Landry on the flight back from Seattle. I gave him my copy of"Sarah". He read a third of it before we landed so I gave it to him.

I agree S'tan,
more please from J.T. Keep it comin' babe, we can take it.

Yeah, Bobby, we can take it baby...! I think JT shouldn't retire from prostitution, but go into hiding, open her own ho-house, and continue turning it out both ways. Kind of like someone else I know!

I've travelled on to the complete plays of Tennessee Williams, lines of which I love reciting aloud in the south'ren accent. JT works that way too, same loping cadences.

"What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your hands, until your fingers are broken?" - TW, Orpheus Descending

"... I miss having my dates. The other boys always talk about having to get high to help them do and then forget their tricks. But I'm pathetically aware, now I get high to fill the time between tricks. Because, no matter how rough or tough the trucker, that point of soundlessness, that instant before they are spent, is the sweetest contact anyone can have with anybody." JTL, Sarah, p. 137

Take a deep breath and look over how JT places - and doesn't place - those commas. How can you not love ha.

[This message was edited by S'tan on 11-22-03 at 12:35 AM.]

Check out the current issue of ID magazine. It has an interview with Debbie by JT Leroy, and I must admit it is one of the best interviews with her I have read. He really got to the real person. Not an easy task sometimes. He didn't ask the usual 10 questions..."what was CBGB's like?" or "do you hate Madonna?". He actually got the closest to the real person I know and love.

Although I did finish Sarah, I still feel I dont have a strong enough opinion about him until I read Heart. Until then , check out ID.

I'm looking forward to reading that interview... and Glammy I really enjoyed our conversation pro & con JT the other night. I wish there were more negative opinions here, I really don't want to sound fatuous...

But I haven't run across ANY negative reviews in re the prose yet. Just people hating the hype -- well who doesn't.

Bobby, I finished "Running With Scissors" which you recommended as per a memoir of perverse childhood... I was pretty well-entertained by how stunningly stupid the mother was. But it had too much flat, psychological language. I don't even think he described what his mother much looked like. Unlike JT who was really both in love and hate with 'Sarah.'

I did not think the material was risen enough out of the yeasty psychologising.
And while JT doesn't whine over his own sad/tragic state of affairs, I though Augusten Burroughs was pretty much "without affect," to use a standard psychology term...
which might make him just another version of his nerdy emotionless father and brother. And I totally hated the 'recap' of what all the characters were 'really' up, by press-time! I mean I did not fucking care!

In other words, it's not as deep as JT.

To finish, was not as thrilled with the language, which is the real point anyhow. Not the weirdness.

And after the flamboyant sleight-of-hand of you-know-who...

In his work you do experience the suffering, which is what makes it a translucent reality, and binds you in some mysterious way to the author.

Debbie gave me one of the "Pussy Pucker Pots" lip balm that JT Leroy sent her for Christmas, the flavor is "Strawberry Snatch", sounds like something straight out of his book. I have yet to try it though.