American Psycho

Are Ellis and Jami Gertz friends? He gives her name some nice play in this scene at his video rental store. They presumably were not lovers since he is gay. She was in his movie “Less Than Zero”.

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“Do you have any Jami Gertz movies?” I ask her, trying to make direct eye contact.

“What?” she asks, distracted.

“Any movies that Jami Gertz is in?”

“Who?” She enters something into the computer and then says without looking at me, “How many nights?”

“Three,” I say. “Don’t you know who Jami Gertz is?”

“I don’t think so.” She actually sighs.

“Jami Gerz,” I say. “She’s an actress.”

“I don’t think I know who you mean,” she says in a tone that suggests I’m harassing her, but hey, she works in a video rental store and since its such a demanding high-powered profession her bitchy behavior is completely reasonable, right? The things I could do to this girl’s body with a hammer, the words I could carve into her with an ice pick.

-- “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis

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KFC

Pop gave me a break today.

I felt like I needed a treat, since I was feeling a little stressed that it looks like Kay will be coming here every weekend. Since I have a little padding of cash, I asked Pop to take me to KFC for that treat. Although I sort of half-hoped that he would pay for it, like he did the last time, I would have bet that he would decline, thinking he would not want to establish a strong precedent for this little luxury of mine. However, he whipped out his credit card, and now I can have a little more fun on Amazon.

Aldous Huxley

According to Laura Frost, in her book “The Problem with Pleasure”, modernist writers were engaged in a sort of war with the easy-going pleasures that were developing in the post-World War One era. This quote from Aldous Huxley suggests some of the animus behind this literary front.

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Of all the various poisons which modern civilization, by a process of auto-intoxication, brews quietly up within its own bowels, few, it seems to me, are more deadly (while none appears more harmless) than that curious and appalling thing that is technically known as “pleasure.” … The horrors of modern “pleasure” arise from the fact that every kind of organized distraction tends to become progressively more and more imbecile. … In place of the old pleasures demanding intelligence and personal initiative, we have vast organizations that provide us with ready-made distractions - distractions which demand from pleasure-seekers no personal participation and no intellectual effort of any sort. To the interminable democracies of the world a million cinemas bring the same balderdash. … Countless audiences soak passively in the tepid bath of nonsense. No mental effort is demanded of them, no participation; they need only sit and keep their eyes open.

-- Aldous Huxley (1923)

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