Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives. Intimate Violence signals the emergence of an astute and humane critical voice." - Wendy Steiner Through an examination of such notorious works as The White Hotel and American Psycho, Laura Tanner leads us in a disturbing exploration of the reader's complicity with fictional depictions of intimate violence.įrom the bestselling author or Less Than Zero and American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England with no plans for the future-or even the present-who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Equally effective as a challenge to textual assault is the grace and gentleness of Tanner's own prose. of reading representations of rape and torture.' " - American Literature "In this incisive exploration of twentieth-century novels, art, and ads, Laura Tanner explains the mechanisms by which reader and viewer are implicated in violence. " - Choice "This thoughtful and disturbing book raises serious questions about 'the consequences. Tanner offers provocative and useful discussions of rape and torture. is the sort that needs to be redone in every classroom and by every mature reader. "Tanner deals with the central question of all narrative texts: how the reader is manipulated into empathy or distance by the text. While Cosmopolis only draws a kind of gloomy atmosphere, American Psycho is also one of the funniest books I have ever read and has been turned into a fantastic movie, with which I have compared some of the scenes. Yet both books have a lot in common in terms of the topics they deal with and the kinds of characters they portrait. The pace of the world has also changed as computers and video transmit news from all over the world into cars that have become indistinguishable from offices. The world of Cosmopolis has become darker and more dangerous wild parties are no longer celebrated, just as get togethers of business people don’t seem to happen in public, mainly for security reasons.
The atmosphere is rather shapen by fear of those that have come too short in the capitalist world and the security needs of those who work on wall street who have by now become anonymous figures, that may only be identified by their stretch limousines. The book by Don De Lillo presents a totally different atmosphere. The book by Bret Easton Ellis takes us into this decadent cocain addicted world, that basically revolves the hunger for parties and sex.
While Don De Lillo’s Cosmopolis deals at a time no clearly defined, which is probably supposed to be the post modern world of the early 2000s, Bret Easton Ellis’ book is set in the booming New York of the 80s where people who work on Wall Street are treated like pop stars and many of them well known as heroes of capitalism (e.g. The characters and their interaction with society are the central points in both books. In both books New York as the world centre of capitalism serves as a stage for two main characters who are shapen by the enormous amounts of money they have at their disposal. Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Wuppertal, course: Issues in American Society - Literary Negotiations, 2 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and Cosmpolis by Don De Lillo both are stories that depict the decadence of their time, hinting at social, moral and political issues that are of importance in their respective times.
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