American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis is the most depressing and disturbing book I have ever read. The novel is told from the perspective of a wealthy 27year old investment banker, Patrick Bateman.

“When we look up at the clouds she sees an island, a puppy dog, Alaska, a tulip. I see, but don’t tell her, a Gucci money clip, an ax, a woman cut in two, a large puffy white puddle of blood that spreads across the sky, dripping over the city, onto Manhattan.” - Bret Easton Ellis, American Pscyho

The novel is disturbing for a number of reasons, but foremost for its accurate reflection of modern society. Descriptions of characters are marked by an analysis of what they are wearing and lists of expensive designer names. This emphasis on superficiality is supported by Bateman worrying more about his hair or getting a reservation at the ‘in’ restaurant than the consequences of his murder sprees.

Ellis criticises society’s superficial and consumerist values mainly through irony. Women are lured into their own bloodshed by their superficial attraction to Bateman’s money or looks. Similarly, victims Bateman murders on the streets, such as the ‘faggot’ with the sharpei, first fall for Bateman’s charm and good looks. Constant juxtaposition of a lifestyle most people apsire to (fine-dining, platinum Amex cards, model babes, exclusive gyms, facials and manicures, designer clothes) with nauseating descriptions of Bateman’s psychopathic murders (eating his victim’s intestines, burning eye sockets… will spare you the rest) portrays excessive materialism as similarly abhorrent.

Bateman reminds me of an extremely depraved version of Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s novel by the same title. However, whereas Dorian Gray faces retribution, Bateman remains beautiful and free at the end of the novel, leaving the reader indignant yet hopeless. The ironic depiction of society’s vacuity is also reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh’s Handful of Dust and Vile Bodies, which left me with that lingering existential aftertaste. Like these two Evelyn Waugh novels, the dialogue in American Psycho reveals egotism and alienation between the characters. Throughout the novel, characters continue their trivial rants despite Bateman revealing his psychopathic activities. As the novel progresses, the writing becomes more fragmented and stream-of-consciousness-like. This aligns with Bateman’s increasing disconnection with the other characters and psychotic behaviour to suggest that it is this emotional disconnection that leads to his absence of empathy.

Ultimately, Ellis suggests that Bateman’s lack of empathy is universal in a society of people blinded by their self-absorption and superficiality.This blindness is what allows the evil embodied in Bateman to thrive.

They always tell you to write about what you know. So I never wrote because I felt that I was too young to really know about anything. Last winter I stayed at a woman’s home in Vienna. She was nearing forties and recently divorced. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment where she would proofread and subtitle other people’s works for a living and then read self-development books before going to bed. She wanted to be a writer. That’s why I had asked to stay with her. I believed that people who wanted to write must want to write because of a need to express all of their reflections on life, and that people who reflect are interesting to be with.

Our time together was marked by silences, and fragmented conversations holding them together like neat gift boxes of nothing. I felt like I couldn’t talk to her because I couldn’t understand her. I didn’t know (and still don’t know) what it feels like to love someone so much to move to foreign country for them, to have so much of your life shaped by them and then to talk about them as an ex-lover to a stranger sipping tea in your one-bedroom apartment.

I then realised that if I couldn’t write about all these things in life, I should just write about what I do know about - being young and what it meant and means to me.

I was reading a book called ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ tonight. It was recommended to me by a girl in highschool, who I thought was very interesting and clever, but now realise was very sad and fed us lies about a double-life. I had always meant to read it in highschool, but am glad that I have only read it now. The adolescent observations and reflections of Charlie (the voice of the book) remind me of my own - which are only interesting and valuable in retrospect.

It saddens me to compare the level of emotional engagement and sincerity I had with the world as an adolescent to that which I have now. I used to actually think about whether people were happy or not. I used to sincerely wish that every good person I met was happy. I used to listen carefully to everything they had to tell me about themselves - it was all precious and crucial to me genuinely understanding them. I used to think that friendships would last for longer than I had lived, if not for a life-time.

Isolated by preoccupations with romantic relationships, finances, and work, friendships rarely mean what they used to. Friends, like everything else, are part of a landscape - a setting for your life that you merely pass through and leave behind along with all the listless conversations and half read books.

I think that the female equivalent for what a man feels when accompanying his girlfriend shoe-shopping, is shopping with her boyfriend in a video-games/electronics store.

For the past 3hours I have been looking into online networking, and I must say that it is the most depressing ordeal to go through.

First, I wanted to start a twitter account for a food-blog I share with a friend so that we could post instant updates on where and what we’re eating. I thought it’d be a good idea to follow some people in the food-blogging community with the hope that they’d maybe, just maybe, follow me back and post about how cool we were… I typed in the search-term ‘food’ and a whole list of food-bloggers and food guide publications came up. I had heard of a lot of them, such as Chocolatesuze, tablefortwo, Jenius and notquitenigella. I was then overcome by the usual hypnotic trance of Internet-surfing where I lose all sense of time and get caught up in a never-ending chain of links. All of the people I read about were extremely successful, at least in my eyes. Jenius is only in her 20s and she already has her own tour and marketing company. Notquitenigella is about to have a book published, and tablefortwo was on the 2011 Masterchef television show. Overcome by a sense of inadequacy, I closed the numerous tabs and decided that I wasn’t passionate enough about food to dedicate my life to it anyway.

Feeling quite despondent, I opened up Facebook to distract myself. From experience, Facebook also makes me feel rather inadequate. The first minute is usually spent scrolling through updates by people who I hardly, if ever, contact. The next minute is spent clicking on one of their profiles. Then I might see a photo that they’ve recently posted up which would often lead me to go through all their photos and ultimately become the most pedantically nosy stalker alive. Through the hypnotic trance of internet-surfing trance, I have now ended up on a friend of a friend of a friend’s profile. They’re smiling, no beaming, in every photo and looked like they were having a lot of fun with a lot of friends. By now, I felt like the dessicated piece of cat faeces on our front lawn in comparison.  To make things worse, they happen to be steps ahead of me in terms of career progression. They’re working as a paralegal in a top law firm as well as a PR intern at a top agency.

I then went on linkedin, which I had recently joined to boost my employment prospects in PR or law and added some more connections. I realised that all of my contacts who were law classmates had been working for top-tier law firms for a while now.

I realise that networking is a requirement for PR experts and that’s why I had been trying to get more into it, jump on the boat with the rest of the masses. However, from my experience of social-networking so far, I’m surprised that public relations hasn’t joined accountants and lawyers in the ladder of most depressing professions.

Aimlessly applying for jobs and sitting through interviews, unable to feign enthusiasm, I feel the inertia spreading like gangrene from the the tips of my fingers and toes. I realise that the solution was not to ‘fix myself’ by trying harder in applications and interviews but just do things that I genuinely find interesting or fun.

Someone gave me some wonderful advice the other day: Just put yourself into situations where you can shine.

Their advice was not what helped me the most, but rather their sheer enthusiasm about life and how much it had to offer. Instead of feeling overwhelmed or confused, they were excited by the numerous possibilities.

When studying, we’re often told to revise the things that we’ve learnt. I often find that I forget things that I’ve learnt soon after I’ve learnt it. These things not only consist of stuff from textbooks but also from mistakes and life in general.

I remember waiting in a book shop in the middle of the night for my train at Victoria, London that had been delayed by snow, to arrive. I picked up a book called rules of life. It had simple rules accompanied by some text about how to succeed in life. I found it corny and obvious yet shocking. It was shocking because all of the rules were things that I knew but often sunk into some dusty corner of my brain under an accumulated pile of random insights.

I have thus decided to try to record all my own little lessons from life so that I can constantly revise and not be caught in a cycle of repeating mistakes.

I have the photograph of us going to the theatre hand-in-hand stuck on the wall next to my bed. Since we were both always excited about dress-up parties and dressing up in general, I suggested that we should have dress-up dates. In the photograph you’re wearing a maroon and brown argyle turtle-neck that isn’t particularly flattering. I remember I giggled a bit when I first saw you that night. It was slightly rough to nestle my face into and smelt like old leather and cigarettes. You carried my brown leather bag that resembled the suitcase of a travelling salesman and wore a golfer hat, your hair carefully hiding the clashing graffiti font of the brand.

I was wearing big rhinestone grandma glasses that hipsters sometimes wear nowadays to prove that their good looks are unaffected even by the ugliest accessories. I certainly was affected. I wore a satin black blouse with a pussy-bow adorning a frilly peter pan collar and a beige skirt under a soft cream cardigan. I had suggested dressing up as an elderly couple as I saw going to the theatre together as an old people thing. 

As I’m sitting in bed writing this now, I’m getting pins and needles in my right leg. I’m afraid to move it though, because you’re hugging it against your warm chest that rises and falls to the rhythm of your deep breaths. I don’t want to wake you. Your body twitches occasionally so you must be having one of those adventure/action dreams.

I’d like to think that this photograph foreshadows our future together and that when we’re old, our hands softened into wrinkles etched into papery skin, I’ll get a tingle of deja vu when we go to the theatre with you in your turtle-neck and me in my cardigan.