The weird.

For this week’s reading I chose American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. The topic was “the new weird”, though weird is a common phrase, when it is used as a storytelling element it becomes even less understood than it already is. Weird is one of the most common words I hear in a day to day basis, but what is it? If you were to look it up in the dictionary it would say, ‘suggesting something supernatural; uncanny.’ but in life, in story telling, its more than just that.

Weird is something you can’t quite understand. It’s like taking everything you know in reality, and throwing it away. It is the endless possiblity of new realities, and even thoughts that wouldn’t naturally come to a mind of you or I. In stories, weird is used to make the audience interact more with the novel, it gives you almost so little information, that you can just barely follow along. It requires a lot more from the audience than any other sort of novel (or film), with more in depth thinking, and so on.

In American Psycho, a lot of it was just too much, there were scenes described in it that were just too weird, or honestly repulsive in a grotesque way. There was one point in the book where the author described the main character scooping out a homeless man’s eyeball with a spoon... a little much. But aside from all the weirdness in detail, the thing that really got me about this book was the ending. I still cannot figure out whether or not this guy was just crazy or if he really did it all. It was so vaguely obscure and abrupt. I’ve even watched the movie that goes along with the novel as well, thinking maybe it would have a bit more of a concrete ending, but alas no. They did a good job interpreting that part into film. I can’t say much more than this week’s reading was pretty, well, weird.