No, not the song by Social Distortion- the book by Jay McInerney. I’m reading it as part of my ramp-up to re-read American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Here are my notes:
Slightly more developed than Bright Lights, Big City, this one follows the party girl Alison Poole, who grew up rich but now scams her way through acting school, nightly cocaine binges, and a string of men.
Alison is rigorously shallow.
Like in Bright Lights, Big City, the book’s “voice” is fairly odd- this time, it’s written as if it’s the stream of consciousness of Alison, written in the first person, without any quotation marks, and with the kind of run-on narrative you might write if you were recording your dreams, or even writing a blog entry.
Also as in McInerney’s other book, the reader is meant to assume that all this carousing and debauchery is motivated by a deeply wounded soul, trying to avoid a horrible truth or memory. In Alison’s case, there are plenty of references to this –
- She compulsively has sex with men she hates.
- She has tantrums in her acting class during exercises.
- She’s throwing up for no reason.
- the name of the horse she bets on is “Demons Begone.”
As before, we are slowly given hints as to the nature of this-
- her dad and Skip comparisons (young girls)
- her dad’s guy tried to rape her – abuse prior to Alex
- horses with drugs
- unsupportive family (dad, Becca, mom)
- rape jokes
- Miss Mary Mack
- Three Lies
- the horse – Dangerous Dan
A feminist theme: men project their fantasy on the girl… then blame her for making them irresponsible.
Alison kind of pulls a Miss Marple by only telling us a piece of the mystery after it’s happened- she DDN’T tell us something she did in between two things she narrated- kind of cheating.
0679722572