Experiencing Fictional Realities:
An Account of Unreliable Narration, Immersion and Metafiction in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
Roos-Marijn ter Horst 10675760
Student-number: 10675760 Supervised by: Dr. Rudolph Glitz 30-06-2017
Contents:
Introduction...4
Chapter 1: Framing and Entering: On the Border of Fictional Realities...9
1.1: Introduction...9
1.2: The Parergon and Paratextual Features...9
1.3: Titles and Covers: Crossing the Border into the Fictional Realm...11
1.4: Influencing Interpretation: 'Author's Note' and Epigraph...12
1.5: Conclusion...15
Chapter 2: Fictional Worlds: Immersion, Polyvalence and Literature as Simulation....17
2.1: Introduction...17
2.2: The Fictional Worlds of Patrick Bateman and Pi Patel...18
2.3: Open to Interpretation: How Polyvalence Enhances Immersion...20
2.4: Inference and Probability: Life of Pi's Unexpected Island...22
2.5: Inference and Probability: What Really Happened to Paul Owen?...25
2.6: Literature as Simulation...30
2.7: Conclusion...31
Chapter 3: How the Unreliable Narrator Reinforces the 'Reality Effect' of Fiction...33
3.1: Introduction...33
3.2: Locating Unreliability: Deviating Patterns, Codes and Conventions in American Psycho...35
3.3: Locating Unreliability: Deviating Patterns, Codes and Conventions in Life Of Pi...39
3.4: Conclusion...45
Chapter 4: Metafictionality: Where the Fictional World and the Real World Meet...47
4.2: Metafictional Revelations...47
4.3: Allegorical Interpretations...51
4.4: Conclusion...52
Conclusion...54
Introduction
In my very first year at the University of Amsterdam, in the first semester of the Bachelor Program Literary Studies, one of the works we were studying was Bret Easton Ellis'
American Psycho. We were only required to read the first few chapters, but when I pick up a
novel I have a persistent urge to finish it - probably an extremely common character trait among us literary students and scholars. So I read on. What started out as an excessive, monotonous and even quite boring summary of what all the characters were wearing, eating and buying, became a breathtaking thriller with vivid accounts of horrible murders. The detailed descriptions of man's grooming products left me bored. The detailed descriptions of gruesome murders left me appalled and disgusted. So much so, that, on several occasions, I had to put the novel away every now and then, before my urge to continue reading was stronger than my aversion. Even when re-reading American Psycho for the purpose of this thesis, the almost physical reaction of disgust I had to certain scenes of the novel was still there.
Another work of fiction that evoked a very strong emotional reaction in me was Yann Martels Life of Pi. I read this novel for the first time when I was about 15 years old, in Dutch. A couple of years later, I reread it in English. Every time, the tragic ending of Life of Pi nearly leaves me in tears; for 227 pages the reader joins a fantastic fairytale of a castaway boy and his unlikely companion in the form of a tiger in a boat, and that story is shattered in the novel's final pages. A big problem I encountered when writing my Bachelor's Thesis, is that, as my primary text for analysis, I chose a work of fiction that interested me theoretically, but, unlike the two novels I just mentioned, did not move me, bore me, disgust me or had any other emotional effect on me whatsoever, which made the whole ordeal somewhat
exhaustive. A thesis takes up a large amount of time, and not being very emotionally invested in the primary text you spend all that time with is not very motivating or inspirational. So
when the time came to think about what research I wanted to do for my Master's thesis, the first criteria, I had decided, was that I would choose a primary work of text that had really affected me emotionally. The endeavor of 'going through' the countless works of text in my mind that had emotionally moved me in the past, caused a question to dawn on me; in all these years of reading and studying literature, I had read amazing texts, but the list of novels and books that moved me emotionally – here I exclude the novels that moved me 'only' aesthetically – seemed to be quite arbitrary, and I started wondering: why? What made these particular texts more moving than others? From the perspective of a literary student these were not works that I considered different, better or worse in 'quality': it is certainly
impossible to state objectively, for example, that Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of
Cholera is a better novel than Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, but, personally, I
have to say that the former had a much greater emotional effect on me than the latter. Although I quickly realized that measuring the amount of emotional effect that one particular novel might have on a reader is impossible – it is a very obvious matter of subjective and individual taste – I wondered to what extent the question of why novels can have such an emotional effect on their readers could be answered, and if that was the case, then how? It where these questions that jump-started my research, and it wasn't long before I remembered a text written by Umberto Eco, one that I also encountered in my first year of Literary Studies, in which he describes the sense of 'having really existed' that fictional characters can acquire through time and (emotional) impact. What fascinated me particularly, is that Eco referred to a study that showed that the more impact a fictional character had on its reader, the more people believed this character had actually, historically, existed. This, to me, showed that the impact a fictional character can have, is closely related to the extent in which we experience this character to be 'real', thus, I concluded, the matter of emotional engagement we feel when reading a novel, is closely related to our experience of reality when
reading fiction.
Of course we are generally aware, when reading fiction, that what we are reading is not 'true' or 'real' in contrast to how we experience our daily lives to be true. Still, there seem to be certain aspects of fiction that simulate a sense of reality, of a 'real' experience, and of real people, and although the novels that create this reality experience will still differ from reader to reader, it is possible to investigate which aspects, techniques and narrative strategies are most likely to create such a reality effect.
It seemed only logical to me to thus undertake the enterprise of investigating fictional realities in a novel or novels that had great emotional effect on me. Life of Pi and American
Psycho both belong to this category, but I came to these two novels because, while the
emotions, feelings and reactions these novels evoke are arguably opposite, these books share remarkable similarities. These two novels not only create strong emotional reactions, they are also both works that play with the element of reality in fiction. Although the contents of these novels are quite different, both of these novels end with what I will call a metafictional revelation, in both cases a revelation that leaves the reader questioning what to believe. Life
of Pi is a novel that is framed, presented and written almost as if it was an (auto)biographical
artifact. American Psycho, on the other hand, is a novel that actively expresses its fictionality. As it happens, these two novels share one last, and to me very interesting and significant similarity; both of these stories are told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator. This, I will argue, is not a coincidence. In daily life we distinguish between truth and lies, between real and fake. When dealing with an unreliable narrator in fiction, I argue that we make a double distinction; first, mostly unconsciously, we differentiate between the real world, the world we live in, and the fictional world in which the story takes place. Subsequently, we make a distinction between what is real in the fictional world, and what is not. I will argue that this second distinction strongly enhances our reality experience in reading fiction,
because our tendency to uncover truth in real life will move from the real world into the fictional world, and what is 'true' in fiction will, by contrast of the untrue in fiction, be
experienced as even more true. Subsequently, the unreliable narrators in both of these novels, serve as tools to emphasize the fiction/reality boundary that they both play with. Life of Pi's imitation of the autobiographical relies heavily on the first person narrator, who's unreliability in the end serves to illustrate the fictionality of all language expressions and storytelling.
American Psycho's unreliable narrator serves almost as a caricature, as the fictionality of the
novel is emphasized in such a way that the reader must reflect on the fictional reality he is creating. As I think I have discovered and hope to prove and make clear in the following chapters, metafictional comments, ambiguity and polyvalence, references to the 'real' world and unreliable narrators are all factors that contribute to a greater experience of the 'real' in fiction.
The decision to focus on these two novels rather than three, or just one, is because the similarities of these two novels are, to my opinion, extensive enough that they are both very relevant and helpful in answering the questions put forth in this thesis and at the same time their differences make for the necessary nuances, making it unnecessary to include a third novel. Rather than setting out for a comparative venture, I chose an approach that makes these novels serve as complementary to each other and to the subject of this thesis. In order to give a complete account of how the fictional realities in these two novels are constructed and experienced, I will first look at notion of frame and framing to demonstrate how this
influences the entry into the fictional realm. Subsequently, I will investigate the fictional worlds of Life of Pi and American Psycho, and give an account of how they should be
approached and evaluated. I will discuss how polyvalence enhances immersion, before giving an account of the unreliable narrators in both of the text who are the creators of this
show how the interplay between reality and fiction enhances rather than decreases the reality effect of fiction.
Chapter 1: Framing and Entering: On the Border of Fictional Realities 1.1: Introduction
There are endless and numerous philosophical debates and questions regarding the nature of reality and its subjectivity. It is not my goal to try and find an answer to these questions or join in on the debate, or even to look at and describe all the different philosophical currents dealing with these matters, as it would result in an endless and phenomenal project. My goal, in this chapter, is to go in depth into 'Fictional Realities', however paradoxical the term, and to uncover how the reading of fiction can resemble, to its reader, such a truth-like experience. This chapter will specifically focus on the realities that are created in Life of Pi as well as in American Psycho before moving on to an analysis of how these fictional realities are heavily influenced by their respective narrators, and ultimately moving towards an analysis of how the unreliability of these narrators inflict a sensation of reality to a larger extent in the third chapter. What are the worlds that our narrators live in and why and how can these worlds become so real to the readers that enter these worlds? In order to answer these questions properly, I will look at how the fictional worlds in these two novels are framed, and where we 'enter' them, as well as the contextual elements at play at the moment of entering this fictional reality.
1.2: The Parergon and Paratextual Features
When moving from the 'real world' into the 'fictional world', we, as readers, need to cross a border. K. Malcolm Richards provides us, through the use of Derrida, with a very well put and exact description of such a border; in the chapter Framing the Truth in Painting from his book Derrida Reframed, he thoroughly explains Derrida's concept of the Parergon. As the
Ergon is the work, the Parergon is the border that separates the work from the world, a
a frame surrounding a painting, it is what separates “the work from the wall” (Richards 33), but the parergon is, as Richards explains, (almost) a 'space of its own', though dependent on the ergon in a near parasitical manner, as it cannot exist without a work to rely on. The same goes, however, the other way around, as a work never comes without a pre-existing frame, as Richards explains that “the subject herself or himself is also already framed” (34), and a work will never be without frame, as “In the case of the ergon, its non-self-identity, the inability of the ergon to define itself as a whole, is revealed through the parergon.” (36) Richards
explains that “Moving both inside and outside the work we can see the slippery nature of the
parergon, its ability to reside in a para-site (almost a site)”. (37) This 'para-site' is the space in
which the crossing from the 'real' into the 'fictional' realm takes place, as it both creates and resides in the limbo between these worlds. One example that Richards refers to, is that of the label. Labels influence, steer and thus frame the way in which we perceive a work. Titles can be considered as one of these labels, and in the case of both Life of Pi and American Psycho, their titles are, as I will come to explain, very influential in constituting a particular frame.
As Richards mostly draws from and applies his theory to that of visual art, another critic very concerned with the workings of the frame, Eric Berlatsky, objects in his text Lost
in the Gutter: Within and Between Frames in Narrative and Narrative Theory, to the idea that
the frame surrounding a painting is in any way comparable to the frame surrounding a literary text. He explains that a painting or a picture has only one frame, while a literary texts has many different 'paratextual features' that all serve as (parts of) different frames. Very similar to Richards notion of the label, paratextual features are elements that belong to a text, but are, at the same time, not completely intrinsic or extrinsic to it. Epigraphs, covers and titles are examples of what Berlatsky calls paratextual features. Berlatsky maintains a much more tangible definition of the frame, disregarding the elements surrounding the subject and the object that are not visible or physical manifestations surrounding objects or texts. However,
his definition of the paratext, borrowed from Gerard Genette, is a useful one in pointing towards these elements that belong in the site that Richards calls the parergon. Richards definition is definitely more nuanced than Berlatsky's, but the tools that Berlatsky provides are more directly applicable. Thus, both theoretical approaches towards framing deserve a place in this analysis.
1.3: Titles and Covers: Crossing the Border into the Fictional Realm
A title, thus, is one the most obvious paratextual features that influences
interpretation. It provides the reader with one of the first bits of information of what to expect, of what to find 'inside' of a text, although it still takes place in the space between reality and fiction: “Far from being marginal, a title often provides for the viewer one of the points of passage into the work.” (Richards 39) My goal here is not to give an explanation of the titles of my primary texts, but rather to illustrate how they guide their readers while taking their first steps towards moving into their respective fictional worlds. When we consider the paratextual features as a threshold, as part of the parergon, there are other influential elements worth mentioning that are situated right before that threshold. Before picking up a novel, a reader already finds him or herself in a space that frames perception. 'Finding' a book in a designated area in a bookstore or library already implies a works fictionality if this works is placed in the literature section, or, when a work is located in the non-fiction section as a text that depicts reality. The consequence of surroundings and context of a text in influencing frames and steering interpretations are not forgotten here, but their nature is so extensive that, for the time being, they will be excluded from this particular analysis. Rather than focusing on frames originating from context, the focus in this chapter will be on the frames that come from paratextual features.
book’s title implies autobiography or biography” (59), as the word 'life' points in that direction. An inexperienced or uninformed reader could understand the novel's title in that sense, if it weren't for other paratextual features that reverse this interpretation, like the fact that the copy used for this thesis is equipped with a blurb from the Guardian stating “This enormously loveable novel is suffused with wonder” (Emphasis added), something that, as Berlatsky explains “may be preparing us for entry into a specific “non-real” world. (170) The drawings on the cover show a boat with a tiger aboard and a boy on a raft attached, already 'hinting' at the novels content. The declaration “Winner of the Man-Booker Prize” points in the other direction, again, towards the 'real world' in which the author, Yann Martel – as, of course, also stated on the cover – received this price. It is mostly here where Berlatsky's notion of paratextual features and Richard's employment of the term parergon meet. All the paratextual features present on the cover constitute a certain frame, while pointing ‘inward’ and disclosing parts of the story while at the same time grounding itself in the real world by referring to the real in pointing ‘outward’.
The particular copy of American Psycho used for this research, has a much more subtle layout; a completely white cover, with a bloody fingerprint as only pictorial indicator of what a reader may find inside of the book. The title, however, is much more telling; it immediately points to the fact that one must be aware of the psycho referred to in the title, a figure that will obviously be a big part of the story 'inside'. The bloody fingerprint points to the nature of this psycho; it becomes clear right away that this novel is not just a
psychological insight into a disturbed character, but that this character most likely will express his disturbance in a violent manner.
1.4: Influencing Interpretation: 'Author's Note' and Epigraph
American Psycho to begin with, it will probably be taken away by the novel's epigraph: a
fragment from Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground that starts: “Both the author of these Notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictional.” (Ellis 2, Emphasis in text) However, it continues: “Nevertheless, such persons as the composer of these Notes not only exist in our society, but indeed must exist considering the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed.” (2) This epigraph seems to function as a reminder of the text's fictionality, by reminding the reader not to confuse this piece of fiction with the reality in which the reader himself is located. At the same time, however, this epigraph also claims reality, as it states that the content of this piece of fiction is something that could happen, something that is not even highly unlikely and something that could have already happened or otherwise might happen in the future. Furthermore, the novel bears a ‘fictionality
disclaimer’, that states that “This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, incidents, and dialogue, except for incidental references to public figures, products or services, are
imaginary and are not intended to refer to any living persons or to disparage any company’s products or services.” The fictionality of the text is emphasized to the extreme, to such an extent that it almost becomes ironic, and although the epigraph and the fictionality disclaimer are not part of the narrative itself, these paratextual features forebear and are in a certain way part of the metafictional interferences in the text, are, as will be further developed later in this thesis, crucial in the novel’s interpretation.
Life of Pi does not have an epigraph at all. The first text, other than the title and
title-page, that one comes across is the “Authors Note”, which is a perfect example of the boundary between the inside and the outside of the text. As an epigraph and fictionality disclaimer belong to the text, they are not part of the story, while Life of Pi’s ‘Author’s Note’ is much more ambiguous in that sense. In this introduction, the author of the text explains how he went to India because of his writer's block, and was informed about the story of a
man named Pi who lived, like the author himself, in Toronto, Canada. The author then returns to Canada to interview Pi and write down his new found story. He claims that “It seemed natural that Mr. Patel's story should be told mostly in the first person – in his voice and through his eyes. But any inaccuracies or mistakes are mine”. (Martel XV) The Roman numerals in this section are significant; these are often used by author's in their preface's or introductions. Although the reader has, in this part of the narrative, already entered the fictional realm (something the watchful reader has probably already realized, while others will find out shortly), the Roman numerals play with the suggestion that this “Author's note” is preliminary. While Berlatsky claims that “opening lines (or paragraphs) of texts are not typically considered “frames,” even though they certainly influence interpretation of the next line (and the next paragraph, etc.)”, this particular case seems to be an exception. Although
Life of Pi plays with the notion of autobiography, any reader of this novel is highly likely to
be aware that they are embarking on a fictional world; they are after all aware of having picked up a novel. And though it may take a while for the reader to realize that the ‘Author’s Note’ is already a part of the narrative, he or she will eventually (and probably quite quickly) come to this realization. But the playfulness created by hinting at autobiography in both the title and the introduction, will however subconsciously, have left their mark on the reader. Furthermore, Berlatsky explains that introducing a new narrative and a new narrator within the existing one, causes for the latter to be ‘framed’ by the former, (172) as is the case in Life
of Pi, as the ‘Author’s Note’ is narrated by ‘the writer of the novel’ (just to be clear; one that
should not be confused with the ‘actual’ Yann Martel), while the bulk of the story is narrated by Pi. Here, we are dealing with an embedded narrative. This what Berlatsky calls a frame inside a frame, as the frames constructed by each paratextual features are, according to him, the first of many frames, (173) and an embedded narrative is framed by a second ‘layer’ of the frame created by the ‘first’ narrative.
Although the first line of American Psycho can no longer be considered a paratextual feature as it is located ‘inside’ of the text, the novel’s first sentence “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” (Easton Ellis 3, emphasis in text) can be considered another exception to Berlatsky’s rule. This line borrowed by Ellis from Dante’s Divine Comedy is anything but a conventional opening line. The bold lettering indicates that this line should not be
overlooked, and that its intertextual reference should not go unnoticed. In Dante’s Inferno, this text is written on the gates that form the entrance into the underworld, and it thus marks the passage from one world into another, and more specifically from the ‘real world’ into hell. In American Psycho this line indicates a similar descending into a hellish fictional world, and as the bold lettering changes to regular lettering, and the sentence continues “is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank” (Ellis 3), the subtle passage from the real in to the fictional is completed. Because this first sentence is a recognizable intertextual reference to another work of fiction, it seems to point ‘outward’ to the ‘real world’ in which many readers will recognize this famous sentence, and are, by this recognition, again reminded of the fictional nature of the text, thus framing the reader’s interpretation and reading of the text.
1.5: Conclusion
In this chapter the goal was to demonstrate which factors play a significant role in framing the fictional world on the threshold. The goal of this endeavor is to show that a fictional world is entered with a preconception of what this world will look like, and that paratextual features and frames determine how to approach the fictional realm and its characters. However, these paratextual features can be deceiving, misleading, or
contradictory; as will be demonstrated in the following chapter, contradictory elements in narrative play an important part in the amount of immersion experienced by the reader. The
paratextual features and the frames described in this chapter are thus influential in how a reader approaches the fictional world, but also on how far the reader is willing to dive in to fictional world and accept its fictionality as 'true'.
Chapter 2: Fictional Worlds: Immersion, Polyvalence and Literature as Simulation 2.1: Introduction:
While paratextual features and frames determine the way in which we embark on the fictional world and form the boundary between the real world and the fictional world, the experience of the fictional world once it is entered, depends on the reader’s amount of acceptance of this world. Umberto Eco describes that, when picking up a fictional text and commencing into the fictional world, readers temporarily accept the fictional world as 'real', in order to be able to appreciate and understand the story. The reader must, to a certain extent, accept the fictional reality as 'true' in order to keep making sense of the fictional world that is entered. The ability of a reader to ‘dive in’ to this fictional world and experience it as if himself or herself ‘being a part of this world’, is called
‘immersion’. Immersion is a critical term here, as the reason for accepting the fictional world as true or real, is dependent on the amount of immersion a reader experiences. In this chapter the fictional worlds of both Life of Pi as American Psycho will be further uncovered, and several aspects that create immersion and reasons for why a reader may feel immersed will be discussed and theoretically substantiated by means of Umberto Eco’s chapter Some Remarks on Fictional Characters from his collected essays
Confessions of a Young Novelist, Vera Nünning’s Narrative Fiction and Cognition: Why We Should Read Fiction and Karen Kukkonen’s Bayesian Narrative: Probability, Plot and the Shape of the Fictional World. The construction and form of the fictional worlds of American Psycho and Life of Pi will be under analysis here, and in particular the reasons
for why and the level to which the reader accepts them. One of these reasons is, according to Nünning, created when a text is 'polyvalent', when a reader is presented with multiple options to interpretation. In this chapter I will look at these polyvalent and ambivalent moments in American Psycho and Life of Pi respectively, and I will take this analysis a
step further by also incorporating Kukkonen's theory on how narrative approached through the idea of Bayesian inference.
2.2 The Fictional Worlds of Patrick Bateman and Pi Patel
The setting of American Psycho’s fictional world is established and well introduced immediately, in the first paragraph of the novel, of which the first sentence is, as discussed earlier, framing the readers perception right away. But further analysis of this paragraph will show what the landscape of this fictional world of this story looks like:
“Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement of Les Misérables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn’t seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, “Be My Baby” on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.” (Easton Ellis 3, emphasis in text)
Many aspects of this fictional world become clear right away. The story is set in modern day New York; as it is commonly known that this is the city where Wall Street is located, and New York is a city where the streets are designated with numbers rather than ‘regular’ street names. We know it is (relatively) modern because of the fact that there are buses, cabs and radios in this fictional world. It is a world in which Victor Hugo’s Les
Misérables and the Ronettes exist, and a world in which graffiti and Dante’s Divine Comedy
exist as well. The reader will become aware that this world is, so far, very close in
resemblance to our ‘own’ world, to the real world. The indications in this paragraph are such clear markers that this story is set in the city of New York, that is highly unlikely any reader will think that, because they are dealing with a work of fiction, this Wall Street would be located in Egypt or on an entirely different planet. As Eco explains, the terms of the fictional world are more or less the same as that of our own real world, even in fairy tales or science fiction stories, so that “Even in such situations, when a forest is mentioned, it is understood that it should be more or less like the forests in our real world, where the trees are vegetable and not mineral, and so on. If, by any chance, we are told that the forest consist of mineral trees, the notions of “mineral” and “trees” should be the same as in our real world.” (79) The same goes for stories that take place in worlds that are mirrored by the image of, and are practically the same as our real world, so that the reader will understand that the Eiffel Tower will still be, as in reality, in Paris and not in (fictional) New York. (79-80) The fictional world
of American Psycho is one that can be considered as completely similar to our own world,
apart from the fact that the fictional characters of the novel live in this fictional New York, while it is safe to say that they do not also live in actual New York.
The same goes for the larger part of Life of Pi as well; although the story’s setting is not contained to one particular city, the locations are, although perhaps not as well known to most as New York City, equally recognizable as a realistic environment; Pi’s family zoo in the Indian town of Pondicherry and the Pacific Ocean are where most of the story takes place. There is, however, one exception; the magical island Pi encounters while being a castaway: Right after witnessing the 'murder' of a stranger encountered at sea by the hands of Richard Parker, the most unbelievable and phantasmatic episode of Life of Pi begins, as Pi describes stumbling upon an unlikely island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: “I made an exceptional
botanical discovery. But there will be many who disbelieve the following episode. Still, I give it to you now because it's part of the story and it happened to me. […] In the near distance I saw trees. I did not react. I was certain it was an illusion and that a few blinks would make it disappear.” (Martel 343-44) Pi’s encounter with and his description of this island is one of the factors that are cause for questioning his reliability. This realization however, will not change the readers mental image of the island when reading its description; the trees on this island will still be imagined by the reader as trees, and the green of the leaves will be the exact same as a color of green existing in the readers real world. The island, however, does not ‘fit’ in the idea of the fictional world as the reader has come to know it. Life of Pi’s fictional world has, up to this point in the novel, been a realistic one in the sense that there are no magical or science fictional elements or activities in the novel; the island would have been perfectly acceptable in a work of fantasy or science fiction, and would not to any degree influence the narrator’s reliability, but because of the context it becomes a source of doubt. The fictional world is a world in which a lot is possible, however, the conventions and rules of this world can not all of the sudden be broken, as be discussed later on in the chapter regarding the unreliability of the narrator.
2.3: Open to Interpretation: How Polyvalence Enhances Immersion
The property of literature to have more than one possible outcome or more than one interpretation is what Nünning calls “polyvalence”. According to Nünning, polyvalence is something that readers appreciate or even expect when reading fiction and that Polyvalence is a distinguishing feature of fiction and reading fiction: “It is one of the distinguishing features of fictional narratives that they provide the basis for more than just one interpretation, and that it is oft en impossible to decide which interpretation is the right one.” (57) As people are set on having a sense of 'closure' regarding narratives that take place in the real world,
readers, at least to a certain extent, expect a fictional narrative to be one that is open to their interpretation, and this is only possible when the narrative is not fixed, when more than one interpretation is possible, so they can actively participate in closing the gaps of the narrative. When it is difficult to decide which interpretation of the narrative is 'the right one', the reader becomes more engaged in the story, and he or she will try to figure out the right solution. Nünning points to American Psycho as an example of such a novel, as it call's upon “the affective and moral engagement of readers, who are unable to find a solution to to puzzling ethical questions.” (57) The polyvalence in this text is not dependent on the 'many options' or possibilities regarding the outcome of story's events (although the reader may certainly wonder if Bateman will be punished for his actions, or if he will be caught for the murder on Paul Owen for example), but the polyvalence in this novel, as in Life of Pi, rather lies in the many options in interpretation of what is real and what is not, and in what to make of certain events; how do some of the illogical events become sensible?
Both these texts are, in both similar and different ways, open to multiple interpretations; similar because of the confusion created by the unreliability of their respective narrators, different in the solutions and tools the texts offer their readers as a means to close the gaps that have emerged. In order to find out where immersion takes place, it is important to designate the location where polyvalence takes place (and in this case specifically polyvalence created by the factor of unreliability). It goes without saying that every text might have endless options when it comes to interpretation, not only dependent on the text itself, but also depending on when, where and who is reading these texts, and how 'skilled' this reader is. There are, however, definitely certain 'junctions' in these texts that require the reader to make a (conscious or unconscious) decision and choose the
interpretation that makes the most sense, in order to keep making sense of the complete story. In Life of Pi the ending is a very clear example of one of those moments, as the reader is, like
Mr. Chiba and Mr. Okamoto, presented with two interpretive options (the fact that this is so blatantly expressed and presented is not coincidental, but more on that later), but American
Psycho also has one of these quite clear 'polyvalent moments'. In this chapter I will look at
two of those polyvalent and ambivalent moments in American Psycho and Life of Pi respectively.
2.4: Inference and Probability: Life of Pi's Unexpected Island
As I will explain later in the chapter on unreliable narration, the unreliability of Pi is already (severely) impaired at the point in which he encounters the unlikely island. By means of the ending, in hindsight, many of the unlikely or ambiguous events of the novel are
explained. The reality of the island remains unclear. Was it ever really there? This
unanswered question makes it so that even the explanation of the novel remains to create a sense of polyvalence. In fact, the island might be the most 'polyvalent' element of the novel. Nünning thus argues that immersion is created by this polyvalence because this calls upon the participation of the reader to close the created gaps. Kukkonen argues that this is something a reader will do automatically, namely by forming a probability model regarding the outcome of the events. Unexpected turns such as the presence of the unlikely island in Life of Pi create the reader to question everything they know about the fictional world they previously thought to understand. Illogical elements like these create gaps that the reader feels the need to close. As Kukkonen explains from her approach on fictional narratives through Bayesian
inferences, is that “Bayesian inferences in narratives create a feedback loop between readers’ sense of the probabilistic shape of the fictional world and what they find on the page.” (Kukkonen 723) The reader will make sense of what they find on the page, and from the information that is gathered, a probability is formed in the readers mind towards how the narrative will continue. If this probability is proven false or different than expected, the
reader will adjust his or her expectations, and create a new set of probable outcomes. This process is repeated and expectations keep getting adjusted by the reader. In an acceptance of Nünning's theory on polyvalence, one must conclude that the more extensive the possibilities are, the greater the amount of the reader's immersion. This would mean that the more
ambiguous and unsteady the reader's probability model is or remains, the greater the amount of polyvalence, and the greater the sense of immersion. A feedback loop between the reader's own preconceived probability model and what they subsequently find on the page will, in the case of Life of Pi, start out, imaginably, as quite a steady probability model with little
ambiguities. The probability that a castaway's only companion on a life-boat is a Benghal tiger, is very small. The fact that Pi grew up in a zoo and that the tiger was with him on the Tsimtsum however, will make this scenario more likely, and the reader has no direct need to question this given. When a 'magical' (or in the very least highly unlikely) island appears, the reader's options are to either believe the island exists and is real in the fictional world, or that the island is a figment of Pi's imagination. The given that not long before the encounter with the island even Pi himself explicitly doubted his sanity, might have influenced the reader's probability model in favor of unreliability and against the reality of the island. Kukkonen explains that: “Considering narrative from a Bayesian perspective thus posits the fictional world as a work in progress. As readers move through the narrative, they revise their beliefs about the shape of the fictional world and (usually) get a progressively better grasp of its probabilities.” The presence of the island could also have the effect that the reader will conclude that in this particular fictional world, there are other possibilities than in the real world, but since there were no previous indications of the sort, it is unlikely that the reader will simply accept the island as part of the fictional world.
Kukkonen mentions that “Readers’ Bayesian inferences are activated, accelerated and finally led to a new equilibrium through the probability design of a narrative, starting at the
very bottom of textual detail and feeding through loops into the more general trajectory of the plot.” (Kukkonen 737|) Although it might be true that small details can alter the probability model and will determine how the reader will continue his or her reading, the judgment regarding these details is dependent from the reader's larger conception of the fictional world. Where paratextual features and a first impression of the fictional world have already
determined a probability model, this model keeps changing by the details and developments of the narrative. When a reader is still undecided, details like these might indeed change their probability model: “In the morning the island was gone, as was the mass of algae we had been towing. As soon as night had fallen, the algae had dissolved the rope with its acid.” (381) When Pi leaves the island because he finds out it is carnivorous, he takes with him a part of the island's vegetation. Although Pi seems to have a proper explanation for the disappearance of the algae, it remains strange that as soon as the island is out of sight, the algae are gone too. Furthermore, Pi was aware of the strange composition of the algae, as he explained earlier “At night, by some chemical process unknown to me but obviously
inhibited by sunlight, the predatory algae turned highly acidic” (Martel 379) Considering his previous and ongoing inventiveness, his constant need for food and the abundance of the algae as a nutritious food source, it seems almost like self-sabotage to handle the algae so carelessly. This all points in the direction that Pi made the island up, and that, as soon as his hallunication of the island ended, the algae disappeared. He does, however, insist on having the meerkat bones in his boat examined by an expert, as proof for the existence of the island when Mr. Chiba and Mr. Okamoto doubt the island's existence. This examination and its possible results are, unfortunately for the curious and confused reader, not a part of the novel.
In her analysis in the text Hollow at the core”:Deconstructing Yann Martel’s Life of
Pi, Florence Stratton shows that inference is indeed a useful approach to the novel, as “Martel
constructing them in accordance with the rules of causal explanation” (Stratton) She examplifies this argument by providing her own probability model: “Thus Pi’s survival for 227 days in a lifeboat with a tiger is explicable in terms of such factors as his skill as a swimmer,[...] his knowledge of wild animals, […] his possession of that essential piece of tiger-training equipment, a whistle” (Stratton) The novel's plot itself plays with and relies strongly on logical reasoning, while at the same time making this an impossibility for the reader, who's sense of ambiguity through polyvalence is thus established.
2.5: Inference and Probability: What Really Happened to Paul Owen?
One of the questions that remain unanswered in American Psycho, and where interpretation is called for, is whether Paul Owen has really been murdered. Paul Owen is Patrick Bateman's colleague, and he is the one in charge of the mysterious 'Fisher account'. Paul Owen keeps confusing Bateman with a guy named Marcus Halberstam, something that Patrick uses to his advantage when he decides to lure Owen to his apartment and kill him. Bateman then supposedly goes over to Owen's apartment, packs his bags and decides to replace the message on Owen's answering machine: “I wonder where I should send Paul, and after a few minutes of intense debating decide: London. “I'll send the bastard to England,” I cackle while turning the volume down on the TV and then I leave the new message. My voice sounds similar to Owen's and to someone hearing it over the phone probably identical.” (209) None of Bateman's crimes seem to end up in the news and it appears he is never suspected of any of the crimes he supposedly committed, not even after he claims to have been caught red handed, shooting someone in the middle of the street, which causes an out of proportion but spectacular chase through Manhattan, where helicopters and a SWAT-team were involved. This all seems to contribute to the theory that Bateman's crimes are in his mind rather than in the real world. The murder on Paul Owen however, seems to be of a different kind, as it
seems that he, in fact, has disappeared. In American Psycho, A Readers Guide, Julian
Murphet asks the same question: “In terms of reliability of our narrator, what really happens to Paul Owen? All we can say with certainty is that he disappears.” (Murphet 46) Murphet seems to indicate here, that there is no question regarding the disappearance of Paul Owen. It is hard to distinguish between what is real and what is not in Bateman's confused and
disturbed world, but let's assume that Murphet is right, and that Owen's disappearance is indeed 'real'. There are several possible scenarios that explain what happened to Owen. According to our narrator, he murdered Paul Owen, takes a detour to Owen's apartment, goes back home to “place Owen head-first and fully dressed into a Canalino goose-down sleeping bag, which I zip up then drag easily into the elevator” (Ellis 210). Bateman then runs in to some friends on the street, dragging the sleeping bag “down the block” (210), and after talking to his acquaintances for a while, he “effortlessly manage to swing the sleeping bag into the backseat, hop in and give the driver the address in Hell's Kitchen.” (210) While it is doubtful that one man can 'effortlessly' carry around a dead body, and even more doubtful that someone can carry a body in a sleeping-bag openly through the streets of New York, it are primarily the events that follow that make Bateman's claim of having murdered Paul Owen unbelievable.
A while after Owen's disappearance, a Detective Kimball shows up at Bateman's office. Bateman's nervous reaction to this man's presence - “Tell him … Then, mulling it over, rethinking my options, I stop and begin again. “Tell him I am at lunch” (Ellis 256) - might, at first, seem like an indication of guilt. Bateman continues by “preparing” himself “for a tense scene” (Ellis 256) and pretending he is on the phone to postpone having to talk to the detective. His guilty behavior subsequently only increases, when he continuously tries to change the subject and his thoughts become more and more paranoid: “I get the feeling he is trying not to stare at me strangely” (Ellis 258). Bateman's paranoia does not seem to fade, so
he takes it upon himself to find out if there is any information that may incriminate him, a question that Kimball answers by telling Bateman “Well, there's a message on his answering machine saying he went to London.” (Ellis 262) This information aligns with Bateman's changing of Owen's message on his voice-mail. At this point, the reader's probability model may start to lean towards believing that Bateman did kill Paul Owen, which would have enormous consequences for how the rest of the novel is read; the probability that Bateman committed all of the described crimes, increases enormously when it would turn out that he did, in fact, kill Owen. However, when Bateman asks “Has anybody seen him in London?” (Ellis 262) Kimball answers that this is indeed the case, although Kimball adds that he couldn't varify this sighting of Owen with certainty, because, consequent with the rest of the novel, there is a lot of mistaken identity amongst the characters. The scenario in which Bateman actually killed Owen, thus becomes more probable, certainly when Kimball explains that according to Owen's itinerary he, on the night of his disappearance, had dinner with Marcus Halberstam, the very person Owen kept confusing with Bateman. As Bateman's reliability is highly doubtful, the reader's probability model at this point must be going rapidly back and forth, since the contradictions keep piling up. But since there is no solving this matter through analyzing the interaction between Bateman and Kimball, another passage of the novel might bring more clarity regarding the fate of Paul Owen:
“Someone I talk to through my lawyer tells me that Donald Kimball, the private investigator, has heard that Owen really is in London, that someone spotted him twice in the lobby of Claridge's, once each at a tailor on Savile Row and at a trendy new restaurant in Chelsea. Kimball flew over two nights ago, which means no one is keeping watch over the apartment anymore, and the keys I stole from Owen still function so I was able to bring the tools (a power drill, a bottle of acid, the nail gun,
knives, a Bic lighter) over there after lunch. I hire two escort girls from a reputable if somewhat sleazy private establishment I've never used before, charging them on Owen's Gold American Express card, which, I suppose because everyone thinks Owen is now in London, no one has put a trace on, though there is one on his platinum AmEx.” (Ellis 289, emphasis in text)
Although Bateman seems to have an explanation for everything – he is talking to 'someone' who has inside information regarding the doings of Kimball – these explanations are quite unbelievable. A professional detective should be competent enough to check the details on all of the missing person's credit card listings and, as the reader will find out, Owen's apartment has a doorman, an obvious choice for a detective to start an investigation by asking who might have been in or near Owen's apartment at the time of his disappearance. Furthermore, the fact that Owen was spotted in London multiple times by several people, almost certainly rules out that this is due to several cases of mistaken identity. These details must influence the reader's probability model, activating the feedback loop creating a new set of possibilities, a model that hinges towards the elimination of the possibility of Bateman killing Owen. The elimination of this probability happens slowly but surely, detail by detail, rearranging the reader's probability model, with as ultimate 'proof' the chapter The Best City
for Business:
“And on a rainy Tuesday morning, after working out at Xclusive, I stop by
Paul Owen's apartment on the Upper East Side. One hundred and sixty-one days have passed since I spent the night in it with the two escort girls. There has been no word of bodies discovered in any of the city's four newspapers or on the local news; no hints of even a rumor floating around. I've gone so far as to ask people – dates,
business acquaintances – over dinners, in the halls of Pierce & Pierce, if anyone has heard about two mutilated prostitutes found in Paul Owen's apartment. But like in some movie no one has heard anything, has any idea of what I'm talking about. […] The building looks different to me as I step out of the taxi, though I can't figure out why. I still have the keys I stole from Owen the night I killed him and I take them out now, to open the lobby door but they don't work, won't fit properly. Instead, a
uniformed doorman who wasn't here six months ago opens it for me” (Ellis 352-53)
Bateman's confused observation that the building is somehow different seems to indicate that he does not know it that well, and the fact that he had never seen the doorman, opens up four possibilities: 1) it either means that he has never been there at all, 2) it means that he has been there - to visit Owen for example - and that the presence of the doorman disrupted his fantasies of killing Owen and the two prostitutes, 3) that he did kill Owen and the doorman was coincidentally not there that night, 4) that he did kill Owen and has now accidentally gone to the wrong building. The least likely possibility – that he did kill Owen and the doorman was not there – is the only one that absolves him from unreliability. When looking at the details of the text, at the fact that the murders of the prostitutes have never been reported, that Bateman's does not know the building, and taking into regard the previous information that Owen has been spotted in London and that no-one is checking his credit card details, seem to point to the second possibility as the likeliest option. However, his
conversation with the real estate agent who happens to be there to sell the apartment, also opens up possibility four, for when Bateman asks her: “Doesn't Paul Owen live here?” she tells him: “No. He doesn't.” (Ellis 354-55) There seems to be no answer to the question if Bateman really killed Paul Owen, but by means of inference and a probability model, the reader is at least able to eliminate some of the possibilities, and come to the conclusion of one
probability as most likely. The fact that Owen's disappearance remains an unsolved and ambiguous matter, creates a great sense of polyvalence, leaving the reader no choice but to actively participate in looking for the answer to this mystery, creating a great sense of
immersion, and, in this case, through following one possibility or the other, probably deciding against Bateman's reliability.
2.6: Literature as Simulation
Nünning investigates why some fictional stories improve cognitive and social abilities and others do not. She explains that the answer to this question can be found when literature is conceptualized as simulation. Social cognition consists of several different processes, of which Nünning stresses the importance of two, which she calls “emphatic sharing” and “theory of mind”. Theory of mind is the process that takes place when one person tries to understand the thoughts and emotions of others with the use of their own knowledge. Emphatic sharing is process in which communication takes place and is assimilated through physical emotional expressions, like gestures of the hands, facial expressions, crying and blushing. Proper social cognition almost always contains both of these processes. (45-7) These abilities are required for “perspective taking” (Nünning 47), a very important aspect of understanding and relating to another person. Perspective taking is, according to Nünning, “at the core of the conceptualization of fiction as 'simulation' and reading fiction “induces spontaneous perspective taking” (48). This spontaneous perspective taking, Nünning
continues, is encouraged by “three strategies”, namely; focalization, “which induces readers to quite literally adopt the perspective of characters and to simulate their thoughts and feelings”, an “overt, preferably heterodiegetic narrator”, and a considerable amount of suspense in the narrative and the feeling of uncertainty regarding the outcome of the story. (Nünning 48) Michel Riffatere explains that in order to achieve a sense of verisimilitude,
characters have to be both “complex and contradictory”. This recreates a sense of reality, because the contradictions in character “conforms to a commonsense template: reality is full of contrasts.” (37) Or, to put it more specifically, it creates a greater sense of experiencing reality, as the characters in the text reflect, by means of their complexity, to a greater extent the characters of 'actual people'. This is very similar to Nünnings explanation of polyvalence as the creator of a 'reality effect'. Since unreliable narrators are not unilateral but ambigous, it is safe to state that the unreliable narrator creates polyvalence, and readers will make use of inferences to close the gaps they create. Since focalization is an aspect that enhances perspective taking, and the narrators of American Psycho and Life of Pi are both the main focalizers of their respective narratives, and both narratives are equipped with a considerable amount of uncertainty, there is a high level of reality simulation at play in both these novels. Polyvalence, complex and contradictory characters, focalization and uncertainty are all elements that enhance and create immersion.
2.7: Conclusion:
Eco explains that “A fictional text tells us not only what is true and untrue in its narrative world, but also what is relevant and what can be regarded as immaterial.” (85) If we go along with this quote from Eco, we have to accept the fact that unreliability is a very relevant aspect of both of these narratives. The narrator might not tell us what is true or untrue in the fictional world, but the fact that he does not is exactly what then becomes relevant. This marker of ambiguity must mean that this is something that is worth thinking about; truth or untruth itself, the reality/fiction dichotomy, becomes the relevant aspect of the novel. If we read a text that is 'true', we will turn to the object and the content of that truth. If a text is 'untrue', it is no longer the object of untruth that the reader regards, but the untruth itself. When reading, a probability model is created in the minds of a reader, weighing all the
options and possibilities of the 'narratives future' against each other to come to the most logical probability model. When the reader 'runs out of options', there seems to be no other conclusion than to deem a narrator unreliable. Although anything is possible in a fictional world, there are certain 'agreements' that do not allow for elements of science-fiction or fairy-tales to just 'pop up' in a realist novel: “A fictional possible world is one in which everything is similar to our so-called real world, except for the variations explicitly introduced by the text.” (Eco 81) When these 'variations' are to extreme, they create an error in the probability model, and reliability will be questioned. Once one might suspect unreliability, one of the ways to detect this unreliability is to look at the patterns of the text, something that will be discussed in detail in the following chapter.
Chapter 3: How the Unreliable Narrator Reinforces the 'Reality Effect' of Fiction 3.1 Introduction
My argument, thus, is that the figure of the unreliable narrator creates a higher level of immersion in the fictional world. But what makes a narrator unreliable? And how can dare I say with certainty that both Pi and Patrick Bateman are, in fact, unreliable narrators? So In order to analyze these unreliable narrators properly, a definition of unreliability is called for. In his book Living to Tell About It, James Phelan works from Wayne C. Booth's notion of the implied author towards applying Seymour Chatman's 'communication model' (albeit slightly altered) to a text in order to locate the source of unreliability in the narrator. Furthermore, he explains the importance of the position of the reader in establishing if a narrator is reliable or unreliable by incorporating Nünning's conceptual frameworks of extra-literary and literary elements in his analysis. Phelan provides a structured overview of all the elements that contribute to either reliability or unreliability and where the clues for a determination of the narrator's degree of (un)reliability can be located. In this chapter his explanation will serve as the foundation for an understanding of unreliability. Although Phelan to a certain extent adopts the term 'implied author', he explicitly states that this is not, in any sense, the same implied author as Booth refers to. Rahter, Phelans implied author, he clarifies, is far closer to Rimmon-Kenan's definition of the concept. Rimmon-Kenan argues for a depersonification of the implied author, and stresses that this 'entity' should be considered as a set of norms “rahter than a speaker or voice” (Phelan 40). Phelan argues that:“since we recognize that there is often a gap between what a narrator says and what we infer, we can also recognize that there is a textual communication other than the narrator’s or the characters’.” (Phelan 41) A more suitable term than Implied Author to define this textual communication that Phelan
introduces, is that of the 'structural whole', a term that I will adopt from here on out. Phelan's conceptual framework surrounding the notion of the unreliable narrator is a detailed one,
taking into account not only the textual elements of unreliability, but also incorporating contextual and extra-textual aspects that are cause for a determination of unreliability.
This determination of unreliability thus largely depends on the degree of which the set of norms and values of the reader correspond with those that the structural whole consists of. This definition of the structural whole as a set of norms and values is a difficult one, as it is abstractness makes it problematic to locate. According to Phelan the reader should be “conceiving the entity not as a human agent but rather as the “patterns of the text,” or the “codes and conventions of the text,” or even “the text intent.” (41) The structural whole, then, “provides a standard against which to test the reliability of the narrator’s statements; if they are consistent with the patterns of the text, the narrator is reliable; if inconsistent, unreliable.” (41-2) One of the ways to locate the unreliable narrator, is thus to look at where the patterns of the text are disturbed, which is accumulated by perceiving of the structural whole as the entirety of norms, values, patterns, codes and conventions, and subsequently locating their possible deviations. In this chapter I will try to locate where unreliability can be determined in deviations of these patterns in both American Psycho and Life of Pi. Once unreliability is established, Phelan identifies six types of unreliability, “combining the activities of narrators and audiences”: “misreporting, misreading, misevaluating – or what I will call misregarding – and underreporting, underreading, and underregarding” (50) He explains that: “unreliable reporting occurs along the axis of characters, facts and events; unreliable reading (or
interpreting) occurs along the axis of knowledge and perception; and unreliable regarding (or evaluating) occurs along the axis of ethics and evaluation.” (Phelan 50) After having
established where unreliability can be located by the broken patterns and conventions, the kind of unreliability of both of these narrators will be further explained.
3.2 Locating Unreliability: Deviating Patterns, Codes and Conventions in American
Psycho
Although an abstract concept, the structural whole of the text can be measured by a number of elements; the patterns, codes and conventions of a text. Eco's explanation in the previous chapter on the rules of the fictional world, showed that the reader of a text can make certain assumptions regarding the fictional world, for example that when, in the fictional world, a tree is described, the reader's mental image of this tree corresponds with the mental description of a tree in the real world. There is also the convention of genre; since paratextual features and frames surrounding the text, as well as textual markers within the novel
regarding the landscape of the fictional world have shown, the reader has become aware that
American Psycho and Life of Pi are not works of science fiction or fantasy. These 'facts' can
be used by the reader to distinguish between which elements of the text are true and which are false.
One of these (quite literal) patterns in American Psycho is the returning aspect of The
Patty Winters Show. Patrick Bateman himself follows, most of the time, quite a strict regime
during his day. In fact, the description of his morning routine is one of the most well-known scenes of the novel. As unreliable and unpredictable as Bateman is, there are certain
predictable elements to him; like his morning routine, his nights out on the town going to clubs and restaurants are pretty much all the same, as are the descriptions of his own outfits and those of his friends and colleagues, something that the reader will quickly learn is an aspect of the text that will be a consistent factor of the narrative. This too, goes for The Patty
Winters Show, as it soon becomes clear Bateman does not seem to let a day go by without
watching or recording the talk-show and 'letting the reader know' what that day's topic was. The first encounter with the show is only 28 pages in, when Bateman mentions it playing on the background during his morning routine; “While I'm dressing the TV is kept on to The
Patty Winters Show. Today's guests are women with multiple personalities. A nondescript
overweight, older woman is on the screen and Patty's voice is heard asking, “Well, is it schizophrenia or what is the deal? Tell us” (Ellis 29, emphasis in text)
The show seems to mirror much of the events in the text, although they are not
aligned with the events of that particular day, they often refer to events yet to come. Bateman mentions quite early on in the novel that: “On The Patty Winters Show this morning the topic was Toddler-Murderers” (Ellis 133), while towards the end of the novel he describes
murdering a toddler himself in the chapter called Killing Child at Zoo. (Ellis 285). The further the novel progresses and the more extreme and detailed the descriptions of the murderous activities become, the more absurd and confusing the topics of The Patty Winters
Show. “Progressing into the novel, as the killings become more explicitly described, the
"errors" increase. […] Bateman's seemingly structured, yet boring and revolting world proves to be inconsistent and illogical, both in time and space. A Christmas party is followed by a night in May; the daily references to the topics of that morning's Patty Winters Show change within the course of the day; the pop artists Bateman mentions do not match the pop songs he hears on the radio.” (Kooijman, Laine)
Bateman starts out as quite a reliable narrator, or at least there is nothing pointing to the contrary, in the sense that he seems detailed and descriptive, notable and honest. When he, in one of the first scenes of the novel, goes to dinner at Courtney’s, he seems to notice
everything, including strange behavior from others. While the reader will immediately notice his arrogant behavior and his superior attitude, he does not immediately come across as unreliable. His ability to notice strange behavior probably strengthens the reader's initial belief that Bateman’s perception of events is an accurate one. At Courtney’s he meets the strange character Stash, who is obsessed with a piece of sushi on his plate, of which he thinks it’s alive. Bateman sharply observes this strange behavior; “Stash is still staring at the sushi
with an intensity that troubles me and I have to ask him, hoping that will catch my sarcasm, “Did it, uh, move again or something?” (Ellis 16) At this point in the narrative, the reader has not had many reasons to suspect Bateman's unreliability. This realization will dawn upon the reader as the patterns of the text are broken, which is the case in the daily references to The
Patty Winters Show. Whereas Bateman's “sharp eye for detail suggests a careful and selective
observer” he “continuously makes seemingly unimportant mistakes.” (Kooijman, Laine)In the chapter Killing Dog, Bateman complains about having missed The Patty Winters Show:
“I don't complain or persuade Courtney to change her mind since I have two files I should go over and The Patty Winters Show I taped this morning hasn't been watched yet. It's sixty minutes about women who've had mastectomies, which at seven-thirty, over breakfast, before the office, I couldn't bare to sit through, but after today – hanging out at the office where the air-conditioning broke down, a tedious lunch with Cunningham at Odeon, my fucking Chinese cleaners unable to get bloodstains out of another Soprani jacket, four videotapes overdue that ended up costing me a fortune, a twenty-minute wait at the Stairmaster – I've adapted; these events have toughened me and I'm prepared to deal with this particular topic.” (Ellis 155)
This seems very unlike the Bateman the reader has come to know, and even more so in hindsight. The unlikeliness of Bateman being unable to sit through women talking about their mastectomies becomes even greater when read alongside passages like the following:
“I place the camel-hair coat back over her head in case she wakes up screaming, then set up the Sony palm-sized Handycam so I can film all of what follows. Once it's placed on its stand and running on automatic, with a pair of scissors I start to cut off
her dress and when I get up to her chest I occasionally stab at her breasts, accidentally (not really) slicing off one of her nipples through her bra.” (Ellis 236)
These two passages from the novel are extremely telling in relation to each other. Bateman's reason for not being able to sit through the tape of women having mastectomies remains unclear, but the fact that he mentions that he is unable to watch it over breakfast, insinuates that he cannot handle it on an empty stomach, implicating that it makes him nauseous. The fact that he, during the day, suffers so many disillusions and tiny
disappointments in his uneventful life, implicate that his frustration with this mundanity expresses itself through a need for violence and aggression. Bateman states that these events have 'hardened him', to such an extent that what he is usually unable to watch due to a limited tolerance of deprivations of the smallest kind, becomes bearable to him. To learn that this same man slices off nipples only a short while later seems at the very least illogical. The aggression in this passage is directed at his college girlfriend Bethany. After being severely frustrated that Bethany is dating the chef at Dorsia, the restaurant that Bateman can't seem to get a reservation at, he brutally rapes and murders her. But the reality of this murder becomes highly unlikely in relation to the first passage, as Bateman does not seem to 'have the
stomach' to commit such horrible disfigurations. Something else stands out in the second passage; the parenthetical words 'not really' are quite ambiguous. At first glance these words seem to refer to the fact that Bateman's removal of Bethany's nipple is not accidental but deliberate. These words could, however, also be interpreted as Bateman's confession that he is not really doing any of this, and that the entire scene takes place in his own mind.
Furthermore, The Patty Winters Show seems to give quite a good indication of how stable Bateman is at certain points in the narrative. The strangeness of that day's topic seems to correspond with Bateman's state of mind. When Bateman mentions that “Patty Winters is
