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...American Psycho,” Coogan’s narration is a constant barrage of brand names, celebrities, and historical references. The narrator self-consciously refers to this multiple times as “name-dropping Tourette’s syndrome,” and flipping through the pages, one sees that each and every name has been set in bold...
...long run, this name dropping convention is frustrating because overall only about one of every three references are immediately identifiable by a modern audience. Here are just a few from one page: Stephen Boyd, Hope Lange, Suzy Parker, Natalie Wood, Frank Powell, D.W. Griffith, Joan Leslie, Tallulah Bankhead, H.B. Warner, Max Steiner, and Louise Brooks...
...about this is that Palahniuk uses these references as he builds images of scenes and characters. Understanding his references will surely enhance one’s reading of the story, but the amount of research left to the lay reader is simply too daunting for such a short book. One could imagine a future edition containing a compendium of glosses in the back...
Where this book succeeds most is on the level of satire. Unlike in his previous books, Palahniuk does not show his readers a secret or paranormal world, but instead takes one especially familiar to most modern audiences and exaggerates its flaws to significant comic effect. For example in one scene, Katherine Kenton decides to adopt a child, and after an extended perusal of infants, she decides that none of them go with her newly painted walls. There is a similar kind of witty iciness throughout, which gives off the air of certain modern celebrities under the guise of a distant...
...career almost fifteen years ago, Palahniuk has been a champion of the groundbreaking and the avant-garde. Though “Tell-All” may have been groundbreaking 20 to 50 years ago, it seems unlikely that it will resonate as much with an audience today—one that feels it already knows too much about celebrities...