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narcasseThis afternoon in something of a tangent I had reason to mention both The Young Poisoner’s Handbook as well as The Wimbledon Poisoner. They were a key film and TV adaptation, respectively, I’d seen as a child, though I later went on to read the actual Wimbledon Poisoner novel and in considering those two stories decided that Kind Hearts & Coronets really also belonged in the same category.
The point of the two films at least or rather the overarching plotline is that some enterprising individual is stifled in their endeavours and finds all their brilliance and ambition curtailed by unfortunate circumstances. Louis of Kind Hearts and Coronets is after all the son of an aristocratic woman who married a commoner and thus inherits nothing despite aptitude or ambition to do so. He’s simply discounted because his father wasn’t an aristocrat and he sets out to redress this balance. The fictional Graham of The Young’ Poisoner’s Handbook (which was loosely based on true events) seeks to synthesise diamond using his chemical knowledge only to have his experiments fail leaving him with a poison instead. And these failures eventually prove his undoing. The Wimbledon Poisoner’s Henry is somewhat different in so far as he really has very little clue what he’s doing and instead falls prey to use as cover for the real poisoner but the belief that he shouldn’t be quite so stuck in his given situation and should in fact transcend it is still there.
All of which does rather well at creating sympathy for the ‘villain’ in each case. And in the end Louis not only ends up on trial but also, believing that his execution or imprisonment is imminent writes his memoir which is in fact discovered just he’s about to make a clean escape. The film does end wonderfully ambiguously too so it’s left open to interpretation as to whether or not said memoir damns him or rather that one of the two women involved does. Graham having been sent to prison a second time and proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt poisons himself. And Henry, having not actually committed any crimes in the first place goes back to the mundane life that he was so desperately trying to escape. Each of them then is dealt a suitable punishment for their assorted crimes. The viewer can imagine Louis being got at a later date due to one of the two woman which would suit his earlier machinations or via his own words which would also be apt as he’s evidently convinced of his own cleverness. Graham has the straightforward ending of losing all chance of creating his perfect diamond, being vilified by society and thus dying. Henry has no choice but to embrace the banal individual that he truly is. So there’s an awful lot of poetic justice going on there really.
Which brings me to the opposite scenario. Because the previous three examples all involve rather endearing protagonists in one way or another; the young man who can’t rise in society despite his talents due to the fault of his birth, the enterprising inventor, the man who realises just what his life has become and is actively trying to escape its tedium. They’re all fairly sympathetic characters when it comes down to it and what really reinforces that at the very end of each story is that they’re all caught out. It’s that adversity that is enough to inspire sympathy. After everything they’ve done, no matter how far they’ve come and how hard they’ve struggled they still fall because the system itself is set against them. It’s a bit of an extreme but it is basically a case of sympathising with the underdog whose downtrodden nature is offset by the fact that it’s due to pure chance since he himself is a heroic figure. The opposite example then is Pat Bateman of American Psycho whose only quality, that isn’t at all personally redeeming, is that he’s a rich yuppie.
Whether Bateman is or isn’t good at his job is a moot point and his sort of society seems to consist of the sort of ‘nouveau riche’ who fight to conform to what they’ve dubbed suitable forms of showmanship in their choice of socialising venues, tailor, living spaces etc. In fact Bateman’s personality is so shaped by who he has to appear to be that there’s very little particular individuality left beyond his distaste of everyone. What, if anything, redeems him is the fact that he knows he’s deranged and expects to be stopped at any given time. Of course he actively avoids being caught but he expects that eventually his luck will run out and yet somehow it doesn’t. At one particular point in the novel it does almost look as if he’d going to get caught and during his frantic dash from the scene of the crime the sense really is that as the reader you don’t actually want him to get caught. And as it transpires he isn’t caught on that occasion or any other which is what actually creates the horror at the very end of the novel. He knows he’s insane and yet he just keeps getting away with murder time and time again. Unlike the three prior examples, his activities aren’t curtailed at any point and the bad guy does indeed ‘win’ but it’s not really a victory at all. Because there’s a rich madman on the lose who can get away with anything precisely because of the social position he’s in.
All of which probably makes the argument that the aspiring ‘whatever they may have been’ earlier examples only retain their nobility in adversity and that once any of them surpasses that, then that villainy becomes unmitigated. So perhaps the point isn’t to see the bad guys win at all because once they do they rewrite the story so that they either become heroes or they prove that the entire system is inherently flawed which isn’t a pleasant suggestion at all. Because if Leviathan is flawed then how can anybody believe in the security supposedly provided? And of course what’s really beautiful about American Psycho is that on the surface Bateman is well and truly normal which nicely strikes down all those little myths that you can just tell if something is a little off. So the message there is really along the lines of no, you can’t and that yes, the system can be exploited. And it’s not a pretty picture at all which is quite the contrast to the other tales where despite the thrilling chase; the balance is redressed at the end and the villain is suitably punished. Even Les Liaisons Dangereuses ‘punishes’ both Valmont with death and Merteuil with disfigurement in the end, though she does escape to fight another day. So perhaps this has in fact become more a piece on just how much I adore American Psycho really because it gives no mitigating hope or poetic justice and in fact gives the reader what they may have thought they wanted the whole way along, which turns out to be a pretty bleak prospect.
“Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I’m twenty-seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Patrick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh…” and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry’s is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes’ colour are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.
- Easton Ellis, B., (1991), American Psycho, p. 383-384, London, Picador.
The point of the two films at least or rather the overarching plotline is that some enterprising individual is stifled in their endeavours and finds all their brilliance and ambition curtailed by unfortunate circumstances. Louis of Kind Hearts and Coronets is after all the son of an aristocratic woman who married a commoner and thus inherits nothing despite aptitude or ambition to do so. He’s simply discounted because his father wasn’t an aristocrat and he sets out to redress this balance. The fictional Graham of The Young’ Poisoner’s Handbook (which was loosely based on true events) seeks to synthesise diamond using his chemical knowledge only to have his experiments fail leaving him with a poison instead. And these failures eventually prove his undoing. The Wimbledon Poisoner’s Henry is somewhat different in so far as he really has very little clue what he’s doing and instead falls prey to use as cover for the real poisoner but the belief that he shouldn’t be quite so stuck in his given situation and should in fact transcend it is still there.
All of which does rather well at creating sympathy for the ‘villain’ in each case. And in the end Louis not only ends up on trial but also, believing that his execution or imprisonment is imminent writes his memoir which is in fact discovered just he’s about to make a clean escape. The film does end wonderfully ambiguously too so it’s left open to interpretation as to whether or not said memoir damns him or rather that one of the two women involved does. Graham having been sent to prison a second time and proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt poisons himself. And Henry, having not actually committed any crimes in the first place goes back to the mundane life that he was so desperately trying to escape. Each of them then is dealt a suitable punishment for their assorted crimes. The viewer can imagine Louis being got at a later date due to one of the two woman which would suit his earlier machinations or via his own words which would also be apt as he’s evidently convinced of his own cleverness. Graham has the straightforward ending of losing all chance of creating his perfect diamond, being vilified by society and thus dying. Henry has no choice but to embrace the banal individual that he truly is. So there’s an awful lot of poetic justice going on there really.
Which brings me to the opposite scenario. Because the previous three examples all involve rather endearing protagonists in one way or another; the young man who can’t rise in society despite his talents due to the fault of his birth, the enterprising inventor, the man who realises just what his life has become and is actively trying to escape its tedium. They’re all fairly sympathetic characters when it comes down to it and what really reinforces that at the very end of each story is that they’re all caught out. It’s that adversity that is enough to inspire sympathy. After everything they’ve done, no matter how far they’ve come and how hard they’ve struggled they still fall because the system itself is set against them. It’s a bit of an extreme but it is basically a case of sympathising with the underdog whose downtrodden nature is offset by the fact that it’s due to pure chance since he himself is a heroic figure. The opposite example then is Pat Bateman of American Psycho whose only quality, that isn’t at all personally redeeming, is that he’s a rich yuppie.
Whether Bateman is or isn’t good at his job is a moot point and his sort of society seems to consist of the sort of ‘nouveau riche’ who fight to conform to what they’ve dubbed suitable forms of showmanship in their choice of socialising venues, tailor, living spaces etc. In fact Bateman’s personality is so shaped by who he has to appear to be that there’s very little particular individuality left beyond his distaste of everyone. What, if anything, redeems him is the fact that he knows he’s deranged and expects to be stopped at any given time. Of course he actively avoids being caught but he expects that eventually his luck will run out and yet somehow it doesn’t. At one particular point in the novel it does almost look as if he’d going to get caught and during his frantic dash from the scene of the crime the sense really is that as the reader you don’t actually want him to get caught. And as it transpires he isn’t caught on that occasion or any other which is what actually creates the horror at the very end of the novel. He knows he’s insane and yet he just keeps getting away with murder time and time again. Unlike the three prior examples, his activities aren’t curtailed at any point and the bad guy does indeed ‘win’ but it’s not really a victory at all. Because there’s a rich madman on the lose who can get away with anything precisely because of the social position he’s in.
All of which probably makes the argument that the aspiring ‘whatever they may have been’ earlier examples only retain their nobility in adversity and that once any of them surpasses that, then that villainy becomes unmitigated. So perhaps the point isn’t to see the bad guys win at all because once they do they rewrite the story so that they either become heroes or they prove that the entire system is inherently flawed which isn’t a pleasant suggestion at all. Because if Leviathan is flawed then how can anybody believe in the security supposedly provided? And of course what’s really beautiful about American Psycho is that on the surface Bateman is well and truly normal which nicely strikes down all those little myths that you can just tell if something is a little off. So the message there is really along the lines of no, you can’t and that yes, the system can be exploited. And it’s not a pretty picture at all which is quite the contrast to the other tales where despite the thrilling chase; the balance is redressed at the end and the villain is suitably punished. Even Les Liaisons Dangereuses ‘punishes’ both Valmont with death and Merteuil with disfigurement in the end, though she does escape to fight another day. So perhaps this has in fact become more a piece on just how much I adore American Psycho really because it gives no mitigating hope or poetic justice and in fact gives the reader what they may have thought they wanted the whole way along, which turns out to be a pretty bleak prospect.
“Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I’m twenty-seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Patrick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh…” and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry’s is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes’ colour are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.
- Easton Ellis, B., (1991), American Psycho, p. 383-384, London, Picador.
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Date: 2007-06-09 08:10 pm (UTC)I honestly would argue that the villain in Gormenghast won though, as he managed to utterly devastate the hero's life before dying, and Tidus Alone shows the deterioration of the hero's character, as now he has nothing. Although he was a bit of a bastard and I don't know anyone who liked him anyhow, regardless of him being the hero or not.
And as a side note, I've been looking for all the books you suggested to me and other than The Liar, they are proving stupidly difficult to find over here, though I know they all have American publishers. I found the Poison book last week but because of some family member of another stealing it every minute, I haven't had a chance to look at it much past the animals chapter (it's a lot more interesting than I first thought it would be, and from what I've read, it's very accurate). I am now hopelessly intrigued by LLD but storeowners keep insisting it is out of print., which is utter bull.