Cormac McCarthy wrote us the great post-nuclear apocalypse. The Road’s ironic hopelessness spreads dull pain, with the mysteriousness of an unknown illness, through the paper-thin incantations of secular faith: you have to keep going, you carry the light. McCarthy made atom bombs look utopian. It really was better to burn out than to fade away.

If The Road is the dying sigh of an old generation with only the bitter shadow of a hope, then The Orange Eats Creeps is one of its feral prodigy. Shortlisted for the Independent Bookseller’s Choice award, Grace Krilanovich’s debut novel has been held up as if it is some sort of light in the distance. ‘If a new literature is at hand, then it might well begin here,’ slathers Steve Erickson in the introduction. ‘Here is a book that insists on its glorious disarray, that finds in disorder a ravishing path to truth.’

Such praise is so exaggerated, it pretty much dooms the reader to be disappointed in the book itself. But more intriguingly, as I read, it started to seem like maybe this was all part of the game. The Orange Eats Creeps is a litany of teenage hyperbole. For the self-deceiving, self-aggrandising narrator, taboo-defying extremes are common, if clumsily forged, currency.

‘What would happen if you harnessed the sexual energy of hobo junkie teens? The world would explode and settle on the surface of another planet in a brown paste, is what. Cockroaches would lick it up and a new wave of narcissistic gypsy-slut shitheads would hatch out of tiny pores on their backs.’

The whimsical, sado-masochistic fantasy of her narration, the particular attention she pays to each new obscenity, jars with the utter blankness of her world. It is a blankness that fits easily into the post-apocalyptic aesthetic. But the wasteland through which her gang slouches is – she sometimes hints – none other than the contemporary US, complete with ‘half-blown-out signs for supermarket chains in strip malls featuring exactly one nail place, one juice-slash-coffee place, and one freshmex-type grill chain restaurant.’

Krilanovich’s eschatology comes via George Romero: her vampires, her ‘blood-hungry teenagers’ are the mutant spawn of his consumerist zombies. Her post-apocalypse need not be set anywhere but in the real world. What  could be bleaker? The marxist theorist Evan Calder Williams writes of a ‘combined and uneven apocalypse.’ We can no longer expect the world to end in a bang. It ends like this, in a perpetual kaleidoscope of crisis, disaster, exploitation and resistance.

The Orange Eats Creeps throws its clichéd socio-sexual rebellion around exuberantly, but with an ambivalence central, I think, to the teenage experience. 

Krilanovich achieves a scalpel-cold parody of romantic nihilism, that matches McCarthy’s immolation of spirituality, ‘My jaw unhinged, my throat was thrown open and made to replicate exactly the form of a glass bottle with a rubber seal. Love poured inside. My heart got bigger and bigger until it threatened to explode.’

This is a novel about loss and yearning as much as it is about oblivious anarchy. Krilanovich does manage to add something to the vampire metaphor, by asking questions that we have all asked: what does it mean to be alive? Am I living yet? Is this it? Undeadness is an apt concept for people dispossessed and disappointed by life; and growing up can feel a lot like the end of the world.

American Psycho is not a comfortable read. As the protagonist and narrator, investment banker Patrick Bateman, horrifically tortures and murders seemingly at random throughout the book, it isn’t hard to see why Bret Easton Ellis’ third novel caused such outrage on its publication twenty years ago. But despite the unflinchingly graphic nature of American Psycho’s murder scenes, it would be a great disservice to label this book as torture porn. 

At the centre of the novel is Ellis’ chilling depiction of American society during the Wall Street boom of the late 80s: a world of designer labels, chic restaurants and top of the range hi-fi systems. For the cast of American Psycho a man is defined by what he owns, and Ellis leaves intentionally ambiguous the question of whether Bateman’s compulsion to precisely describe every aspect of his AV systems, his record collection, his colleagues’ outfits (just about anything that carries a price tag) is a result of some psycholgical need on his part, or has been forced upon him by the consumer-centric nature of his environment. 

This destructive obsession with material possessions and social status is at the heart of Patrick Bateman’s descent into madness, memorably stating that he has ‘not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust.’

Bateman’s resulting alienation from the outside world is explored masterfully by Ellis without ever resorting to emotional pathos; a theme of mistaken identity runs throughout American Psycho as Bateman and his colleagues struggle to distinguish between any two people with a similar taste in Valentino suits, and the starkly clinical, unfeeling nature of the narrative is reflected in the awkwardly robotic interactions that take place between the characters. 

This all lends a curiously comical feeling to the book; Bateman’s narrative exists in a sort of exaggerated reality, a surrealist dream world where everything feels slightly out of proportion. 

The reliability of Bateman as a narrator is still a fiercely debated topic amongst critics, and it is tempting to say that many of the reported events are simply fantasy but, when faced with the entirety of Ellis’ disturbing vision, this point seems rather moot. Never does Ellis portray Bateman as external to his environment or wildly different from those around him; rather his grotesque murderous desires exist as a logical extrapolation of the grotesque selfishness of the society in which he is trapped. Perhaps this is the most pertinent, and lasting, message of this bold and terrifying cult classic.

The invention of the internet has brought books, maps and even our friends to the tips of our fingers. At the click of a button, encyclopaedias of information can be accessed, online shops browsed and now museums visited virtually. Yet with the juxtaposition of paintings by ancient masters and twenty first century technology, perhaps the Google Art Project has gone one step too far in its quest to bring the wealth of the world’s cultural prowess to our living rooms. Launched in February, the collaboration between some of the world’s most prestigious art museums and the internet giant Google allows everyone to become armchair curators, visiting museums and galleries across the world without moving and creating their own collections of their favourite works.

The project widens access to art to everyone. People who may not have the means or ability to travel in person to the world’s premier museums and collections can now see works from New York, Madrid and London in one place.

The danger, however, is that people will become complacent and neglect to visit museums on their doorstep, content to view the work online through the pixellation of a computer screen. They mayno longer feel the need to go and see the work in its original form, and the numbers of those frequenting museums could dwindle. With funding cuts already eroding resources given to  the  arts, galleries cannot afford to suffer any further losses.

While the Google Art Project allows you to zoom in and stare closely at the brushstrokes, the digitalised image is no substitute for the naked eye. The texture of the paint cannot be truly appreciated, and it is difficult to stand back and admire the work from a distance. Navigating virtually through the rooms of the museum is awkward. The atmosphere of reverence and awe inspired by seeing great art in its original form is lost by touring the museums virtually.

The architecture and layout of the physical museum often also contributes – deliberately or otherwise – to the way in which the paintings and sculptures are viewed. The industrial façade of the Tate Modern helps create the effect produced by the abstract paintings displayed within, while the National Gallery’s imposing columns fill one with a suitable sense of awe before any paintings have been viewed. The moment of standing in an empty room in the Courtauld Gallery, with Manet ‘s original Un bar aux Folies Bergère all to oneself is one that cannot be replicated online.

Nonetheless, admiring works of art online is surely better than not seeing them at all. For some it may serve as an introduction to great works of art, thereby increasing entrance to museums in the long run. If this does happen, maybe the Google Art Project should be viewed as a complement to museums, rather than their replacement.