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American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis
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The modern classic, the basis of a Broadway musical, and major motion picture from Lion's Gate Films starring Christian Bale, Chloe Sevigny, Jared Leto, and Reese Witherspoon, and directed by Mary Harron.
In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
- Sales Rank: #4448 in Books
- Brand: Vintage
- Published on: 1991-03-01
- Released on: 1991-03-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.20" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 399 pages
Features
From Library Journal
This review is based on the galley issued by Ellis's original publisher, Simon & Schuster, before it cancelled the book. The book is now going through the editing process at Vintage. There may be some changes in the final version. The indignant attacks on Ellis's third novel (see News, p. 17; Editorial, p. 6) will make it difficult for most readers to judge it objectively. Although the book contains horrifying scenes, they must be read in the context of the book as a whole; the horror does not lie in the novel itself, but in the society it reflects. In the first third of the book, Pat Bateman, a 26-year-old who works on Wall Street, describes his designer lifestyle in excruciating detail. This is a world in which the elegance of a business card evokes more emotional response than the murder of a child. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, Bateman calmly and deliberately blinds and stabs a homeless man. From here, the body count builds, as he kills a male acquaintance and sadistically tortures and murders two prostitutes, an old girlfriend, and a child he passes in the zoo. The recital of the brutalization is made even more horrible by the first-person narrator's delivery: flat, matter-of-fact, as impersonal as a car parts catalog. The author has carefully constructed the work so that the reader has no way to understand this killer's motivations, making it even more frightening. If these acts cannot be explained, there is no hope of protection from such random, senseless crimes. This book is not pleasure reading, but neither is it pornography. It is a serious novel that comments on a society that has become inured to suffering. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/90 and 12/90.
- Nora Rawlinson, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“Bret Easton Ellis is a very, very good writer [and] American Psycho is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel…. The novelist’s function is to keep a running tag on the progress of culture; and he’s done it brilliantly…. A seminal book.” —Fay Weldon, The Washington Post
“A masterful satire and a ferocious, hilarious, ambitious, inspiring piece of writing, which has large elements of Jane Austen at her vitriolic best. An important book.” —Katherine Dunn
“A great novel. What Emerson said about genius, that it’s the return of one’s rejected thoughts with an alienated majesty, holds true for American Psycho…. There is a fever to the life of this book that is, in my reading, unknown in American literature.” —Michael Tolkin
“The first novel to come along in years that takes on deep and Dostoyevskian themes…. [Ellis] is showing older authors where the hands come to on the clock.” —Norman Mailer, Vanity Fair
From the Inside Flap
Now a major motion picture from Lion's Gate Films starring Christian Bale (Metroland), Chloe Sevigny (The Last Days of Disco), Jared Leto (My So Called Life), and Reese Witherspoon (Cruel Intentions), and directed by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol).
In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
MISOGYNISTIC. CONTROVERSIAL. GRATUITOUS. SENSATIONAL AWESOMENESS
By Thomas S Flowers
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, American Psycho, has just about as a precarious history as the contents held within its blood splattered pages. First released by Simon & Schuster in early 1991 and soon after quickly sold to Vintage by the publisher for undisclosed reasons and for an undisclosed sum of money. For us folks doing a review in 2015, almost a quarter of a century down the road, this sounds quite bizarre for a publisher to boot such a phenomenal piece of horror fiction -- however, apparently during the early 90’s, American Psycho was received a tad bit differently than one might expect today. Today, American Psycho is heralded as a postmodern cult classic, used no less in hip English lit classes and sociology classes, hell maybe even psychology classes, and if teachers were really smart, criminology classes! Its very strange looking back at American Psycho’s first release and reading all the vile contemptuous swings reviewers and readers and the media alike took at Ellis. Especially considering how during the same year Silence of the Lambs was released theatrically and went on to win dozens of awards, including: The Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, etc. etc. How can a movie and book about cannibalism, the most taboo thing imaginable, shine with audiences while at the same time American Psycho can be chased away by a mob with flaming torches and pitch forks? According to Ellis, who stated in a somewhat recent interview, “It was feminists and The New York Times. Hand-wringing liberals [who] were upset about ‘American Psycho.’ I don't think there was a single peep from conservatives or anyone like that. It was a liberal witch hunt and I was at the center of it” (The Oregonian, 2010). In a previous interview with Roger Cohen, from the New York Times, back during his books initial release, in response to the numerous death threats he had received in the mail, Mr. Ellis said that he “had no idea the novel would provoke the reception it's gotten, and I still don't quite get it” (New York Times, 1991). It is so bizarre how Anthony Hopkins chewing some dudes face off can be considered highbrow, while American Psycho, which had more to say regarding the quiet submission to consumerism and desensitization of the silent majority than any other work of fiction at the time, can be held with such contempt.
In retrospect of heavy criticisms, Mr. Ellis follows with one of the most profound statements regarding the craft of writing, something I believe all writers should well remember, when he states: “You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you” (New York Times, 1991). And with American Psycho, as this humble reviewer understands it, Ellis was “working out” how society during the late 1980’s had considered the “surface” things, such as: food, clothes, money, etc., to be the only means in which a person can be defined. And this comment on society becomes obviously apparent and satirically metaphorical when you begin to read his book. In the very first pages, Ellis numbs the mind by using the narrator, Patrick Bateman, who also so happens to be a complete lunatic, to list off in excruciating detail all the many “surface” things he sees on the day to day, such as: designer suits, Walkman’s, music, movies, furniture, TV shows, restaurants, food, etc., etc. These things are important to him, while at the same time, not important. Even the murders are so brutally detailed, eventually at least (the book does have a sense of pace to it), that we become, in a way, desensitized to the violence just as much as we are desensitized to the material. Everything becomes banal. Here is what Pat Bateman has to say for himself towards the end of the book after he emerges from a near-psychotic break:
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there…” (American Psycho, pgs. 376-377).
The above statement was made popular with the release of the theatrical version of the book, staring Christian Bale, back in 2000. And the madman goes on, of course. Bateman questions the very banality of evil, “is evil something we are or something we do?” etc. etc. And by the end, he finds what we “normal” folks might consider to be the deeper things in life, such as: war and politics, family, discoveries, sunrises, heroes, falling in love, blah-blah-blah, to be also utterly dull. Bateman can only find one clear emotion within him, greed – oh and perhaps, as he suggested -- disgust. The most pungent scene, for me, that invokes this macabre bland worldview is at the beginning of the book. Patrick is waiting on Patricia who so happens to be late for their date. When she finally arrives, Patrick narrates, nonchalantly, that she is safe from his knife, safe from him cutting open her throat and watching her bleed with mild disinterest, not because of any kind of luck, and not really because she comes from a wealthy stock, but simply and callously because Bateman made the choice. Bateman states: “Patricia will stay alive, and this victory requires no skill, no leaps of the imagination, no ingenuity on anyone’s part. This is simply how the world, my world, moves” (American Psycho, pg. 282). When I first read this line…my bones were chilled by the eerie ordinariness of it. The stylization is so humdrum you can actually feel madness slipping on like an old pair of slippers as you read the narrators ghastly horrific plunge further down into the rabbit-hole. When he finally emerges, you’re expecting some earth shattering revelation, but his only revelation is that nothing matters. It is what it is. He is what he is. The world is what it is. And there is nothing special in that. And there is nothing special in monotony.
When thinking what American Psycho means to me in 2015, I’m struck by an overwhelming sadness in how some horror books and movies are never appreciated in their day. The heinous reception of American Psycho in 1991 and how it has now become this beloved cult classic reminds me so much of John Carpenter’s adaptation of “Who Goes There” with The Thing (1982). Both were completely hated and bashed by not only critics (which we should expect) but also by audiences. American Psycho stands out to me, not only because of its quip attitude toward yuppie culture during the 1980’s, an excellent timepiece for modern day writers to resource, but also because you can feel the character, the crazed loon, desperately trying to be normal even though he is anything but normal, till the end when he finally snaps and the story whips from first person to third and finally back to first when Pat Bateman realizes there is no “normal.” It’s oddly human and somewhat farcical, something we might even call dark comedy. Everyone around Bateman is, in a lot of ways, similar to one another. They have little to no empathy towards others, not even with each other. This is often seen in not only how they talk and what they discuss, what’s of importance to them, but in how grossly they mistreat the homeless, which during the 80’s was witness to some of the highest percentages in American history. And the very same brutal detail in what they wear and what they eat and who they sleep with. In this, they are mirror images. The only difference, the only way Patrick sets himself apart, is his murderous and sexual appetites (though you could argue his sexual desires are also in line with everyone else). But this is all beneath the “surface,” and when it comes to the criticisms of the book, perhaps those same voices who threatened Bret’s life could only see what was floating on top. On the “surface” are the boring albeit grim details of every little aspect in Pat Bateman’s life, the clothes, the music, the food, the women, and even the way he imagines lacerating those same women. Beneath are metaphors, how we see society, how we place value on meaningless things, how we look at those around us as things, how we’ve become completely callous toward suffering. This is why the book is still so popular and important for readers today. If we can get past the brutality and sink our heads beneath the lapping waves of the mundane, to peer into the depths of consequentialism, for a moment at least, before we’re gasping up for air, we can walk away with some realization or dare I say an awakening. If even for only a moment.
If you have yet to read Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 masterpiece, American Psycho -- well, as the saying goes: there is no time like the present. Just be forewarned that the book is written from the first person perspective. Today, few stories are told from the first person narration. Personally, the only first person stories I’ve read are Lovecraftian. However, I suggest you give the book a fair amount of patience. And patience you will need. As mentioned in my review above, the author goes into grave detail about everything. You will be numbed -- but isn’t that the point?
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
This is not an exit
By HH
"American Psycho" has a ton of literary merit, offering readers a fascinating look at a serial killer relating his own experiences and insecurities. It is neither misogynistic garbage nor is it a mere series of gruesome killings from cover to cover. In fact, I tested both of these theories. First of all, I took a body count. Counting deaths that occur in the present of the story -- any references to past killings or mutilations did not count -- my final count was seven men and seven women killed. On the other hand, the killings of women take much longer. Rather than quote from the book, here's an inventory: p. 217, Bethany, nail gun, scissors, dead; p. 290: Elizabeth and Christie, butcher knife, two dead; pp. 304-305: Tori and Tiffani, skinned one alive, burst the other's eyeballs with match, two dead; p. 328: inserts starved rat in girl's vagina, one dead; page 344: girl killed, made into sausage and meat loaf.
So it's gory, but Ellis is not completely hopeless. It takes him until p. 131 of his 399-page book to get to the first major act of violence, and until p. 166 to get to his first actual killing (both of which, by the way, are men, apparently a deliberate ploy to make the book look even-handed in its treatment of the sexes.) Before that first killing and in between the subsequent ones, there is some very funny parody of 1980s culture, and Ellis is dead on target. The call-waiting/answering machine culture takes its share of shots, as well as trash television. A running joke in the book is Bateman's favorite talk show, which discusses topics as diverse as dwarf tossing and home abortion kits.
There is a marvelous, if unappetizing, scene where Bateman steals a urinal cake from a restaurant bathroom, coats it in chocolate, wraps it in a Godiva box, and has it delivered to his girlfriend as they dine together in a fancy restaurant. She eats it, refusing to admit how awful it is because it came in a Godiva box. "I adore Godiva," she says, not understanding why Bateman won't join in. It's a very funny and shocking jab at people who see the label rather than the product. She gags, forcing it down, saying, "It's just so minty."
The funniest three chapters in the book are the "musical group" chapters, in which the narrator suddenly spends a few pages discussing one of his favorite singers or bands. Being a vapid soul, he likes only the most vapid bands; Huey Lewis and the News, Whitney Houston and Genesis are the three bands he discusses in the book. By taking these pop bands so seriously, so analytically, Ellis succeeds in showing just how soulless and transparent these bands are.
Bateman is constantly telling his friends what he does, but they are all so wrapped up in themselves that they don't hear him or don't believe what he's saying. After feeding his girlfriend the urinal cake, he tells her quite openly that "My need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale cannot be, um, corrected." She responds to his admission by saying "Patrick, if you're going to start in again on why I should have breast implants, I'm leaving." Bateman calls another character and leaves a long, detailed admission of guilt on his answering machine. The man responds, "Bateman killing Owen and the escort girl? Oh, that's bloody marvelous!", forgetting about the "joke" immediately. It's black humor, and pretty funny at that.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Incredible Indictment of America's Excess
By Ellen Jo
An incredible indictment of the American tendency to be excessive in all things. The tale was inspired by Yuppie culture of the 1980s, though Patrick Bateman's dead soul transcends all eras. (Patrick Bateman is out there today, as vapid as ever, though he's probably much more evil... and his mobile phone is no doubt much smaller.)
Throughout the story Bateman hypnotically drones on and on about brand names, designers, furnishings, status symbols, pop music, numbing us (and himself) to the moments of sheer terror, gore and sexual violence that punctuate the book. The fashion houses, the expensive restaurants (with their corny fusion cuisine, each concept funnier than the next) and the fellow stockbrokers are all interchangeable. Don't pay too much focus trying to differentiate the characters. Nobody else in the book can either. Bateman is frequently mistaken for someone completely different, just as he frequently names others incorrectly. In the end it helps him carry on his double life for much longer than he otherwise could have.
The story is populated by a nameless swarm of bored big spenders, unhappily socializing in 1980s NYC. Patrick is different though. His mind is not right. He cruelly murders homeless people, prostitutes, small dogs...escalating to kill people from within his circle of friends. His taste in music is crap.
This book made my blood run cold, yet I was unable to put it down. Bret Easton Ellis is an incredible writer, bringing us into this highly deviant mind.
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