My very limited research on psychopaths reveals that a potential 4% of the population has a sociopathic personality disorder. (source: Harvard psychologist Martha Stout Ph.D.)

In other words, one out of every twenty-five people is a psychopath----a person with no sense of concern for the well- being of others and no feelings of remorse, regardless of what sort of harmful or immoral action they undertake.

A psychopath is able to lie, cheat, steal and kill with no feelings of sorrow or regret. Sometimes their only motive is the thrill of inflicting pain. This gives the psychopath a competitive advantage over a normal person.

American Psycho is a guided tour of this unspoken, atrocious carnage that lay way beyond the pale. It is a visceral, evil journey to the darkest, dankest, depths of depravity. This is not casual reading. It contains some of the foulest scenes that I have ever encountered. Scenes that still days later I am not able to erase entirely from my minds eye.

None the less I believe this to be an important piece of work.

Some where deep in each of us lay that primal fear, in whatever form it may choose to take. It’s healthy, it adapts, Hello Fear!

We need to throw open the shutters, hang out this thing that is so pervasive in our society.

Bret Easton Ellis’s, American Psycho shines the light on this monster and invites debate.

A predecessor and founding father of the extreme horror genre with an implemented, very direct in your face criticism of the economic system.

Maybe a bit overrated
I´ve read much weird stuff, old and new, and must say that this one is simply and completely overrated. There is so much static drivel about status symbols, the music the protagonist likes to listen to and even not really enough violence for the genre. Cheap self promotion: If you want the really cool stuff, look into my extreme horror shelf, that´s both disturbing, the content, and why I read that stuff. And there are many cool, better written ideas on how to torture, even with some dark fantasy elements to make it more dynamic.

Conspicuous consumption mixed with extreme violence and some very thin plotlines
That´s the whole novel, decadent, evil, WEIRD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
guys sitting together to talk about their wealth or the protagonist driveling about his possessions, style, good taste, general narcissism, etc. Then the next chapter goes full frontal torture rape murder to switch back to product presentation again until it culminates in some kind of showdown that´s somewhat putting together elements of the storylines of his victims to end without any morality, because rich people can get out of anything without any problem. It´s not really a novel, because taken alone, the commercial parts could be a boring, endless exposition, and the violent parts extreme horror. By mixing them together, the author tries to create a pseudo sophisticated, deep impression of an experimental novel, but it´s just avoiding the effort of writing a real, cohesive, good book with a meaning transported by a character fused with the plot, not products and violent crime separated from the ever so sociopathic antagonist.

The rest of the review is driveling me about censorship because of violence in books and movies, so well, that was it regarding the book. But at least it inspired this thought, so it´s maybe at least a bit not too far off topic? No, a clear and definite, no.

Let´s better censor than talk about the inherent problems
It´s always funny to see which books and movies got and still get put on the index cause they deal with sex and violence. There is hardly any discussion about the underlying social misconstructions and grievances that cause those problems, even if the criticized work of art isn´t just pure splatter, but has a deeper meaning too. Philistines and their political and bureaucratic equivalents love bashing the author with idiotic argumentum ad hominem instead of a civilized conversation about the problems they produce with their ignorance, greed, and sick ideology.

For kids it´s ok, but don´t spoil our teens and young adults, please.
The whole thing makes me think about the MPAA film ratings, that allow inappropriate and sometimes too extreme content in children´s movies that could be traumatizing while dealing with the question if an elder teenager could be traumatized by, gosh, murder and rape. The kids that should be protected get content that is too hard because the rating system wants to help the film industry to make as much money as possible and the older audience gets patronized for no reason.

Something regarding censorship that annoyed me, even more, when I was still watching television
Gratuitous censoring of adult content, so that the meaning of the movie gets lost, is another hobby of these, above mentioned, bigots. But at least extreme horror is becoming more and more popular so that I see a fair chance of a reasonable argument about what art can and can´t do and especially why and that an open discussion should take the place of faceless censors in the background. And, most ridiculously, those frigid abstemious people should try to get a more easygoing connection to their sexuality, because they do totally accept extreme violence as long as there is no sex.

Tropes show how literature is conceived and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

When a book sticks with you, you know it is powerful. It may not be entertaining, and it may be downright disturbing, but if you can't get it out of your head it is most certainly great, and that is my experience with American Psycho.

For me, it's about the music.

Bret Easton Ellis did something miraculous within Patrick Bateman's killings: he destroyed the music of Huey Lewis and the News, Genesis and Whitney Houston. Before every nasty killing, Bateman goes on a diatribe about the music of one of these eighties' faves, then listens to the music while killing, making it the soundtrack of habitrails and bloodshed.

I can't listen to any of these singers without visions of Patrick Bateman's killings flooding into my consciousness. Granted, losing some of these singers is worse than the loss of others, but it has been over a decade since I last read American Psycho and the gory music video Ellis conjured in my mind is as strong as ever. I can barely reference the images of the real videos of "I Want a New Drug" or "If This Is It," but I can see a voracious rat about to eat a woman to death through her reproductive organs with stunning and disgusting clarity.

It is not a pretty book, and the squeamish should stay away, but for anyone who seeks to be overwhelmed by images they will never forget, American Psycho is one of the greatest books ever written.

*Beyond Ellis' power to evoke indelible images in my mind, horrific though they may be, there are depths in the story of Patrick Bateman that make it not just a great read but a nourishing read.

Is there another book that so perfectly captures the eighties in the US or the Reagan/Thatcher world view as American Psycho? Patrick Bateman is the quintessential eighties American male; he may even be America itself. Obsessed with appearance and appearances, consumption and greed (almost clinically so), Bateman is arrogant to the point of hubris, malicious, deviant, and ultra violent, yet he still maintains an outward likability that completely fools his friends (allies) much like the nation he so perfectly represents (from his first person narrative -- "me, me, me" -- right down to his designer suits and morning, skin revival rituals), and therein lies one of the necessities of violence in Ellis' narrative. If Bateman is America, Ellis needs to lay the nation's murderous streak bare; he needs to make people face the brutality and horror of the murderous act -- not simply gloss over it and move on as post-Vietnam America wittingly did and continues to do.

Even today, people blithely ignore the violence inherent in the American system, and if American Psycho is an allegory for this system, the terrible violence of Bateman's cruelest moments become the most important moments of the book. They force us to face the cruelty, to see the cruelty and not forget it. And if Ellis were to drop the violence but maintain the rest of the book as a criticism of consumerism, the removal of the violence would simply become another version what Reagan's America did so well (and the nation has been doing so well ever since) -- admitting the less offensive problems to hide the more offensive.

Even if we drop the allegory, however, and simply see Bateman as a monster whose presence criticizes hyper-misogyny, hyper-violence, hyper-masculinity, and hyper-consumption, Ellis' choice to express the violence as he did is sound because when Patrick Bateman isn't being violent (and he isn't being literally violent very often) his narrative has the ability to lull us into comfort -- to forget how horrible the man can be, how horrible he really is. Thus, the book's moments of shocking violence wake us out of our comfort zone and force us to face the sort of monster our culture created and still creates (there are more serial killers killing today, after all, than ever before).

When Ellis was writing this piece, I doubt that he was considering the infamy his book was about to achieve. So when I read American Psycho I try to suspend what I already know about the contents of the book and the controversy surrounding the book and imagine (which is the best I can do) what it would have been like for a reader who had no idea what they were getting into -- which was surely Ellis' intent (even if this could only happen a few times in the book's history): for the uninitiated, Bateman would seem a little weird to begin with, maybe mildly OCD, but likable all the same. Bateman's cynicism and his dislike of the insufferable people that surround him would likely win over most readers very quickly; we would connect with his unhappiness and quickly come to empathize with a man who's struggling to find out what is wrong with his life, even though he has a dream job, everything he'll ever need, and a potentially dream life. Then...BAM! He is a murderer. And not just a murderer but the worst kind of sadistic serial killer one can imagine. And we are instantly implicated in his violence (which I think is the ULTIMATE point of the book, regardless of other readings...that we are all implicated in creating the Bateman's of our world) because we empathized with the man, even liked the man, and we are in his head and watching him commit heinous acts, and we are compelled to continue reading. It challenges us to wonder if anyone can be part of this culture and truly claim innocence.

What an amazing reading experience it is must have been for the people who read the book without any foreknowledge. And what a tremendous feat of writing on Ellis' part. If you try to read American Psycho today, I hope you approach it from this direction because I think all of Ellis' possible purposes come clearer when we enter American Psycho as a blank slate -- even if it can only be an imaginary one.

Violência Asquerosa e Perturbante


Este é daqueles livros que aconselho a ler lado a lado com MindHunter, só para investigar até que ponto a realidade supera a ficção e vice-versa.

É uma leitura pejada de cenas de violência sádica, altamente perturbantes!

Enfim!... Trata-se da mente dum Psicopata!... Que outra coisa seria de esperar?!...


Nota: Devo confessar que a leitura deste livro foi uma sucessão de batalhas entre a minha curiosidade (avança!... ) e uma tempestade de sentimentos negativos (larga essa m***a!...)!
Está bom de ver quem ganhou a guerra!...

Truly fascinating. First of all, you have to be prepared to be let into the mind of a psychopath. That entails more than murder, which a lot of people reviewing this book completely miss -- what is psycopathy? The lack of empathy, which is judging people as objects rather than understanding they experience the concept of "I" exactly like you do, lack of remorse, and bold egotistical traits.

As you read this book, ponder "how much of American culture TELLS YOU to understand things the way Patrick Bateman does?" The answer is, all of it which exists to make money. People exist to consume product, (and to judge them by what they consume, by the way, for they're just another product that YOU consume. Don't pull the string any farther than that by the way, in case you find out your own idea of yourself is just as fake), and you are an outside entity, afloat and subject to this competitive world in which you need to WIN. (This book was written in 1991 and it's no mistake that Patrick Bateman idolizes Donald Trump.)
And look, it's not just a book writing about the shittiness of the world; if that were the case, anyone could write good books by just filling them with the worst parts of our culture. The point is, you can understand it and it's often, well ... funny. Or compelling. Or understandable. Or sad. It is after all based on a very real human condition, not just a satirical critique of the worst of human traits.

WATCH OUT for these two types of shallow reviews. "Its worth the boring stuff for the violence". or "It's misogynistic! And about murdering people. You like that?". I know it's not standard, but a protagonist CAN be a villain. If you think experiencing or creating something makes you an advocate of it, you're missing out on a lot of good art.

Anyways, the entire book is written from Patrick Bateman's point of view, and Patrick Bateman is a materialistic vain insecure obsessive compulsive hallucinating (yeah, mysogynistic) delusional psychopath. And you will be completely enveloped in his world. This is what traps you and makes the book so addicting. I would read this book at the park, or on the bus, and when I'd put it down to join the rest of the human world it was almost impossible. For a good 10 minutes I'd just be staring at people feeling a million miles away. Learn from this, but don't identify with it; this itself is a type of compassion to feel what a lot of people in this country are stuck in.

You don't skip over the bits about his facial creams, you absorb it and afterwards let your jaw drop that he is more passionate about it than any human life, or feeling. People ARE materials to him, just more useless and often tasteless ones.
Maybe you won't even notice when a talking cheerio is sitting in a chair being interviewed, since you can't be sure of what he's hallucinating either. (and that's key).

Where to begin? Well firstly, I will just comment on the violence in this novel and say that it contains some of the most graphic torture and killings that I have ever read about both in the real and fictional world. There are wild and creative forms of brutality performed on people that I didn't know were possible. I am not easily put off by goriness, but a lot of pages of this book were difficult to read. It goes without saying that 'American Psycho' is not for the faint-hearted.

The story is told from the perspective of a wealthy investment banker named Patrick Bateman who lives on one of the most prestigious streets in New York City. The beginning of the novel suggests nothing too horrific about Bateman, but he does often mutter very questionable remarks about himself under his breath, begins seething over trivial matters, and is remarkably meticulous with assessing expensive clothes and jewelry. To the reader, he is initially just another self-absorbed upper-class asshole who lives a very extravagant, promiscuous and drug-fueled lifestyle. However, the dark and cruel side of Bateman's character eventually manifests and his acts of murder and sadism become a frequent hobby. It also becomes increasingly clearer that his sanity is very dubious, as he develops trouble with distinguishing the real from the imagined. His decaying sanity along with his astounding callousness creates a highly unreliable narrator and the novel eventually closes with a very ambiguous ending.

Easton Ellis is very skilled at writing characters. He pays close attention to characters' habits, intellect, temperament, level of empathy etc. and writes them in a way that makes them feel very real. I think why 'American Psycho' has stood the test of time is because of its portrayal of the upper-class in Manhattan, and the juxtapositions of common realities such as wealth & poverty, good & evil, attraction & repulsion.

"Hey, I'd sure like money. Maybe I'll write a book about cutting off a woman's jaw and facefucking her! Yea! People'll kick up a fuss and buy it based on controversy alone! But books are long, and I can honestly only come up with like four ways to kill people, and three different types of helpless people to kill! Maybe I'll pile it with 300 pages of repetitive filler about what Yuppies wore ten years ago, French cuisine, blow, and record reviews of ironically shitty bands I've plagiarized wholesale from Rolling Stone bios! Bingo! A book's length of pages + liberal use of the phrase "Eating her asshole" + the subtle, deep social analysis of a Political cartoon = a big fat check for me, Bret Easton Ellis!"

Or that's how I imagine it went. Glad I didn't pay for this piece of crap.

Why would I want to read a book about a status-obsessed conscienceless American misogynist who kills a large number of people for no very good reason? Seems entirely gratuitous to me.

i would have also done this if i had to live through the les mis craze of the late 80s

Australian Psycho 2012

We decided to catch up for a barbecue lunch in the park, rather than the sort of dinner party we used to have.

It was difficult getting everybody together, what with kids' sport and, for those whose kids had already grown up, there was some initial reluctance because the football season had started, whatever code you followed.

I started to look at my wardrobe on Thursday, I still have everything I've ever bought that hasn't physically worn out, even jeans that I won't fit into until, perhaps, the advanced stages of cancer.

I know it might sound bad, but I sort of look forward to that day (I hasten to add there's no history of cancer in the family), so that I can reminisce about what I did in those bellbottoms, purchased and worn before they were retro.

I wondered if a T-shirt would be too un-ostentatious. F.M. Sushi suggested I wear something No Logo, though she stopped short of recommending a polo. I agreed with her.

I thanked her for her advice and held her to me, full body length, every inch of contact an expression of our love and gratitude to each other.

She is my beautiful wife, my rock, I can't imagine now what I saw in decades of promiscuity and seed-spilling before I met her. I love the way we hold each other. I will never tire of her opinions and the way she tentatively proffers advice, as if I might reject it, because I didn't think of it first.

I might have done that once, but no longer. I listen before I speak, I seek first to understand an idea and then to improve it, if possible and only if necessary.

It started to rain on Friday afternoon. I looked at F.M. Sushi and she reassured me that everything would be OK, in her usual "don't fret" way.

For once she was wrong, not that a minor deluge is a catastrophe.

Saturday morning, everyone started to phone, "Is it still on?"

Josh and Mary decided that they'd stay at home, indoors, Mary had a bit of a sniffle, she didn't want anyone else to catch it. I replied that I was more concerned for her health than ours.

Josh said they'd take a raincheck and I laughed. It was good to see his old sense of humour resurfacing. I assume he meant it as a joke. He would have once.

When the rain intensified, I realised it had put an end to the plan that we all walk to the park.

I decided to do another ring-around and suggested that we change the venue to our place.

A few more pulled out. I was sort of grateful. The new place isn't really set up to host more than a dozen people at a time. Still, we should be grateful for small mercies.

Peter and Sally arrived first, by cab. Their car hadn't started on account of the rain. Peter was carrying a wine carton from a New Zealand vineyard I hadn't heard of. When he placed it on the kitchen bench, I lifted the lid and discovered that he'd brought a dozen bottles of Perrier.

I looked at him and thanked him both verbally and with the enthusiasm evident in my eyes.

I hadn't been looking forward to alcohol, even a glass or two for the old times.

Mark and Nina arrived with some home-made pastries for dessert. Unfortunately, they had to leave early, when their baby-sitter rang, panicking about the water level in the front yard.

The girls made a nice salad and we broke bread, before they retreated to their rooms to do their homework. Mandy offered to give Peter and Sally a lift home, if it was still raining when they were ready to go.

We laughed and chatted for an hour altogether on the deck. It started to pour even harder, so Peter suggested that we move indoors, he'd been looking at his watch furtively and I realised that he was keen to watch the football.

It was the first Saturday game of the season. It was funny, the four of us sitting there, couples with arms around each other, the rain beating on the corrugated iron roof, while the players raced around, bashing each other, in total sunlight, all optimistic about what the new season held in store for them.

Just as the game finished, there was a break in the clouds here, too.

Peter and Mary declined the offer of a lift from Mandy and decided to walk home. It wasn't far. Thirty minutes max.

I let an hour go by, before ringing them. They'd arrived home, safe and dry. I was grateful.

There wasn't much to clean up. F.M. Sushi had done most of it while everybody was here.

No cigarette butts, just a few Perrier bottles.

Later when I looked in the fridge to see what I might whip up for dinner, I noticed that there were four bottles of Perrier left.

I still like the way you can end up with a bit of a private stash when you host a party.



American Misogynist 2011:


http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...



American Psycho 2011:

Paul Bryant's Review

These comments are not a considered review of the novel itself, but contain some responses to Paul Bryant's excellent review of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries) by Julian Murphet (and the comments it stimulated):

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I originally posted my thoughts as a comment on Paul's review, but am not sure whether that was fair to Paul.
So I have moved them to this page, edited them slightly and deleted my original comments.


Where Do Serial Killers Come From?

Paul's review created a debate about the likely class or wealth of most serial killers.
I felt that this issue was a bit of a sideshow to Paul's main arguments.
But it did make me think about the real issue of how to categorise serial killers in the first place.
To be honest, serial killers don't really interest me as a true crime genre or area of research or reading.
However, even if someone did scientifically verify that fewer rich dudes are serial killers, I would want to pry into the statistics.
It might just mean that fewer rich dudes got caught; or that the poor guys in some cases might have been the patsies of rich guys, etc.

What is a Serial Killer?

But a more important point of distinction is how we define a serial killer.
Is a Mafia foot soldier who commits multiple murders for the benefit of the Family a serial killer?
Are the rich guys at the top of the Mafia serial killers if they authorise or direct the murders?

What's Wrong with Me, Doctor?

And more recently there was a classic example of what we could easily define as a rich serial killer in my own state.
This person wasn't found to have intentionally killed a series of people in separate incidents, but he was found to have recklessly or negligently killed them.
He was a medical doctor whose treatment and surgery was found to be culpable.
Wasn't there also a recent case of a doctor in the UK who "killed" a number of patients as well?
So you don't have to be a shooter or a slasher to be a serial killer.
If you were a doctor, you could dress up your serial killings as sloppy work.

Disproportionate Violence

In Paul's review and the resulting comments, there was a lot of discussion about the amount of violence in the book..
The amount or proportion has some interesting history and precedents in the law of obscenity.
This area of the law interests me as a point of intersection between morality, political philosophy and the law.

Merit Defences

When there was a defence that a work had literary or artistic merit that justified the alleged obscene or offensive material, it was sometimes counter-argued that there was so much of it that it might have overwhelmed the inoffensive or literary or artistic content.
So lawyers and judges got themselves distracted by arguments about amount and size (we all know lawyers are preoccupied by these things anyway).
You can see that, if someone says that there was only 10% violence, then that presumably means that there was 90% art or literature.
Therefore, the 10% is OK.
This whole argument relies on the legal distinction for its validity.
But then I think you're entitled to argue that if the very subject matter of the book or work of art is violence or sex (or blasphemy), shouldn't it be permissible to have 100% of your work devoted to your subject matter?
Isn't it how you write that determines whether it is literary or artistic?
Conversely, the literary merit of the 90% might not necessarily justify the grossness of the 10% (which is sort of linked with the gratuitousness argument, as well as the old practice of sticking a few pages of pornography in between unrelated serious articles).

How Do You Assess Size or Amount in a Film?

Part of the reason I've yapped on monotonously about this is that these concepts started to become difficult to apply to film about violence or sex.
You couldn't realistically make 90% of the film deal with some other subject matter in order to justify the 10% that was naughty.
It would be interesting (academically) to calculate the proportion of violence in the film of AP, but I would venture to say that it would be higher than 10% (not that it really matters on my argument).
Ultimately, this sort of problem with film helped contribute to the system of classification of literature and film and more recently games (G, PG, M, R, X, etc) that replaced the old law of obscenity (that was applied in the Oz trials).
So the material is now permitted, but regulated and restricted in its circulation.
Within this system of regulation, it doesn't matter whether someone finds content shocking or appalling.
They don't have to buy it and read or view or review it.
As long as they don't have it thrust down their throats publicly or on free to air TV or in newspapers.

Does It Make Any Difference If It's Satire?

Within this framework of classification, it doesn't really matter to me (at least) whether AP was satirical.
It is enough that BEE made an artistic choice to write about violence.

Illegal or Immoral?

The legal arena has moved on from amount and size (to some extent), so I think people should forget about turning their sense of offence into some sort of legal attack every time they hear about something they don't like personally (see the Bill Henson dispute discussed in David Marr's book).

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/70...

People might still have a moral objection to the material, but I think they should express their objection in the moral arena, not the legal arena.
They should just express their disgust if they feel so bad about it and let other people decide whether they want to read or watch it.
Then if they want to change the law, they can make it an election issue at election time, which they always do anyway.

Unholy...Shite!!

This may be the only book I've rated 5 stars that I have NO intention of EVER reading again. Ever. After finishing this, I was forced to wait until my brain had cooled down and re-congealed before I could cogitate sufficiently to put my experience with this novel into words.

And yet, even after almost 36 hours have ticked by, the only word that keeps bubbling up to the surface of my consciousness is...WOW

...in both the good and not so good vareity.

At first, I'd thought about trying to do a “tongue-inside-the-cheek” review by imitating the narrator and describing what “designers” I was wearing while typing this review and what “brand” of shampoo and shaving cream I used this morning. However, the more I thought about, the more I realized I wanted to play this one straight given the profound effect the book had on me.

Therefore, you get (mostly) serious Stephen today.

On the one hand, this novel is a visceral, disturbingly dark portrait of the 1980’s as a emotionally vacuous, disconnected and superficial bastion of consumerism in which the people living through it became more and more detached from society and less and less able to emote for anyone beyond themselves. In essence, the book deals extensively (and brilliantly) with a loss of empathy.

The protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is the personification of the darkest extreme of this lack of empathy. He is, by definition, a psychopath which has as one of its primary characteristics, the “inability to feel guilt, remorse or empathy towards another person.” Patrick is outwardly charming and good-mannered with all the outward indicia of normality.

Inside...there is NOTHING.

I found the beginning of the book to be very funny in a dark, satirical way. Almost every sentence out of Patrick’s mouth included a description of a specific product “brand” or status symbol. He didn’t just reach into his wallet and pay the cabbie, He opens up his “Ermenegildo Zegna” suit coat, pulls out his “Tumi” calf-skin wallet while seeing in the corner of his eye the “Fratelli Rossetti” wingtips that his friend has on and pulls out cab fare before putting the wallet back in his new black leather attache by “Bottega Veneta.” As the narrative goes on, you realize that we are seeing the world through Patrick’s “distorted” lens and this focus on brands is simply a result of Patrick’s twisted world view.

In addition to having some serious fun with the out of control consumerism of the 80’s, Ellis slowly begins to reveal to us the fact that Patrick (and I might add all of the people he associates with) have no empathy or compassion for anyone but themselves. Upon arriving at a very high-end restaurant where Patrick and his friends will spend an exorbitant amount of money (and barely eat any of their food), Patrick casually narrates for us:

n  Outside Pastels Tim grabbed the napkin with Van Patten’s final version of his carefully phrased question for GQ on it and tossed it as a bum huddling outside the restaurant feebly holding up a sloppy cardboard sign: I AM HUNGRY AND HOMELESS PLEASE HELP ME.n

No further comment is made about the scene and it is only after many more similar occurrences that you begin to get the “picture” that is being portrayed.

I thought that the first half of the book was nothing short of BRILLIANT as an indictment of the period. However, that is not where the book ends and it's the second half of the book that, while equally well written, was arguably the most disturbing writing I've ever read.

As the book progresses, Patrick’s nighttime activities become more and more bizarre, sadistic and just plain brutal. Now, I've read a lot of horror and seen my share of movie gore and while I don't enjoy “slasher” movies (or torture porn novels) I certainly have been able to deal with some very brutal images and scenes in the context of a what I read and watch. Well, the images and descriptions of Patrick’s murders unsettled me as much as anything I have ever experienced. It was not just the graphic, detailed AND PROLONGED scenes of rape, murder and torture (not always in that order). It was inner monologue of Patrick totally devoid of empathy for his victims that will probably stay with me for the rest of my life. I had read reviews that the murder scenes were graphic and I was like “thanks for the warning but I should be okay.” Well I want to say again:

BE WARNED, it is about as disturbing as you can imagine.

I wanted to make sure I said that because, despite my cautions above, this is a book I will recommend provided people understand the level of gut-wrenching depictions in the novel. It's not a book to read for pleasure and it is not a book I believe I will ever open again. However, I do believe that this is an IMPORTANT work and will be remembered as one of the seminal novels written about the 1980’s.

It shines a harsh and brutal light (if exaggerated for effect) on a way of life and a mind-set that has become, over time, all too familiar.

5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION...though I'm likely never touching it again.

American Psycho is an energetic display of brutal writing.

It’s without a doubt the most gruesome thing I’ve read. It’s horrifying and truly shocking at times. I had to put the book down on several occasions whilst I recovered from the graphic nature of some of it. So, a word of warning, if you don’t like blood don’t even bother picking this one up. It’s full of mutilations and brutal murder.

But the violence was so completely necessary in all its terribleness because it captures something very disturbing about the world. A question, if you will: how many people truly know you? I’m not talking about the you that everybody sees, but the real you. Not many, I’m sure. We only ever truly know ourselves because we are the only one who has access to our thoughts and hidden desires. Bateman knows this and he uses it to his advantage.

“...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.”

Nobody knows him. He appears to be a conformist, blending comfortably into society and all its stupid materialistic aspirations. He is very well aware of the problems society faces. His speech at the start of the book is a convincing argument, though none of his "friends" sat around the dinner table are willing to listen to him and address a real problem. They are too materialistic and self-absorbed to consider anything beyond their own lives. They simply carry on with their conversation as if he never spoke; thus, he continues on with his own destructive behaviour and slowly becomes more and more trapped, repressed and angry. I think he was, however, only ever probing them for a response to know how much he can get away with.

The book is a heavy critique on consumerism and the ridiculous nature of it. Everybody is obsessed with the latest brands and most expensive products. The homeless are always remarked on as Bateman walks past them wearing his ridiculously expensive clothing. There are endless descriptions of goods and products. The use of such a device in the narrative was a perfect way to expose how out of touch society is. It doesn’t see what’s in front of it, which allows the real Bateman to explore his darkest and most evil of fantasies unnoticed as he enacts the charade that is his life. It’s an immensely clever book and though the narrative does become dry and repetitive, it was totally necessary to show the mind of a psychopath and his fixations.

“All it comes down to is this: I feel like shit but look great.”

That being said though, I found myself struggling to read it. It wasn’t the violence or the nastiness of the protagonist that put me off, although that was truly disturbing, it was the pessimism that ran through the book. There is no hope in sight. Ellis shows us a dark part of reality, and it left me feeling rather depressed. (This isn’t a criticism of the writing, for it is a fantastic creation, it’s just a summary of my feelings, such as they are.) Afterwards, I found myself craving something light and fluffy, something that would lift my spirits and restore some of my faith in humanity.

It’s an intense book and it could leave you feeling rather shit. It affected me quite strongly, which bespeaks the power of this narrative.

n  Read it if you dare. n