Literature's pivotal rule is that the people populating the novel must change by the end of it. American Psycho is none of that. Patrick Bateman, 26 years old, Harvard Graduate, working in Wall Street, remains unchanged from the first page to the last. It is a novel about insight. About a certain type of people living a certain kind of life. The said people are hedonistic and morally deprived/ bankrupt. Their only true purpose in life is to chase pleasure/happiness although their idea/definition of pleasure is unstructured, fleeting and uncontainable within the moral limits of reality...

I wasn't really around when the novel came out in 1991 nor did I have a palpable conscience when the movie came out but American Psycho has left an indelible impression in the vast pop cultural scene. That said , in a very unsettling sense, American Pyscho seems more prescient now than ever. Early in the novel there is an entire chapter dedicated to the morning routine of Patric Bateman and all one has to do is go on YouTube to find a plethora of these. The novel consists of more than 35 chapters and roughly half of them is Bateman dining in the top restaurants in Manhattan. Well, there's nothing wrong in seeking a good life, one might argue, sure, but one would also ask ruminatively if this is actually a good life or an aesthetic lifestyle being sold as a good life. How much is too much/ enough. It's a bottomless pit.

Bateman's worst nightmare at any given time is if he'll have to buy mineral water sold in plastic bottles instead of glass bottles because plastic oxidises the taste of the water within and ruining the original benefits of even drinking this water. This came casually after he went on a killing spree without an ounce of moral conscience bearing heavy on him. A black comedy but brilliantly executed.

Throughout the novel Bateman gets mis recognised as someone else by people who "know him". The privilege and the senseless hedonistic pursuit is so lacking of nuance or thought, one is indistinguishable from the other in this part of the world. All through Bateman's disastrous deprivation the author doesn't take a single moral view, which is the novel's biggest success.

It's a novel about depersonalisation and desensitisation of a life that gets emptier as one acquires more materialistically. Whilst much of pop culture now primarily serves as crass escapism, American Psycho, runs face first into the unsightliness of bottomless materialistic clinginess. A seminal work.

n  Screaming in a Dead Man's Earn

This was a book written by the young Ellis, the kid who was close to famous after 'Less than Zero'; or at least the diminished definition of 'famous' that applied to celebrities of the novelist kind and painters like Keith Haring and Basquiat. 'American Psycho' is as much a violent artistic gesture as it is a novel, an act of grand narrative destruction. As the machinery of story and language is hammered into twisted wreckage, and a new form emerges from the chaos, from the structural artifice before it... Ellis is suddenly and profoundly disgusted with the slick, polished, coke-dusted emptiness of Bull-market 80's living. All of it. All of them... the unanchored and swollen upper-middle-class he came from; waiting for someone to make them believers, or curse them. HIV came, and they just nodded, like it was an Old Testament judgement and not a retrovirus, like someone had it coming (but it sure as fuck wasn't them); and they were grateful for something to feel, a direction to worry at... groping and squinting at the darkness, seeking out vaguely apocalyptic shapes to justify the decadence, as if super-dense plutonium isotopes might add weight and mass to their empty hedonism.




American Psycho is Ellis screaming 'WAKE UP' in a dead man's ear. And you almost expect the milk-white eyes to open, because this book is LOUD. This is Ellis pointing an unloaded gun at people who don't believe they can die, pistol-whipping readers to show us we can bleed. He hates his peers for being living reflections of his own hollowed-out persona. He's just another walking corpse, going through the rituals of living, and slowly being liquefied by his own enzymes under a painted mask of youth and vitality and expensive cologne.



What makes it such powerful satire is the quieter comic absurdity hiding between the screaming and the Dahmeresque disassembling of the human form. The ridiculous power games and meaningless status symbols... the business cards, the restaurant reservations, the manicured physical perfection. A gold-plated culture; scratch the surface and you'll find the last generation's trash, compressed and deodorized and molded, then painted with gold. What passes for passion and creativity is Huey Lewis and Whitney Houston. Ponder that oblivion, and lament that the baby named WWIII was never born.




Eventually identity slips away, and 'friends' trade suits, apartments, women, faces, lives... because they're not sure what it is that makes them, 'them', and me, 'me'. In that context, serial killing is a desperate - and failed - existential gambit to reclaim the essence of Patrick Bateman Ellis.

this is good until you realize ellis has no grip on any concepts other than using the same devices over and over again to illustrate the same one point, which you understand at around the 100 page mark and then gets dragged through 300 more using nonsensical, tired and redundant prose. only truly interesting when you consider the homoerotic subtext, which is missing entirely in the movie, which is such a shame considering it's one of the best adaptations i've seen.
see, also: fuck bret easton ellis

n  American Psychon is one of the most, if not the most, misunderstood novels that’s ever rocked the literary world. No matter which way you look at it, structurally it is a masterpiece of literature.

When I was a teenager I would recall hearing from people around me that there is a brilliant film based on a violent novel about a crazed serial killer in New York. I remember buying the novel a few years after watching the film adaptation starring Christian Bale (who I now realise was perfect for the role of Bateman in an otherwise decent adaptation) and people told me that I would throw it away by page 200 because of the graphic sex and violence in the pages. Ironically, these were the same people that enjoyed the works of, say, Thomas Harris, James Ellroy and Jim Thompson. All these authors have written incredibly dark and gory books which crossed the established line, regarding violence in novels. For example, James Ellroy’s fantastic book The Big Nowhere is, amongst other things, about a violent sex murderer in 1950’s Los Angeles. These murders are highly detailed, bloody and disturbing, which works so well for Ellroy’s brutally dark piece of noir fiction. Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me is about a small-town sheriff who also happens to be a sociopath and sadist. But why didn’t they like American Psycho?

So what separates American Psycho from the previous novels I mentioned? Everything. American Psycho is a literary paradox. It’s not genre fiction like the previous novels. It’s not even about a serial killer. It's more cerebral than that. I’ll go further and say it’s not even a character study. American Psycho is more about America itself than a fictional serial killer. It is about the moral and cultural decline of societies that value materialism, consumerism and global capitalism. In other words, American Psycho is a postmodern satire in the grand tradition of Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Nikolai Gogol and also moonlights as a serious work of absurdism and existentialism.

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First..." *

Bret Easton Ellis is undeniably great at misleading his readers, as countless reviews from professional critics see it as about an 80’s yuppie misogynist and his murderous escapades. Scottish writer Irvine Welsh sees it in ways that are similar to my own views: ‘American Psycho holds a hyper-real, satirical mirror up to our faces, and the uncomfortable shock of recognition it produces is that twisted reflection of ourselves, and the world we live in… distorted by individualistic consumer capitalism… the running metaphor is one of a culture succumbing to a materialist consumerism that destroys society by eradicating its human values in favour of an obsession with image.'

So if you think of it this way, American Psycho is exactly what it says on the front cover: It’s about psychotic America. Bret Easton Ellis is seeing it from his perspective, as an American living in a highly consumerised, neo liberal state which emphasises and prioritises all the wrong things. Patrick Bateman is literally the embodiment of America:

n  “We have to stop people from abusing the welfare system. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights while also promoting equal rights for women but change the abortion laws to protect the right to life yet still somehow maintain women’s freedom of choice. We also have to control the influx of illegal immigrants. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values and curb graphic sex and violence on TV, in movies, in popular music, everywhere. Most importantly we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.”n

This is a segment of his, and what could be America’s, proud and ironic message at the start of the novel. The projection of an idealistic America is shown through Patrick Bateman's obsession of a fictional talk show The Patty Winters Show, which is seen as a friendly topical TV show on world issues and debates. Characters speak about restaurants, clubs, holidays, or anything that involves paying with money, as if rehearsing for a promotional advertisement. If anything, Bret Easton Ellis is giving us a strong message about what his book is all about, and what it is not about. Turning a blind eye is the human being’s worst trait, but Bret Easton Ellis as Patrick Bateman isn’t ignoring these messages: he’s reversing them, playing with them, effectively showing the reader everything that is wrong with society, and is therefore enhancing the shock value. It is this violent shock of recognition that, through the subjective lens of the reader, shows the depravity and corruption not only of America, but of any country that embraces capitalism and mass consumerism.

The characters themselves are less characters and more machines of materialism, devoid of emotions and feelings. They are essentially blank faces, blank physiognomies dressed up in pretentiously expensive designer suits. Narrated with a cold outlook, this reflects the emotionally void world we live in. Every human being populated in this book is a void soul floating through our physical reality, aimlessly wandering in existential fashion, evoking the footsteps of Mersault from Albert Camus’ The Stranger. This is why American Psycho is described as a piece of literary nihilism. Bret Easton Ellis depicts the world as an emotionless place, where the characters are abstract entities, simply being representations of monetary value and material wealth, rather than a thinking, breathing animal of heightened consciousness. The author has intentionally avoided describing things with artistic emotion; instead everything Patrick Bateman describes comes across as stilted and sounds unnatural. This observation is notable when Patrick is describing a piece of expensive art in his home to friends in a fancy restaurant:

n  “Well, I think his work… it has a kind of… wonderfully proportioned, purposefully mock-superficial quality.” I pause, then, trying remember a line from a review I saw in New York magazine: “Purposefully mock…”n

Everything is purposefully described as if from a package or magazine. As a satire, it’s the author’s job to make the world hyper-real and more exaggerated in order to show the reader the morality of the book’s message. American Psycho is, incidentally, much more of a moral piece than anything else.

Despite the novel’s dreamlike quality, surrealism and almost metaphysical presence, it is isn’t about whether the killings were real or not, and Bret Easton Ellis has refused to answer that question, simply because it would turn the novel into something completely different from its original self. The killings are, in some way, massive metaphors for the author to release his rage and frustration upon the world. Incredibly detailed violent scenes again shock us and disturb us and the author’s message is obscured in this haze of bloody violence and torture. Bret Easton Ellis has stated on numerous occasions that he was going through a dark and bitter period of his life whilst writing this book. He got financially wealthy from the success of his previous novels, moved to New York and lived a yuppie-like lifestyle, which he thought would make his life better. He has also said that his father was abusive to him when he was a young boy. So when things add up, Patrick Bateman’s violent actions were Bret Easton Ellis’ way of releasing these deep-rooted frustrations and bitterness upon the world. Again, American Psycho’s fragmented structure fits perfectly as the author’s concern of the world around him is satirised and is also interspersed with autobiographical liberation. Combine them together and you have this book. The violent content is actually rather limited, as only roughly 15 pages consists of bloody violence in a 400 page book.

So is American Psycho really about a serial killer? Despite being visceral, I don’t think so. Has Bret Easton Ellis got a message for us all? I do certainly think so. The book is a masterful black comedy and a violent wake-up call to the reality around us. Is that why they don’t like the book?



* - This is the very first sentence of the book. Is the author sending us a message in the very first sentence? Incidentally, this chapter is called 'April Fools'. Is Bret Easton Ellis making out that this is a book about a serial killer the 'April Fools' joke? A delightfully smart little tactic to lure the reader into a false sense of awareness? Because we now know that this book isn't about a serial killer...

"I've forgotten who I had lunch with earlier, and even more important, where."

Patrick Bateman is handsome, well educated, intelligent. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. His nights he spends in ways we cannot begin to fathom.

Where to begin... first of all, let me preface this review by giving a trigger warning for almost every possible trigger you can think of: rape, animal abuse, torture... this book is not for the faint of heart! This book stands head and shoulders above the rest as the most disturbing book I've ever read. But, I absolutely loved it. Not because of how disturbing it was (although I did find that mostly entertaining), but because I've never laughed out loud so much whilst reading a book!

I LOVED getting inside Bateman's head, a true glimpse into the mind of a psychopath. He is severely deluded, shallow, neurotic... and yet I could happily read about his beauty routine and gym workouts forever (whilst making some notes of course - if only I had multiple hours to spend in the gym each day!!). In particular, I was sincerely impressed by Bateman's ability to identify exactly what designer you're wearing by sight alone - I mean, surely he is wasted in his job as an investment banker?! There must be some way he can make use of this incredible talent!

People had previously commented about how annoying it was when the book goes off on random tangents where Bateman breaks down different musical artists' careers. I found this weirdly enjoyable - particularly the chapters where he discusses Genesis and Whitney Houston in great detail. Although I was not too impressed when Bateman described Bruce Springsteen as overrated (but he made up for it by later telling a stranger on the street that Brilliant Disguise by the Boss was the happiest song he could think of - how depressing and sad is that song... LOL). Bateman's obsession for serial killers also reminded me of myself, he would slide that chat in anywhere he could. Although he did get one of his quotes wrong, attributing a quote by Ed Kemper to Ed Gein - easily done I guess *shrugs*

I can understand why the repetitive nature of this book would be annoying for some - Bateman's life is basically a cycle of brutal murders/torture followed by him and his fellow investment bankers trying to decide where to make reservations for that night - but ultimately I found it strangely captivating. It's just so funny and full of satire that I couldn't NOT love it, it really appealed to my dark sense of humour.

American Psycho also provides a really disturbing social commentary on the upper-class in Manhattan in the 1980s, a society full of racism and sexism, where a lot of emphasis is placed on image and wealth. Bateman has a crazy obsession with Donald Trump - a real representation of the times - and it honestly baffles me that this man is now President of the United States. Ellis really succeeds in painting a rather despicable picture of consumerism in America.

The murders and torture are brutal - consider this a warning! It's graphic and detailed, and the creativity and originality that Ellis manages to bring to some of them is staggering. The sex scenes are pornographic in terms of the level of the detail included, and I actually found these much more uncomfortable to read than the murders.

This book won't be for everyone, and it's one of those books that although I enjoyed almost every page, I would feel cautious recommending it to others. Just prepare yourself if you decide to pick it up! And please don't think of me as one sick puppy for enjoying this satirical masterpiece.

4.5 stars.

“...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.”

FUN FACT-Gloria Steinem is Christian Bale’s stepmother, so while she was protesting the movie and the book d/t violence against women, he was filming

Excuse for the ages- I think I was returning videotapes. I don’t care what my supervisor asks me from now on that’s my answer. I also need a T-shirt

20/22 can't believe it's been that long since I read this! Oddly enough a review of this book by GR friend has pushed me to listen to my copy again (it's been way too long). I've never seen the movie from beginning to end, so yes my review is 100% book. Most of his monster thread is one person after another hating on Bateman and BEE. So I had to stand up for the book esp since most of them haven't come close to finishing it. Or they were just total douchebags who couldn't put a coherent sentence together without insulting someone. Bateman is a classic character like I said below the ultimate antihero. So here we go!

OMG! I’m two and a half hours in and I’m already super amused by his relationship with things. I have a couple of friends who do this to an extent. This brand, the cost, head to toe and full surround. I buy well made items things I know are classic pieces, only certain colors, and I’m used to chicks asking where I got something. Oohhh I bought this when my daughter was prob in high school lol she’s 32 now!


Audio #4
2018 Reading Challenge: villain or antihero

Easton Ellis at his best Generation X - speak. Every little detail reminds me of the late 80’s.

I can't help it! I'm enjoying this book immensely
If I'm not laughing at his OCD absurdity, I'm cracking up laughing at the clothing descriptions. Then I'm shaking my head at his laissez faire attitude toward life. Yes, Bateman your hair is fine

I'm constructing my review in my head now. Vanity and rage rule. This is THE book to speak for my generation.

(first review - will probably add another after a reread:)
We meet Patrick Bateman (here again - he appears briefly on Rules Of Attraction; he also appears even more briefly in Ellis' later books, at least two of them), in the physical and professional peak(ish) of his life, fit, in a good age, doing well enough... but he's now entering a dark mental phase that shows in his killings and increasing desperation; his world is full of shallow people, and his violence seems to go by unnoticed and not-believed (it is not certain if he really does (all of) them, or if it's his mind's fantasies).

Rating this 3.5 - the violence (rape, torture, necrophilia, cannibalism, murder - and not just women, but also men, animals and one child) makes certain chapters hard to read, but I will mark these parts in my book soon, so I can skip them during re-reads. Because outside the violent stuff, it's actually pretty decent.

This is my third copy of the book, gave the previous ones away because of *those* bits. I'm thinking of keeping this one. I need to reread the book to give a deeper review, and to mark it as I said above. So this is is just 'what I remember' sort of review now :)

4.5 Stars
This is easily one of the darkest, most messed up horror thriller novels that I have ever read… and I loved it. The story is ultra violent, particularly with excessive sexual violence, so I need to give huge content warnings. The main character is absolutely despicable, but it actually works in this case because it's done on purpose. I loved the social commentary on the corporate yuppie culture of the 1980s. This felt like the horror version of the Wolf on Wall Street. I completely understand if some readers will find this book disgusting, but I would highly recommend this one to readers willing to go down this dark path.

He Wants to Fit In...

AMERICAN PSYCHO
by Bret Easton Ellis

No spoilers. 4 stars. Patrick Bateman is a psychopathic serial killer disguised as a yuppie NYSE broker...

He hangs out with like-minded yuppies at Manhattan's trendiest and most expensive restaurants and clubs...

His circle of friends and dateable women are concerned with having restaurant reservations, what they'll wear, what school they attended, and scoring drugs...

Bateman is a cross between Bundy and Dahmer... The world is most certainly a better place with some people gone...

Bateman's Chinese dry cleaner frequently tries to remove the blood and gore from his clothing and bedding, but not without vehemently complaining about it...

Over drinks with friends at Harry's...

Bateman quotes Ed Gein because he was an interesting guy. When Gein saw a pretty woman, he thought about two things:

Getting to know her and how her head would look on a stick...

He likes to taunt the homeless by offering them a dollar, then, at the last minute, shoving it back into his pocket and abruptly killing the bum...

Bateman is a suave and worldly date...

When his girlfriend Evelyn asks to come over to his apartment, he tells her: No. Why? she asks. Because I have a head in my freezer, he replies...

On one date, with a woman from his past who dumped him, there's this exchange over dinner:

Woman: Why do you work?
Bateman: Because I want to fit in.
Woman: Are you seeing anyone?
Bateman: Does anyone ever really see anyone?

When he needs to get rid of unwanted company, he simply tells the person that he has to return videos...

Bateman enjoys Christall champagne, the Patty Winters Show (a Windy Williams-like show), and his Rolex watch. He's always searching for the perfect hair mousse...

Bateman is completely and emotionally dead...

This story may be one of the forerunners of the Extreme Horror genre. I certainly can't think of another novel as extreme as this one (except for True Crime) during the 80s and 90s.

If you look back at the life and times of serial killer Ted Bundy, you'll see many similarities to Bateman.

The beautiful and wealthy characters in this story are vile and vapid. Their only goal in life is to see and be seen spending obscene amounts of money on clothing, food, and drink. The NYC scene is the perfect hiding place for an up-and-coming serial killer.

Some readers didn't like the pages and pages, and sometimes whole chapters describing clothes, jewelry, and music, but some of it sets the stage for Bateman's obsessive thought process.

This is my second reading of this excellent story told from Bateman's POV, and I saw more this time round than the first. BTW, the movie with Christian Bale was also very good.

I'm going to cleanse my mind's palate now by binge-watching DEXTER.

Warning to some readers: extreme horror, explicit sex, animal abuse, and racial slurs (including use of the N-word).

Of COURSE Patrick Bateman is obsessed with Trump

The Good:
This was scathing and brilliant and often absolutely hilarious. It managed to make me nostalgic for the 80s. Hell, it made me nostalgic for New York and I’ve never even been there. The infernal setting here really consists of the horde of awful, vacuous men that look exactly like Duncan McDonald or Boris Cunningham, and who might be dating Nina Goodrich while her fiance is out of town. It was all so incredibly well written I could almost see the tortured human being inside Patrick Bateman. For all these reasons I give this an unreserved five stars.

The Bad:
Graphic sexual violence, torture, animal cruelty, human degradation and suffering, this was the most horrible book I’ve ever read. And to be honest I’m still not fucking sure what happened at the end. This is a truly dreadful excuse for literature and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. If I could give it less than one star I would, and if I ever see Bret Easton Ellis I’m going to punch him in the mouth.

'Friends' character the protagonist is most like:
There is no protagonist in this book. Abdullah maybe? He’s a thieving vigilante like Phoebe.