It is nothing short of a miracle that I finished this dumpster fire of a book. I get what he was trying to do and he failed. Miserably. By far the worst book I’ve ever read in my entire life. Thanks for the trauma and the ENDLESS outfit descriptions Bret.

This has got to be the strangest music review I've ever read.

“I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning”

Bleak,bleak,bleak.
Armani, Ralph Lauren, Hermès...........
Double breasted suits,silk ties.....
“I have to return some videotapes”.

I seriously considered DNFing it around 150 pages,but I pushed myself to see why it is considered an important piece of literature and I was not disappointed.Everything the author does,the dispassionate tone,bleakness,the violence ,the depravity has a reason.He was trying to tell us something and he managed to do it exceptionally well.The violence and depravity was just too much for me,but I understood why he did that.I see it's literary significance and also the significance of the idea itself.
I did NOT enjoy it one bit,but I really appreciate it for what it is and what it does. I have not stopped thinking about it.The last 150 pages were a revelation.It really is a brilliant book with a great theme.
I am never going to pick it up again,not sure if I can handle the movie.But I know it's not going to get out of my head any time soon.
I went from "Bret Easton Ellis is a twisted depraved bastard" to "Bret Easton Ellis is a brilliant author with a great deep mind"
Not a pleasant experience,but very enlightening!

(another update incorporating comments about BEE's latest novel - apparently he's still at it!)

Before we start - a quote by Norman Mailer about Bret Easton Ellis : "How one wishes this writer was without talent!"


*********

People think the pages and pages of descriptions of hacking and chopping up women are ironic.
Well, in one sense they are, but in another sense they aren't.
People who like this book should ask themselves why they want to read pages and pages of descriptions of hacking and chopping up women (with the occasional man thrown in, but all the lavish descriptions with rats and nail guns and so on are just for the ladies).
I don't think people can tell what's misogynistic and what isn't any more.
Here's a real life anecdote. A couple of years ago I went into Waterstones in downtown Nottingham, and mooched around. In this shop (probably others too) the staff had put various books on display with their own handwritten enthusiastic recommendations underneath. Well, that was nice, I liked reading them, until I came to the handwritten card under American Psycho. It said something along the lines of : “after a night of getting knocked back by various women in Nottingham hostelries, what better than to pick up Bret Easton Ellis’s 80s classic and get some of my own back”. Wow! That was a little like a guy working for Waterstone's recommending “Commandant of Auschwitz” by Rudolph Hoess, with the comment “After a day of having to deal with members of the Jewish community, what better than to sink into an armchair with this book, and get some of my own back”. Believe it or not, my GR friends, I actually wrote a protest email to the manager, who wrote back with an apology and said he'd removed the tasteless comments.
You know, this book reveals how much of a different planet some people are on than the one I'm on. It's not a good feeling.

UPDATE : FROM THE PAGES OF YESTERDAY'S SUNDAY TIMES

there's this review of "Imperial Bedrooms" which is BEE's latest novel. The reviewer is Theo Tait, I never head of him and it isn't an anagram of Paul Bryant, and I am not Theo Tait, let's get that clear. So imagine how the following remarks warmed the cockles of my heart:

At 400 pages, American Psycho is probably unfinishable except by adolescents and sociopaths...[Imperial Bedrooms:] descends into a phantasmagoria involving torture, online snuff videos and the appalling abuse of prostitutes and rent boys. Ellis claims to be a moralist, by which I guess he means that it is the emptiness of the modern world that causes his characters to behave in a spectacularly louche and/or homicidal fashion. But as with many satirists, it is unclear whether he is criticising the horrors he depicts, or simply wallowing in them. Either way, Ellis's determination to rub the reader's face in the gore carriessome heavy costs. Many people have no strong desire to read sustained passages of pornographic and misogynistic violence, in which, for instance, masked men urinate on a bound actress...[other examples omitted:]... these sequences also chip away at the novel's realistic texture and leave you wondering if Imperial Bedrooms has any meaning beyond that of the average slasher film.

They say that most serial killers and sociopaths start off by killing animals. Building up their evil threshold and barbaric skills. I read this book back in the 1990's. I did think it was a good book but I hated all the animal cruelty. It was a chore to read through to the end. Too much graphic violence and less about the character's psyche. If you love animals give it a wide berth. Also a film starring Christian Bale. I would give that a wide berth too.

What the actual hell I just finished reading?!
Now I need a therapy!!!

A modern dark, very dark and controversial classic? Handsome, well educated, smart and extremely privileged Patrick Bateman works on Wall Street in the day.. and at night he does what he wants... whatever he wants.

A compelling meticulously planned piece of satire of the American Dream as seen and recanted by a first person... psychopath! What causes controversy is that the same detail and flat-tone Bateman uses to describe nights out and business, is used for his detailed very explicit and dark often sexually violenced themed murders, and it is the minute horrifying detail and the dispassion that it is documented that appears to have deeply offended some. especially as many of the victims are female and/or poor. Huge trigger warning for the detailed sexual violence.

A masterfully lesson in unreliable delusional first person storytelling. Can be seen as a deadly attack on the results and excesses of capitalism... as consumerism in our affluent lives being the gateway for psychosis, in that we deserve to take whatever we want? And the masterful cherry on top is that as the book plays out you have to question whether any of it is real!!!

2020 read and 2003 read

Takes a while to get into but very enjoyable in the end.

Damn this book is graphic!
It's the 1980s and the rich keep on getting richer and the poor keep on getting poorer. Patrick Bateman is bored of his humdrum life on Wall Street. Nothing seems to excite him more than stopping people and ripping them apart. We follow his quick descent into madness as Ellis gives us in a blow-by-blow fashion.
With the exception of a few scenes, the movie is pretty much true to the book. They cut out a lot of the sex as well as the killing of a child and a dog. They also toned down the gore substantially.
I can see why people hate this book. Patrick Bateman and his "friends" are a pack of egotistical and extremely self-centered pricks. I mean it's supposed to be American Psycho, not American Douchebag right?
However sexist Bateman is not. And I will tell you why... he looks down upon everyone. Women are either trash or hard bodies or they are deemed as unfuckable and are completely in love with him. Men also fit into three categories for Bateman: friends/business associates, not from America, and faggots. He even looks down on animals LOL. Bateman is a case where he in discriminately looks down upon everyone that is not him.
I will warn you eager readers, this book is EXTREMELY graphic not just in gore but also with the sex scenes. As the somewhat rational person that I like to think I am, I have a hard time thinking that another human being could actually put pen to paper the way that this author did with some of these scenes. It kind of makes you sick. like I got a lump in my throat reading it knowing that I'm reading a book and that someone has written this book from their own imagination. That's how sickening it is.
With all of that aside the book is rather a boring read. The Douchebag Circle is constantly talking about the hard bodies they want to fuck or the new things that they bought or who is sleeping with who or the drugs they can score and where. All of it is extremely monotonous and takes up more than half of the book in all. It gets rather annoying.
With everything considered I would have to say this was an okay read. However I wouldn't really recommend this book because of the extremely graphic scenes and apparently obvious tendency to piss people off for one reason or another.

You can also watch my review of this book on YouTube here:
https://youtu.be/a1WwzH-O9GM

Pre-review:

So Bret Baston Ellis wanted to write the script for the 50 Shades of Grey movie!? (Link: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012...)

My reaction to it: HELL YES! You can simply insert Patrick Bateman directly into Christian Grey's place and you most likely won't even be able to tell the difference because these two people are just interchangeable! Let's be honest, Bateman is a creep and a douchebag who treats women like crap, and isn't Grey just the same?

I'm so upset to hear those Hollywood people eventually laid Ellis off!

Edited@04/05/2017

What I'd learned from reading this novel: You don't have to be a serial killer in order to be a complete and ugly asshole.

You think this book is about a bunch of rich and self important yuppies going through their expensive yet meaningless life in New York? You are right.

You think this book is about a psychopath serial killer preying on women and other helpless people (e.g. POC and poor and/or homeless people)? You are right.

You think this book is about the flaws in the neo-capitalism's mindset? You are more than right!

n  
n  “...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.” n  
n

I won't lie, the violence, the misogynism and the poor attitude toward poor people (especially people of colors) in the story is difficult to stomach but I guess it's the exact point of this story? It is scary to think a certain group of people who are so well educated, cultured and well off (just think about all the goods these people could have done with their wealth and knowledge) can be so shallow, unconcerned and 'none-fuck-given' at the exact same time. But let me repeat, if there is one thing I had learnt by reading this book: n  You don't have to be a serial killer in order to be a complete and ugly asshole who just goes around ruining other people's lives with your money and power.n

And Patrick Bateman, even though he is hateful and he can be every bit as egoist and shallow as his rich friends, he is still the only one in the story who is trying to tear his own expensive but empty existence apart and going out of his way to mock everything and everyone around him with his terrible action. For that, he is a highly interesting character!

PS: There are TONS OF name-dropping and brand-dropping in this novel, even Donald Trump got mentioned a lot (and Ivanka Trump was also brought up a few times) in the MC's narration too.

Once in a while a man can surprise himself. I see myself as a very serious, considered, peaceful, rather more intellectual type of a person. But I must confess: I really loved this gruelling book!

I was warned in advance about the nasty, upsetting scenes of extreme violence in this novel. It contains descriptions of cruelties that - when reading - become unbearably real and horrible. Principle character Patrick Bateman is 100% a psychopath, a serial killer continuously going further and further in his sexual escapades and torture practices, driving it to the level of raw cannibalism. Especially the detailed and emotionless way all this is described makes you just sick. I can imagine lots of readers throwing this book aside, just halfway.

But ... I didn't. To be honest: I just really couldn't put it down. On the one hand there is the ironic aspect (yes!): Bateman is portrayed by Easton Ellis as an incredibly funny exaggeration, all clichés about the Wall-Street-yuppies of the '80s are magnified into the absurd (the endless lists of the designer clothes that he wears, and the discussions with his colleagues on how to wear them, the constant wandering between luxurious restaurants – where barely anything of the exquisite dinners is tasted -, the constant hunting on lines of cocaine, his fitness addiction, his obsession with beggars, and the elitism, sexism and racism that is ubiquitous in his peer group). It's so over the edge, that it becomes really enjoyable and funny (what's wrong with me?).

Exaggeration probably is the predominant style element in this book: in the nasty passages on torture of course, but also for example in the general image of women; the women who appear in this book are almost all flatly stupid, they are treated as cattle (or worse) and end up almost all smeared over the walls and floors of Bateman's flat.

Another style element is that of contrast: the contrast between the Bateman who tries to fit in in the world of his fellow yuppies and the Bateman that revells in orgies of violence; the contrast between the insensitive, inhuman Bateman and the Bateman that with much subtlety and nuance discusses the music of Whitney Houston, Genesis and Huey Lewis and the News (that last one is a real gimmick). And so on. From a literary point of view American Psycho certainly is not an ordinary crime-book. It really is a sublime (although absurd-exaggerated) sketch of the yuppie environment in the 1980s in the US, and an overwhelming pastiche on the serial killers genre.

But ... I'm a bit stuck on the question whether there is a deeper layer in the book. Easton Ellis certainly gives the impression that there is more than meets the eye: he shows upsettingly how communication between people fails (in the sometimes very long dialogues the characters hardly listen to each other; even the countless "confessions" by Bateman to his colleagues and friends are just not heard or taken serious). Especially towards the end, the author portrays Bateman more and more as a tragic figure: our psychopath seems to acknowledge his deeds are evil, he even is trying to find the source of it (his inability to attach to real feelings), but he concludes he cannot possibly contain his "inner urges".

Is Easton Ellis trying to tell us something about man in his time? Is it a 1980s version of The Stranger by Camus (who also commits a crime, just like that, out of a deep feeling of alienation)? Or are all the cruelties just happening in the head of Bateman, the most unreliable story teller in history? I honestly don’t know. There are too much ambiguous signals around in this novel, especially by the way Easton Ellis has highlighted the cruel scenes. In Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky for example the crime (also not very neat, by the way) has a functional purpose in the story of personal catharsis. In American Psycho there is no such function, the violence seems nonsensical.

Maybe that's the power of this book: that this ambiguity is not resolved, and no definite answer is possible on the question of what this novel actually tries to tell. So, I'm going for a 3-star plus rating, despite the sickening passages. And yes, that did surprise me.

⛧⛧⛧⛧⛧

*A re-read with