Compared with the movie version,which I'm
sure is a good and compact one,
the novel is more than 200% BLOODY.
I bet it must give you enough of nightmares.

n  n    See Pat date.
See Pat screw.
See Pat mace.
See Pat use a nail gun.
See Pat eat flesh.
See Pat do obscene things with a severed head.
See Pat store body parts in random places.
Go, Pat, go!n  n

1.5 stars Don't worry. That's the tame version. I didn't spoil the extreme parts of the story. Trust me.

It might be a long, long time before I read something which knocks American Psycho out of the top spot for "sickest thing I've ever witnessed," and I've read books which have had rape, murder, and gore aplenty in them.

How often can a person say that the movie was better than the book? I actually liked the movie because it carried the point from the story without being quite as tedious or gruesome.

Part of me wanted to spoiler-tag a couple of the more gruesome scenes, just to give readers who were curious something to look at. But I'm not giving anyone any ideas. O.o

The first half of the book was overworked satire. Pages and pages of excessive description gave no great sense of entertainment or enjoyment in terms of reading experience. I do understand why the author did what he needed to do in order to set up the character's state of mind to the reader. Many of the conversations and interactions were needed, and a few were actually informative or interesting, but the same point really could have been made in a few chapters.

It all comes down to reading preference for me. Half a book of recycled conversation about fashion, society, tanning, etc. is torture for people like me who could not give a shit about that stuff. I hate wasting my time by reading about stuff I don't want to read about, satire or not. Overkill is still overkill, especially when you see the same catch-phrases (hardbody, gazelleskin, etc.) used dozens of times in the book, and you're sort of sad that you're not playing a drinking game to combat some of the repetitiveness. By the time I got to the chapter on detailing Whitney Houston's career, I was downright tired of reading scene after scene of tedious information.

Although...the chapter on name brand water amused me, probably because of how I learned that I'm sparkling water poser.

Speaking of excessive...let's get to the second half of the book, otherwise known as a precursor (no, not really) to the show 1,000 Ways to Die.

Try thinking of the sickest way you could kill someone. Chances are, you aren't even close to thinking about what Pat put his victims through.

Did Pat become the way that he was because he was so rich and bored, and had nothing left to achieve or desire, or was his mind so completely ordered and methodical about everything from the start, that he viewed murder without emotion as just another thing he could organize and categorize?

I get why American Psycho has a good portion of its ratings on either one end or the other of the spectrum. Since the subject itself doesn't lend itself well to words such as "love" or "admire," a reader is either going to respect the method of writing, or hate the product of the writing.

I wanted to fall on the respect end because I understood why others rated the book high. But I can't overcome the fact that I hated reading the repetitive formula of : character talks about meaningless shit, character talks about or participates in unappealing (and super-extreme) sex, then character makes a gruesome kill.

The end of the story gave the reader nothing to wrap up the madness of it all.

The guy was a psycho. That's about it. At least the book was aptly named.

Brands, bands, bloody demands - welcome to "American Psycho"! You can say a lot of things about this novel, but subtle it is not: It's an over the top satire on Wall Street capitalism, and it contains extreme violence that is somehow hilarious (yes, I said that). The plot: Our unreliable narrator, young broker Patrick Bateman, enjoys flexing his wealth and his status, pop culture, and killing people - or doesn't he? This thing is a wild romp written by a guy who enjoys expensive items, surface aesthetics, and pop culture, while also seeing potential dangers for society - but a serious critique of capitalism this is not, and it does not intend to be. Easton Ellis' main provocation is that he indulges in ambiguity, that he refuses to take a clear moral stance, and that he demands from his readers to deal with it (case in point: White). And doesn't he have a point, that our lives are contradictions, and that these contradictions tend to drive us mad?

I had a blast reading this insane, surreal, relentless novel, that can probably best be compared with Fight Club: Both play with the growing divide between outside reality and psychological inner worlds, both put their fingers in wounds and draw problematic conclusions. It's punk. And I can't help but marvel at how deeply the protagonists of these books are ingrained in the collective cultural psyche: Everyone knows wealthy Bateman and his hobby (serial killing) as well the first rule of fight club. "American Psycho" also had a huge impact when it comes to questions of popmodern surface aesthetics - which aren't as superficial as you might expect. The attitude that these appearances consist of signs that send signals, as afficionados of semiotics would put it, that presentation and habitus are real, has been perceived as a provocation in some leftists circles (not that they don't have their own codes, mind you). In Germany, Ellis has played a monumental role in the creation of a whole genre: Pop literature. The word "Eurotrash" is mentioned six times in "American Psycho" (hello, Eurotrash - its author Christian Kracht has written a review and a parody on "American Psycho" when he started his career, and his first prize winning text about homelessness was entitled "Less Than Zero" after Ellis' novel from 1985).

Like it or not, this novel is a staple in the postmodern literary canon - while its author won't win a Noble Prize (and to be clear: he schouldn't), he clearly made a bigger impact than some authors who did. And regarding the criticism that the novel is misogynistic: The protagonist is misogynistic, but he's also a serial killer and more of a stock character, a foil of a soulless capitalist. It would be a very hard case to make that this means that the novel promotes hate against women. Does it also promote cocaine and toture after this logic? And was 80's Wall Street a place that promoted feminist empowerment and should be portrayed as such?

You can learn more about the novel and its impact on German pop literature in our podcast episode on, well, pop literature (also feat. Jörg Fauser, Rainald Goetz, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre...).

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.

3 stars

Patrick Bateman, apart from being an American and a psycho, is actually many other beautiful beautiful things.

➢ He may hate all black people but atleast he likes Whitney Houston
➣ Loves women and all their insides
➢ Visits gay pride parades.
➣ A little sadistic but tips well
➢ Loves a sausage

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.

Loved this book. One to give me a book hangover. Didn't want it to end.
Always loved the film and the book is really not far off.
Descriptions were OTT.
Dark Masterpiece



Love the scene with the business cards. Both film & book.

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.

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.

As far as I can tell, there are two ways to interpret this book. The first is as a hysterically funny, incredibly dark satire on the excess, greed and materialism of rich young Americans in the late 1980s. The second is as a hideously misogynist extended fantasy about the abuse, torture and murder of women. It's the second interpretation that raises issues for me. I am a feminist, and proud to say so; yet I absolutely loved this book. So is it possible to be a feminist and still enjoy American Psycho?

My (personal, subjective) answer to this question is yes. I can understand the objections others have raised and, unsurprisingly, I found the violent scenes intensely disturbing and difficult to read, and skimmed over the worst parts in the same way I'd squint at the screen during a particularly bloody film scene. The titular psycho, protagonist and narrator, Patrick Bateman, is undoubtedly a horrifically misogynist character - both in terms of the hideous things he does to women and in the minute details of the ways in which he perceives and judges them. The female characters (pretty much all of them, one by one) are objectified in the ultimate way - desired, fucked, tortured, dissected, even eaten. The violence is often juxtaposed closely with graphically detailed sex scenes or fantasies, with the two flowing into one another until they begin to seem almost inseperable. To me, this feels like a damning comment on the links between pornography, the consumer of pornography's view of women, and violent behaviour. And after all I've read about the author's motivations in writing the novel and other readers' and critics' reactions to it, I'm fairly sure this is how it's meant to be read.

The story is so obviously an allegory that, to be honest, I find it hard to understand how anyone could take it seriously as a fantasy of violence. Bateman announces his crimes to colleagues and girlfriends at numerous points, with these confessions become more blatant and more desperate as the book goes on - yet it seems nobody ever hears him, or their own self-absorption and greed is advanced to such a level that they don't notice or care. The character becomes more and more of a blank canvas as the book goes on, a development underlined by the fact that he is constantly being mistaken for someone else, or spotting an acquaintance and not being sure exactly who it is. The men melt into a homogenous blur of Brooks Brothers suits, Valentino ties, slicked-back hair and nonprescription glasses; the women into an interchangeable mass of blonde hair, big tits, whiny voices and Carolina Herrera silk blouses. In the end it doesn't seem that Bateman is actually a character as much as an amalgam of these people: their obscene greed, materialism, lack of empathy and empty selfishness - mixed in with astounding naivety and ignorance - concentrated and personified.

There's no realistic way Bateman could continue to get away with the crimes he commits - so frequent, so violent, so obvious - and as a result it becomes clear that either they are symbolic, or they are the fantasies of the character himself, an expression of his inward/outward anger and hatred. As the narrative becomes ever more surreal and descends into madness towards the book's conclusion, the latter theory begins to seem more and more likely. Bateman's supposed victims seem to reappear; he is involved in an impossibly lengthy police shoot-out which yields no retribution; he begins to step outside himself, narrating from a third-person perspective. The only incident in which he is identified as a killer by someone else appears, at second glance, to be a straightforward robbery. At the very end of the story, the reader is left to make up their own mind about the truth of events, making this a classic example of the unreliable narrator genre (I really should create an unreliable-narrators shelf here, I love them so much).

This book is, as its reputation suggests, a harrowing read at times, but it's also truly hilarious in parts - the endless repetition, the lengthy passages solemnly appraising the back catalogues of dreadful 80s bands, the meticulous descriptions of ludicrous meals and label-laden outfits. I loathe gratuitous violence and 'torture porn' films but while the violent scenes in this book are arguably unnecessary in their detail, they are contained within the context of a viciously intelligent satire. I wavered between admiration, amusement and repulsion throughout many of the earlier chapters, but I really loved the ending; the build-up and the subtle changes and the conclusion itself, all so brilliantly done. Altogether I thought this was an absolutely fantastic, if not always 'enjoyable', book and I don't feel bad about saying so.

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

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.