"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.

n  ‘’The Voice Of Reason. The Boy Next Door.’’n



n  n    Bateman:n  n a vain, soulless, sadistic, yuppie and most importantly a psychopath with an interest in snuff.
People say he is sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and more, which yeah obviously he is. A Nazi on the Patty Winters Show said something and he clapped… He hates men, women, the poor…. everyone and everything.

n  n    -you can get dyslexia from pussy-n  n

n  ‘’I can’t tell if I’m cooking any of this correctly, because I’m crying too hard and I have never really cooked anything before.’’n
Biiitch I felt that. I make okay spaghetti and good popcorn. Don’t let me cook for you.

SHIT IS FUCKED UP AND GORY…. omfg I love it.
n  “That was what was so interesting to me about it. You can read the book either way.”-Ellis on Rolling Stone 2016n
Did fucked up shit happen? Is he just insane? We will never find out.

I think that at this point we all know about this. It’s a commentary on consumerism, capitalism and the garbage businessmen. Of course and homeboy over here thinks of killing/kills people. His life is so monotonous and boring. I’m shocked he didn’t off himself from boredom.
You may find this boring (apparently a lot of people found it) because it’s basically blah blah blah torture porn blah blah blah torture porn…. but liiisten, I didn’t mind reading about Patrick’s boring life.
I did not expect all these graphic details even tho I know Ellis. I blame the movie which took all the graphic shit and threw it out of the window... I wanna state that this is not a complaint. It’s a pleasant surprise. Skin them all Patrick. We are rooting for you… I read a lot of reviews because I’m bored and people were like ‘ew why would anyone want to read about people getting chopped up and raped?’. Karen mind your damn business. Do I judge your interests?...... wtf did this turn into? I’m ending it here and going to watch Ο Κύριος Και Η Κυρία Πελς. Don't know why.

Side note, FUCK I really wanna watch The Patty Winters Show.

I recently asked a dear friend for book recommendations. He suggested Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. Dude is a wicked smart-ass. Although his response was given in jest, I was intrigued. The title was familiar. I’d heard plenty of pop-culture references and seen variations of the cover. I had to read the book immediately.

Readers are weirdos with quirky rules. I have only one. Know as little as possible about the book. Nothing is optimal. It is with blissful ignorance that I gleefully announce: I’m reading tonight!

Dude: Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Me: You didn’t. That is not a warning. It is a thinly veiled dare. You are making me read this book.
Dude: (Says nothing. Accepts zero responsibility)

I’m stunned by the detail. Patrick Bateman gives an inordinate amount of time and focus to minutiae; noting each article of clothing, accessory, and hair product (or total lack thereof) for each person he sees. Further along, I get it. The only way to truly jerk the reader into Bateman’s sick, twisted head. Mr. Ellis is quite clever. Or maybe he just dabbles in magic. How else could pages (and pages) devoted to men’s fashion or Huey Lewis and the News become engrossing insights into this lunatic’s mind?

Peppered throughout the incidental information, snippets alluding to Bateman’s capacity for cruel are sneak peeks into how totally messed up this may turn out to be. The unwavering attention to each slight detail does not wane as Bateman’s actions become more frequent. There would be no other way to honestly convey how heinous, disgusting and terrifying the torture is. It is difficult to read on.

Allow me to put that into perspective. I’ve never once read Stephen King or Dean Koontz while peeking through my fingers. I read Bill Bitner before going to sleep. Ellis is horrifying. Reading a particularly gruesome scene while in Starbucks, an understandably anxious lady gently touched my arm, and politely told me that I was whimpering. It is vividly graphic. Thank Herra, I’m anosmic. Picturing the carnage is one thing, conceivably conjuring up the accompanying odor….unimaginable.

Yet, I read on. I have questions.

Is any of this really happening? How has he not gotten caught? Really, why hasn’t he been arrested? Nobody notices the stains on his clothes, the noise, the odors? WHAT about his family? WHAT firm do they own? Why is his mother in a room with bars on the windows?
Why did my friend say to me that, since I had been in the securities industry, I might get something out of it? I’m confident Bateman is the exception, not the rule. Most people on Wall Street don’t actually behave in this manner…..I hope.

Wait. THAT is the ending? No. He didn’t finish, so much as he just stopped writing. Unbelievable.

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.

I actually read this book a few years ago, but I stumbled across the Goodreads reviews of it, and felt I needed to add my voice, because it is such a difficult piece of lit in a lot of ways,and honestly, it probably is more deserving of a thesis paper than of a measly little review on Goodreads.
American Psycho is a brilliant book. Genius. It will no doubt deservingly be remembered as Bret Easton Ellis's masterpiece, his tour-de-force of sadist misanthropy.

I effing HATED it.

American Psycho is a brutal satire of the American upper middle class, set amongst the yuppies of New York during the boom era of the 1980's. Patrick Bateman is the main character and narrator, a bland upwardly mobile business man whose personality is a terrifyingly blank slate. He defines himself solely by the products he uses, the clothes he wears, the places he is seen eating or partying. He is also a murderer. In the course of the book, he murders a homeless man, a colleague, and numerous prostitutes, all with less emotion than he bestows upon his hair gel.
Ellis slyly balances the relative passion with which Bateman might discuss Huey Lewis in one chapter with a dispassionate yet detailed and horrific play-by-play of rape and dismemberment in the next.
The banality and sly humor (Bateman's analysis of Whitney Huston is both disturbingly off-kilter and hilarious) of the early non-violent passages of the book make the murders all the more jarring to the senses when they start coming thick and fast at the end, and black humor gives way to an out-and-out brutality the likes of which have not been touched in any other book I've ever read.
At first glance, it seems as though it is the juxtaposition of the banal and the brutal that make American Psycho shocking. In fact, however, what wrenches the gut is the sameness of detail and emotion with which both torture and nouvelle cuisine are treated. Ellis's muse is at once a monster and a metaphor, not just for the Reagan era, but for the potential darkness of post-modernity in toto. He is a camera. His world is reduced to an inventory of details, equally weighted; a chair, a suit, an arm, a head.

Reading American Psycho is a much less enjoyable experience than you might think, based on its titillating reviews or even Guinevere Turner's smart film adaptation (which was my original impetus for reading the book). The book is many times darker, nastier, uglier, grosser, crueler than I was prepared for, and I am a pretty die hard fan of horror and true crime lit.
Like many other women who read this book, I found myself getting faint and queasy, and ended up hurling it across the room in disgust. I couldn't make it to the end. As a female and a feminist, I found the book problematic.
Of course, the character of Bateman is supposed to be vile, but his misogyny is so pronounced that I find it hard to simply glom it on with the rest of his misanthropic tics. Sure, he kills his a*hole co-worker, and a few other dudes here and there, but mostly, he kills women. And unlike the asexual murder of his colleague, these womens' deaths are hyper-sexualized. They are all committed post-coitally, they are almost all prostitutes. While I don't think that Bret Easton Ellis is unaware of the misogynist content of A.P., I nevertheless find it more disturbing because of the narrator's lack of analysis, and because of a dearth of the clever commentary Ellis sneaks in during so many other moments in the novel. It is heady territory, just waiting to be mined by some iron-willed feminist scholar with the eggs for it, but I am not that woman, and if you don't think you're that woman either, then I would STRONGLY advise avoiding American Psycho.
Putting it bluntly: the scenes of women being raped, beaten, tortured and killed in this book are numerous, long, detailed, and presented with an absolute lack of empathy. For myself, this book made me feel as though I had been sexually assaulted. And while I appreciate the genius of such a book, that doesn't mean I have to like it.

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

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...

i hate this book. it's one of my least favorite books i've ever read. i'm sorry. it makes perfect sense that bret ellis and donna tartt are close friends, because good lord. he does not shut the fuck up ever. if ellis needed to shut the fuck up to save the world, we'd all be dead.

i never want to read the name of a luxury brand again. this book could've been two-hundred pages shorter if we didn't get an in-depth bateman beauty routine. i know the whole point of the novel is bateman's absurdity, but by page 130 i wanted to shed my own skin and rip my eyes out.

i couldn't find it in myself to care. he's a pretentious self-centered, and bigoted cunt. his life isn't even interesting without the gruesome murders he commits— and even those are boring. bateman's reasons for killing, raping, and beating people are so lackluster that it's not even interesting. he's just an insufferable prick, because he can be one.

not only is he insufferable, but his friends are, too. there's not a single thing in this novel that even makes it bearable. this book has nothing of substance, besides drugs and alcohol. haha.

a rich man with a sex & drug addiction? how original! i read this while sitting in a hospital waiting room, and the entire time i was wishing i had brought something else. i've never been more grateful for the fact that i never have to read something ever again.

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.

Obviously this is unimaginably violent, vulgar, and gruesome. I have never read anything nearly so depraved or disturbing. When it comes to transgressive fiction, this wins by a long shot. This book is extremely upsetting and difficult to read. The granular, pages-long descriptions of sex that begets torture that begets killing are repulsive and gratuitous.

It is also a brilliant narrative on the emptiness of consumerism and the effects of our stimulation society. Numbness is dangerous, and life is shallow when it's defined by objects.

I loved this book almost as much as I hated it.

Ein zweitrangiger Yuppie verschafft sich durch Gewaltexzesse Erleichterung. Realitätsverlust als Plot, konsequent und atemberaubend umgesetzt.

Inhalt: 4/5 Sterne (intensive Gewaltexzesse und unterhaltsame Tristesse)
Form: 3/5 Sterne (instrumentelle, plakative Sprache, aber mit Drive)
Komposition: 5/5 Sterne (rhythmisch-dynamisch Eindimensionalität vermieden)
Leseerlebnis: 5/5 Sterne (ein Drahtseilakt der Atemlosigkeit)

Nur wenige Bücher schaffen es heutzutage noch auf den Index der Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdete Medien. „American Psycho“ von Bret Easton Ellis, erschienen im Jahr 1991, gelang dies 1995, bis die Indizierung 2001 wieder aufgehoben wurde. In der Tat besitzt der Roman an Grausamkeit kaum zu überbietende Stellen. Patrick Bateman, ein 26-jähriger Wallstreet-Yuppie, langweilt sich in seinem Berufs- und Privatleben, verbringt viel Zeit in Fitness- und Wellness-Studios und leiht sich zumeist Horror- und Gewaltfilme aus:

Nach weiteren Stretchingübungen zur Entspannung nehme ich schnell eine heiße Dusche, eile dann zur Videothek und gebe die zwei Kassetten, die ich am Montag ausgeliehen habe, zurück, She-Male Reformatory und Der Tod kommt zweimal, aber Der Tod kommt zweimal leihe ich erneut aus, denn ich will es mir heute abend noch mal ansehen, obwohl mir klar ist, daß ich nicht genügend Zeit haben werde, zu der Szene zu masturbieren, in der die Frau mit der Schlagbohrmaschine getötet wird, weil ich mit Courtney für halb acht im Café Luxembourg verabredet bin.

Nebenher trifft er sich mit seinen Freunden, die sich alle gegenseitig verwechseln, betrachtet das Straßenleben New Yorks und bewertet und beurteilt das Leben der Obdachlosen und rezensiert hier und da Musik (Genesis, Huey Lewis and the News, Whitney Houston). Gebunden wird der Text durch viele Markennamen, Modebetrachtungen und Kleidungsstilfragen, sowie den neuesten technologischen Geräten und Möglichkeiten, TV-Talkshows und Klatsch und Tratsch aus der Finanzbranche. Diese beinahe unerträgliche Tristesse durchbricht der Roman, der aus dem Präsenz einer Ich-Perspektive konsequent umgesetzt und als Wiederholung des Immergleichen inszeniert ist, mittels radikalen Gewalt-, Vergewaltigungs- und Folterszenen von Männern wie Frauen wie Kindern, die Bateman mehr oder weniger zufällig über den Weg laufen:

Obwohl ich zuerst zufrieden mit mir bin, durchfährt mich plötzlich klägliche Verzweiflung darüber, wie sinnlos, wie außerordentlich schmerzlos es ist, ein Kind ums Leben zu bringen. Dieses Ding vor mir, klein und verkrümmt und blutig, hat keine eigene Geschichte, keine nennenswerte Vergangenheit, nichts Wichtiges geht verloren. […] Automatisch überkommt mich das schier überwältigende Verlangen, auch die Mutter des Kindes zu erschlagen, die in Hysterie verfallen ist, aber ich kann nicht mehr tun, als sie grob ins Gesicht zu schlagen und sie anzuschreien, sie soll still sein.

Erstaunlich klar, intensiv-verdichtend repetiert Easton Ellis die Tagesabläufe Batemans. Die Ich-Perspektive erlaubt eine Immersion, die selbst brutale Gewaltszenen erträglich werden lässt, da das erlebende Ich keine Beziehung zu seinen Taten besitzt und so plausibel erscheint. Je länger der Roman anhält, desto deutlicher wird auch die Spaltung, die innere Distanz, die Unzuverlässigkeit des Realitätserlebens und stellt die Szenen in den mehr oder weniger videographischen Kontext seiner Gewaltfilm- und Pornosucht, die sich wie Tagträume den Weg in sein Alltagsbewusstsein schaffen:

Das Leben blieb eine nackte Leinwand, ein Klischee, eine Soap Opera. Ich fühlte mich tödlich, am Rande der Raserei. Mein nächtlicher Blutdurst sickerte in meine Tage durch, und ich mußte die Stadt verlassen. Meine Maske geistiger Gesundheit bröckelte bedenklich. Das war meine tote Saison, und ich mußte raus aus der Stadt. Ich mußte in die Hamptons.

Die Gewaltausbrüche fungieren als Kurzurlaub, den er schließlich auch mit seiner Fast-Verlobten Evelyn unternimmt, nur um festzustellen, dass Urlaub nicht ausreicht, um sich selbst und seiner eigenen Leerheit zu entkommen. Mit fesselnden, sich immer weiter in Gewaltschraubenden hineindrehenden Prosastanzen vermag der Roman eine Psyche zu rekonstruieren, die das Höchstmaß an Selbstüberdruss zu ertragen versucht und just an dieser Aufgabe, als Gipfelstürmer der Dekadentexistenz, scheitern muss.

Dieses Scheitern mit all seinen Facetten eingefangen zu haben, darin besteht der Verdienst dieses an Eindringlichkeit kaum zu überbietenden Romans, der zeigt, wie die Banalität des Bösen erscheint und doch für andere, trotz schier überbordender Perversion, unsichtbar bleibt. Bret Easton Ellis setzt diese Ästhetik mit „American Psycho“ konsequenter um als selbst Vladimir Nabokov in „Lolita“ und schon erst recht als Quentin Tarantino in „Es war einmal in Hollywood“, von Gaea Schoeters „Trophäe“ gar nicht zu sprechen, indem er die Figur selbst und nicht die Erscheinungsweise für andere zur Sprache kommen lässt und sie nicht durch Selbstrechtfertigung in ihrer Plausibilität unterminiert und so in Mitleidenschaft zieht.

Ärgerlich: teilweise zu brutale Stellen, die dem Buch nichts hinzufügen (Stichwort: Ratte), die die Sensationslust befriedigen sollen, und genau hier ins Illustrative der ohnehin kargen Sprache abschweifen.

Erfreulich: das Psychogramm ungebrochen bis zuletzt durchgehalten, und die in Schwebe gehaltene Realitätsverlusteskapade erst am Ende, letzte drei Seiten, befriedigend dargelegt und aufgelöst. Die Perspektive selbst war der Plot.

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