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American Psycho |  | Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 1884
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0330448013
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780330448017
Publication Date: November 3, 2006
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Product Description
Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street; he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to a head-on collision with America's greatest dream - and its worst nightmare - this work is a black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 39
 Read this now. February 6, 2007
J. D. Aspinall (South West England)
57 out of 67 found this review helpful
Let's get one thing clear, American Psycho is a comedy - that needs to be understood before you read it. It's a comedy about yuppies, and how empty-headed and essentially shallow they are, about how far too much money coupled with far too little imagination can cause you to begin to shrink your world, until you live in such a self indulgent cocoon, you cannot even spot the raving, murdering lunatic in your midst. That is effectively what Easton-Ellis is telling us - yes, Yuppies are THAT shallow.
This is a well constructed work; it actually causes the reader to suffer from the same syndrome that grips the minds of most of its characters - only in reverse.
We have the self-obsessed city-boys, only interested in the correct clothing labels and getting reservations at the right restaurant, and us, the readers, obsessing over the violent scenes of rape and murder, and missing the point entirely. The violence and murder are simply incidental to the plot, they are not the point. They serve just the same purpose as a piece of misdirection performed by an illusionist. Just as you look the wrong way, the conjurer pulls a stroke.
Patrick Bateman - the protagonist - is as hilarious as he is twisted; a perfectly tanned, toned and attired Metro-Sexual killing machine; drowning with pleasure in the very selfish excess that he despises, and yet must conform to the rules of. He maintains the required trophy girlfriend and keeps up to date with the latest men's fashion, has membership of the most exclusive fitness club, styles his hair with a surgeon's precision and forces rats into the vaginas of his victims - a man of many tastes, indeed.
His circle of co-accused are just as lacking in any sort of meaningful mental programming, treating the New York they live in as one huge private boys' club, with membership relying on ticking certain financial and fashion based boxes on a seemingly ongoing basis. Most of the men in this work are successful, rich and hilariously stupid, and that is certainly the point. A second point - which feeds the previous one - is that they never step out of the world in which they consume space, therefore never catch a glimpse of their own vulgarity, and consequently, are unable to change for the better, or indeed, want to. They are the small obnoxious building blocks, who together, make the impenetrable wall of arrogance and snobbery that protects their false, built-on-sand world.
Even between themselves, in packs of their own kind, these men are only half aware of each other, do they even know who each other really is? They all have adopted the habit of addressing each other by their surnames, at least a large majority of the time. This is not so worrying until a particular character is introduced, and he starts referring to Bateman by the wrong surname. Why should this be worrying? Because Bateman responds to the surname as if it were correct, unable, due to the particular etiquette at work in their society, to offer a correction. This small, comical component offers to the reader some very disturbing questions about - if you will - the depths of their shallowness. When Bateman addresses an acquaintance, does he use the correct name himmself? Are they just humouring him, shackled by the same etiquette? Is any of the group of friends Bateman surrounds himself with the people he thinks they are?
This question is thrust at the reader, when after killing Paul Allen, a man he has been obsessing over for sometime, Bateman learns that the very same man has been seen in a restaurant in London. This is a confirmed sighting because Bateman is told by his victim's dinner guest, no less! So who on earth has he killed?
This particularly gruesome murder offers Easton-Ellis the chance to have another subtle kick at the world he is cleverly ripping to pieces. The killing happens in Allen's own plush apartment; and upon returning to clean up the mess, Bateman - armed with a surgical mask to cope with the smell - has a brief conversation with a real estate agent who is re-selling the expensive property. The agent spots the surgical mask, and Bateman spots the mysteriously clean apartment. Their brief exchange involves the agent saying she doesn't want any trouble and that Bateman should just go. So he does, walking away from the scene of his crime utterly bewildered, his already fragile mind ever more damaged.
It is exchanges like this that allow us to wonder if Bateman has actually been created by the world he lives in. Is the "Greed is good" culture causing his psychoses? What could happen to a person's view of what's acceptable, when that person lives in world that utterly lacks substance and any shred of morality, a world where even murders can be cleaned up if there's a possibility of profit? Is Bateman the ultimate avenger for the self-indulgence of the slick-haired city boys and their air-head women? It's possible, though I believe that Easton-Ellis lets Bateman loose on this world because he simply thinks they deserve it.
It was people of this kind that Brett Easton-Ellis was mixing with during the second half of the Eighties; he saw their world from the inside, the celebrity and credibility of being a writer allowing him rare access. He has stated that the time spent mixing with New York's Yuppie elite, convinced him that they were the sort of people he would hate to be like; though they certainly left a lasting impression on the man, and this work demonstrates that impression. He didn't like them much.
I said this book is a comedy, and so it is. Consider this scene. Finally snapping and deciding to kill a chap whose attentions our psycho is sick of, he strides into the men's room to confront his intended victim, his black-gloved hands ready to strangle the life out of this irritating man. As Bateman's hands grip the man's throat, the victim starts to smile, feeling the first stirrings of sexual desire. The victim is secretly gay (and must enjoy his own dark pleasures behind closed doors, it's implied, if strangulation turns him on), and Bateman's hands gripping his throat confirm Bateman must be as well. At last, the façade is dropped, now they can be together!
The comedy runs throughout this book. A urinal cake, taken from a men's room, coated in chocolate, and then offered as a present, provides hilarity as the trophy girlfriend attempts to eat it. Bateman dropping his veil of normality and telling people directly what violent acts he'd love to perform on them (no-one really listens to each other, so he gets away with it), whilst the empty heads just nod along, paying no attention. Yeah, yeah, man. Sounds good, let's touch base, oblivious that Bateman is telling them he wants to dig out their eyes. Again, telling us just how dumb and ignorant these people are.
The laughs are there, just so long as you don't allow yourself to be tricked into paying too much attention to the violence. There's plenty of it, and a lot is incredibly graphic, but it's there to catch your eye - to keep you from the seeing reality; just like the soulless drones that populate the book can't see it either, they're too busy obsessing about designer labels to be able to.
READ THIS BOOK! February 19, 2007
J. magee (uk)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I read this book in one day. One day. And that's just silly so I am reading it again.
Read this book. You will cry with laughter, and you will cry in horror. It is not for the weak hearted that's for sure. If you don't cry in horror then you seriously need to question your own sanity!
I have 2 questions after reading it: 1. I wouldn't like to meet Bret Easton Ellis in a dark alley. and 2. I would LOVE to know what Pat Bateman's sessions with his shrink were about!
Many things to many people July 22, 2007
Brian Hamilton (Scotland, UK)
16 out of 23 found this review helpful
American Psycho is not an easy book to read or review. It is many things to many people, a straightforward account of a serial killer's exploits, a treatise on male machismo, a satire on 80's consumerism, an insight into a nervous breakdown. It can be none, some or all of these things depending on your age, intelligence and personality. I bought this book about ten years ago and have read it about six times. Each time as I open it I find it affects me on a different level. As I have matured, gotten married and become a father, the books resonates differently on each read.
The novel is powerful and affecting. For me the gore and killing has become a backdrop to the bleakness that overwhelms Patrick Bateman. He is incredibly rich, handsome, well educated, at a place where he is envied by most. Yet, he is consumed by doubt, terror,fear and anxiety that his life is hollow, unfulfilled and empty. Here he is, the epitome of consumerist America, a poster boy for a thousand expesnive colognes or pairs of designer underpants but he is dissatisfied, predatory. The fact that he speaks of his life of priviledge and his killings in the same breath is both disconcerting and perhaps, for some, a thrilling look into a life of hedonistic abandon where there is no fear of the police knocking at the door, nobody to put a stop to any form of behaviour one wishes to indulge in.
It is beacuse of this that the book is both majestic and shocking. The controversy is nothing but media white noise. If it hasn't already, the furore surrounding this will die down and the book will be viewed for what it is, a classic.
This book will put words to any feelings of alienation, dissatisfaction, doubt of one's worth and self image and the pressure to conform, that the adult male cruising through the late twentieth and early twenty-first century goes through. For that reason alone it should be read by woman as well to help them appreciate the pressures men face but are unwilling or unable to vocalise.
A classic for so many reasons.
Not for the faint hearted!!! April 9, 2007
Jen (West Yorks)
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book is a fabulous satire on upwardly mobile, shallow yuppies. Its sarcastic and ironic humour had me laughing till I nearly cried. It really tears into those who are materialistic above all else and makes them look ridiculously foolish. The worst thing is I know, and I'm sure everyone knows, people exactly like this. Pat Bateman is an excellent character, a perfectly normal, arrogant, irritating businessman by day and an absolute lunatic on his own time. Be warned, the violence is hideous, truly horrific and if you don't have a strong stomach then don't read this. I feel strange saying this given how bad the violence is but it seems like the perfect balance to Pat's consumerism and concern with all things new and expensive. If you read it you'll see what I mean. I've been told the film isn't very good so I'm going to give it a miss as I enjoyed the book. I recommend it.
Warning: not for the faint-hearted October 25, 1999
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
A book which has achieved cult status since its release in the late 1980s - AmericanPsycho contains material which will profoundly shock many readers whilst leaving others bewildered by the grotesque nature of the charcters portrayed here. The material within its pages has been described as ' intolerable' and in a sense this is true. However, the book is a brilliant send-up of the values of the 1980s. Bateman (the novel's central character) works by day, making millions out of treating people as disposable assets - and much of the book is the interaction between him and his Wall Street Buddies - the difference being that Bateman carries this attitude to its logical conclusion, murdering people because in the end, his attitude to life is that it DOESN'T MATTER.Ellis has created a novel which is almost impossible to put down, and certainly is still his best book to date. The book is designed to shock and some scenes will have more sensitive readers in tears, but the scenes that DON"T involve violence are, to me almost as disturbing as those that do. American Psycho reveals through a very crass satirical form, the rottenness of much of the 'American dream', and is a thoroughly worthwhile read.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 39
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