American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of American Psycho
Book Review: I couldn't stop laughing
Summary: 5 Stars
American Psycho is one of the few books I have ever read that REALLY made me laugh out loud. Patrick Bateman is like so many people that I met whilst climbing the corporate ladder in the eighties (I even saw some sad, long forgotten reflections of myself in there). Yes it's graphic. Yes it's violent. It's also funny in a way that few other satires are. Do yourself a favour and read the book!Book Review: Read this now.
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Don't do the same about the violence.
Book Review: Simply Awful!
Summary: 1 Stars
I cannot believe how bad this book is, and I am only on page 94! It is a pointless, rambling piece of garbage. There is no point. Nothing. I am such a huge fan of the movie that I decided to read the book, and I am sorry I did. The movie moved along at a good pace and was fascinating to watch. It was funny, depraved, interesting and horrorfic. The book just rambles along. If you want something that gives ou information on name-brand clothes, restaurants, perfumes, colognes and hair gels and interesting places to visit, this is the book for you. If you are intetested in reading an interesting story, don't waste your time. This book sucks. Go see the movie. Nine out of ten times, the book is always better than the movie - not this one! The book cannot even compare to it.Book Review: Wolfe, McInerney, Dunne . . . Ellis
Summary: 5 Stars
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, is a very well written, even clever, time capsule of affluent New York in the 80s and 90s. Ellis, clearly with his own style, will appeal to those who enjoy Tom Wolfe (especially Bonfire of the Vanities), Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City), Dominick Dunne's portrayal of the wealthy in virtually all of his fiction and any writings on New York in its state of heightened self-importance (coming from a native and long time New Yorker).
Ellis's novel clearly has a twist, a psychotic murderer among its fast moving Wall Street, uptown societal crowd. The protagonist. Written in the first person. At the same time the conspicuous consumption and vacuous living is both revolting and quite funny. Really more the latter. But very realistic given the time frame. Even today, not that much has changed. So, a story within a novel that gives the reader a flavor for a world unto itself, Manhattan.
Ellis's writing is, quite often, crisp, erudite and superb. ". . . 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. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, and all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have no surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless."
While much of the writing is more of the New Journalistic variety of Wolfe, the above describes the author's protagonist superbly well. The introspection of Bateman there, while deeply flawed, is at the same time, strangely true. All the warnings about the graphic nature of this book not withstanding, it is brilliantly written and a great and disturbingly funny read. It was, strangely, my first read of Ellis, it will not be my last.
Book Review: blah blah boring
Summary: 2 Stars
Controversial? Shocking? Misunderstood? Boring is a little more accurate. The name brand clothing descriptions get real old real fast. The best parts are the critical theories on Genesis and Phil Collins. The movie is a little better. I like the part in the special 80's documentary on the DVD when the editor of Film Comment is interviewed and says about the book, "It's just not that good". Hah!.
If you're into this "genre", whatever it is, check out Hubert Selby's "The Demon".
More American Psycho reviews:
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