American psycho door Bret Easton Ellis

Primary Titel: American Psycho
Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Published by: Vintage Books, 1991
Pages: 416 My Choice Few books have created as much controversy as American Psycho. I was therefore curious about the book and decided to read it. Expectations Reading the title, American Psycho, I was hoping the book was about the perfect all American life, and that this was a cynical way of telling that it isn’t. After reading the back cover, I certainly got a clear vision of what the book will be like. I’ll quote a few lines: “American Psycho is set in a world (Manhattan), and an era (the Eighties) recognizably our own. The wealthy elite grows infinitely wealthier, the poor and disturbed are turned out onto the streets by the tens of thousands, and anything, including the very worst, seems possible. Even so, Bateman, who expresses his true self by torture and murder, prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront. And he remains, in the end, at large. This is not an exit.” First Reaction Afterwords My God. I’ve never read anything that comes near the horror, the sickness but at the same time the fantastic way which the story’s told. It’s not only shocking, at some point you just think, what if this really happens? Can someone seriously have a twisted mind like Patrick Bateman? Some parts of the book are so descriptive that it almost made me physically sick. The impact of this book will knock you off your feet. If you are thinking of reading American Psycho, be prepared to laugh, be prepared to gag, and be prepared to see the most horrible side of American society.
Summary Patrick Bateman, 27, is handsome, well educated and intelligent, earning a fortune being the prototype Wall street-guy who seems to have it all. He’s an executive at Pierce and Pierce, a firm his father owns. But Bateman is also a psychopath. He’s more worried about the design of his business card then he is about the people around him, the people he murders without any reason with his favourite music playing in the background. The more stylish the business card, the more pompous the girlfriend, or the more expensive the meal ("speaking of reasonable...only $570") His diseased mentality has been growing steadily like a tumour, fed by the bland, superficial accoutrements of life as a New York yuppie Bateman is a monster, but he couldn’t care less. He’s a ticking bomb that resets itself with a shorter fuse after each explosion. Patrick resorts to doing hard drugs, watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Inside Lydia's Ass, listening to vacuous artists like Phil Collins and Huey Lewis And The News, engaging in group sex, dining on expensive boutique cuisine, dropping serial killer trivia into everyday conversation, collecting power tools, pandering to his exercise addiction, and indulging his sexual sadism. Trouble is that his latent psychopathic urges gradually pull back the curtain of his sanity, revealing a monstrous metaphor that no one recognises...perhaps because Patrick is so insane that his incredible acts of violence are exactly that: not credible, at least to the world outside his skull. Story Analysis A The story is told in America, Manhattan, around the eighties. The story has no real plot, it follows no coherent time line. It's just a series of events in Bateman's life, told from his point of view. The novel describes two years of the life of Patrick Bateman. B Perspective The story is told from Bateman’s point of view, the first person narrator. C As already told, this book has a certain way which the story’s told. It makes almost makes you sick. The horrific way in which the author tells the thoughts and things Bateman commits his rapes and murders is just awfull. Bateman describes how he kills and tortures several people. - beautiful young women ("hardbodies"), never older than Bateman himself, whom he "punishes" for being what they are: either friends or former friends of his. Examples are his ex-girlfriend Bethany, prostitutes, and escort girls. - business rivals (in particular a man called Paul Owen, whom he kills in his own apartment); - The poor homeless and unemployed he stumbles across in the streets of Manhattan, generally people to whom he refers as the " underclass" (for example an African American) - people from different ethnic backgrounds (apart from the beggar mentioned above, Chinese delivery boy, whom he mistakes for a Japanese); - innocent people he comes across in the street (including a boy he stabs at the Central Park,gay man with a dog, and saxophonist); - people he shoots at one point in the novel where he is being chased by the police (a taxi driver, a policeman, a night watchman, and a janitor). - Bateman also tortures and kills animals such dogs or rats. D Theme, Motives The theme in the book is murder, and also the urge to kill, personality disorder. Motives are Bateman's urge to "return some videos"—an excuse he frequently uses when asked by jealous young women what he was doing last night or what he is going to do tonight. In the novel this phrase is used for what he really does mostly at night: torturing, raping and killing people.
E Characters Patrick Bateman
Batemand has studied at Harvard (he’s one of the class ’84) and has turned himself into a yuppie. He works at Wallstreet, at his fathers firm Pierce and Pierce. Bateman has an incredibly twisted, dark, and cynical mind. Many of the things he says are hilarious. He regards his friends, girlfriends, and yuppie acquaintances with the same view that he gives to a prostitute. The great difference between what he thinks and how he seems to other people creates very humorous situations. I think Bateman has an antisocial personality disorder, and is indifference to the suffering and death of his victims. In American Psycho, all the Wall Street people dress perfectly, eat only the best and most expensive food and keep their bodies in shape by working out in exclusive health clubs. In the course of the novel Bateman discusses things like which brand of bottled water is the best, or which tie knot is less bulky. Bateman knows all the answers and could pass for a very refined and also intelligent and thoughtful young man. This, his "public persona", is defenitly contrasted with his alter ego: Bateman not only drinks his own urine, he also bites off and swallows one of the nipples of a girl he is having sex with; he cuts out Bethany's (a girl he killed) tongue while she is still alive; he eats a girl's brain after he has slaughtered her; and decapitates a woman, puts his erect penis into the mouth of her head and walks around the room with it, laughing. Bateman on the one hand, lives very healty. For example, he is a non smoker and works out. On the other hand, he consumes large amounts of alcohol and drugs. Bateman is a music fan. He does not like rap music because for his taste it is too "niggerish", but otherwise he closely follows the pop and rock scene of his time. Evelyn
She’s Bateman’s girlfriend. She’s described as a gorgeous woman, of course rich and well educated. She’s always accompanied by the upper class, the rich and wealthy. Tim Pierce
He is a friend of Bateman. He is also rich, handsome and a bit arrogant to the less-wealthy people. Bateman is suspecting that Evelyn is cheating on him, with Tim Pierce. F Title The title American Psycho obviously refers to the leading character Patrick Bateman. It also refers to the perfect American life as it seems, but there are a lot of crazy people in the American society, it’s not as perfect as it seems. Personal Criticism The way the story’s told, it’s fantastic. A hilarious story is told by mixing obcene scenes of torture with harmless humorous passages. The best thing about the book is that some passages suggest that Patrick Bateman is imagining at least some of his horrific crimes. This would explain the ignorance of people, as well as his actions without any logic and all of the disappearing bodies. A line in the book, at one point, even breaks the middle of a scene with the phrase "... but since this is all a dream anyway ...” I think the author tries to show that people in contemporary society only care about themselves and their appearances. For example, the characters in the novel regularly call each other by the wrong name, showing that they don't care much about whom they are talking to. In fact, Bateman regularely confesses his crimes to other people, but they do not appear to listen, or they don't take him seriously. He even goes to this Halloween party at his place of work "disguised" as a mass murderer, with his suit covered with real blood and himself. Bateman's maid regularly cleans up the mess in his apartment without asking any questions. His Chinese dry cleaners clean his blood-stained clothes without suspecting anything. Even the women Bateman dates with most closely or for a longer period of time do not become suspicious of his personality. It is not explained why the police fail to track Bateman down. So that’s interesting. The book was easily told, I had no trouble reading it, because the story is so exciting, you just keep on reading it.