American Psycho

Rating:
Summary: American Nutcase!!!
Review: Oh my god.....what a mad book! I started to read this book and found myself unable to put it down. I don't even know if I liked it or not but it is certainly thought provoking! Shock Value?...I think not. Probably a real honest account of what a real life mad man may think. I would certainly understand anyone who came to the 1st kill and decided it was not for them, but for me, I had to carry on reading it until the end and I almost felt guilty in doing so. But the question is, did he commit these crimes or are they all just a figment of his sick and twisted imagination? You tell me. All said and done, I'm glad I read this book and I definitely won't forget it!

Rating:
Summary: a trek into a killers mind
Review: an amazing book which was incredibly well written. An unforgettable trip into a serial killers mind, revealing all he does and thinks.

Rating:
Summary: it was good, it wasn't great
Review: I just finished reading American Psycho, having no preconceptions about it, never having heard of it before and luckily having missed all the hype about the new movie and other reviews. Ellis's technical style is great, and the message on the materialism of the 80's is blatant. The excruciating details of the extravagant living of Pat Bateman and his yuppie friends (facials, clothes, gyms, restaurants) add to the portrayal whole senseless and meaningless wealth-oriented lives, where everyone is just another yuppie, not an individual. Bateman even mentions this on several occasions (once he mentions that him and Craig McDermott looks "basically the same", and another time he says that his and Paul Owen's voice sound very similar, especially through the answering machine, or the whole easily-accessible technological filter they wrap themselves in). I do believe that most of the violence described (and I must say it did make my stomach turn once or twice) is merely in Bateman's head, considering the absurdity of the situations. The neighbors not noticing any noise or smell, the dry-cleaners and the maid cleaning up blood without a second thought or care about what has happened, the lack of any formal investigation on any of the murders (detective Kimball was a private investigator), etc etc. Oh, and in the Paul Owen situation, his sightings in London can be either taken as a proof that the murders are fictional, or as yet another one of those confusions between who the people are (none of the yuppies recognize each other, calling everyone by wrong names - perhaps it was only someone who "looks like Paul Owen" that dined in London). Also, Bateman is confused and disoriented when he goes over to Owen's apartment and the realtor lady is there and everything is nice and clean (most likely Paul Owen did go to London and is selling his aptmt). There are many humorous lines, like the instant when he offers someone (who?) water and says that he can get "a lot of lime" with it, playing on his habit of allegedly dissolving the male corpses with calcium oxide, aka lime. OKay, I'm sure this book would make a great analytical paper for someone's English class, but for the rest of us, let's just put a V next to it on our checkoff list. I've read most of the reviews on here, and those of you that complain about wasting the 12 bucks on the book after hearing so much about it, come on, like there was not a library in your neighborhood.

Rating:
Summary: Indictment of '80s yuppie culture mixed with gore galore.
Review: Ellis has created the ultimate indictment of '80s yuppie culture. Admittedly, Patrick Bateman is an evil presense and there's gore galore, be wary. But the importance of this book is its contribution to a literary history of our changing culture, its mores and cliches, a microscpic slide allowing us to examine from clinical distance a sad and soulless time in the American Dream slash Nightmare. The scene, New York - late '80s, the cast - the young, upwardly mobile, the venues - the clubs, restuarants, bars and 'in' joints at the height of their popularity, oh and the clothes, can't forget the clothes, don't worry, Patrick never does. In the chronical of the life of a pathological, psychopathic killer Ellis has attempted neither to explain nor excuse Bateman's devastating and deranged behaviour but rather, avoiding playing the popular blame game brought to the fore during the time described, he has instead merely laid out the conditions in which this behaviour became possible, conditions which in fact exacerbated the madness of one Patrick Bateman. American Psycho is a read highly recommended as a warning to the future on how to avoid... wait, no one ever learns from the past, do they?

Rating:
Summary: Obsessive, surreal, and often brilliant.
Review: I thought this book was excellent- it is pretty interesting that the reviews on Amazon seem evenly split between one-star and five-star reviews. For the most part, the people who reviewed it at one star seemed to mistake a through description of Bateman's obsessive thoughts about food, clothing, technology, and music for poor writing skills on Ellis' part. All of the description that Bateman uses is vital to the story and to his psychological profile. He goes into the same obsessed detail about his new CD player or the restaurants he visited that he does with his brutal murders. The book might be repetitive, but that is because Bateman's MIND is repetitive. Very impatient people might find this book boring, but people who think about it will find it amazing.

Rating:
Summary: Is there a "Negative Stars" catagory?
Review: If literature had a nutritional content, American Psycho would possess the equivilant of an African famine. This is one miserable little waste of ink and paper. Forget about the human life toll throughout the book- I'm more outraged at the amount of trees that were cut down to make this book. The story is dull and boring, the murder scenes are purely shock value...and they plan on making this into a MOVIE?!?! They could use this as some ghastly form of inhumane torture by forcing people to read it. You'd be better off taking a match to your money than wasting it on this tripe.

Rating:
Summary: Contrived
Review: Too repetitious, too contrived, too ridiculous. Want an easy summary? torture, the foulest and bloodiest of misogynistic murders, Armani, Dorsia, Les Miserables. Repeat this 399 times and you have the book.

Rating:
Summary: Media analysis of American Psycho
Review: I first read American Psycho in 1996, in part because it was suggested to me by a university lecturer, as a strong example of a category 1 text. That was something of an understatement, but nonetheless like many, I also read the book to see what all the fuss was about. There is no denying it is a deeply disturbing novel, and in terms of structure it is certainly no masterpiece either. But I think that when Ellis wrote this book, the last thing on his mind was producing a book that was going to delight the purisits of style. I might be stating the obvious here, but I think Ellis deliberately wrote it in the style he did, knowing that elements of style were going to be sacrificed in order to write such a frantic book. That is I believe he deliberately structured it poorly, to reflect his character of Bateman who also is his narrator. That point aside, something that annoys me when this book is discussed in the media, is that many commentators openly admit they have not read the whole book. Too many of them take a high moral ground by saying "I only read parts of the book and was so disgusted, I refused to complete it." What sort of comment is that? How can one many sense of any text by reading individual passages independantly of the rest of the book? It seems to me that in the rush to form a kind of 'thought police', many media channels are not only refusing to consider the full meanings in the book, they are damning it from an uniformed position, with the justification that the book's contents offend them, and therefore should offend everyone. I am no great fan of the book, but I do recognise the messages Ellis is trying to relate in the work. Unfortunately, thanks to the oh so self righteous left, those messages are being ignored. It is easy to slate this book for its graphic violence and percieved hatred towards women. Any idiot can read the book and see that. We don't need so called media experts to tell us what we already know from reading the book, yet they persist in reviewing it from the point of view that says this book is about nothing more than murder. Everyone, particularly those that are going to review this work needs to open their mind, and make judgements based on a solid understanding of the text. This book is hard work to read, no question. However it is worth the effort because you don't have to like it, but it is important to understand.

Rating:
Summary: Much, Much Less Than Zero
Review: I hope Simon and Schuster turned it down not because of the explicit scenes but because this novel would not even merit reading in an undergraduate creative writing workshop. Hey Brett, read Gardner's The Art of Fiction; maybe you will finally learn something. What a piece of garbage. If this is the future of American fiction, then we are all in for one gigantic aesthetic collapse.

Rating:
Summary: The bible for the 21st century
Review: Just buy this, read it and live it