American Psycho

Rating:
Summary: A unrecognized American, modern existential novel
Review: I read the novel about 5 years ago, and I continue to read bits of it once in a while. I treat it as novel about modern day alienation--living in a city that exists on chic-ness or fashion trends or materialism--and how difficult it is for the protagonist to reach out to anyone who will listen. Bent on murders, cannibalism, and also good clothes and looking just plain good, Patrick Bateman lives as an American IB drone during the day time and lives in a demonic world during the rest of the time; thus, he becomes a solitary figure living in New York City, lonely and perhaps desperate for some humanist attention.

I could go on, but I suggest reading the novel as an existential treatise.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected.
Review: I had heard a lot of hype about this book and expected a lot out of it. After forcing myself to read the first 1/4 of it, about 100 pages, I am done reading. I understand the author trying to show how people strive for just too much and that people with power can get away with quite a lot, but there is just too much talk about what everyone is wearing. Half of what I've read so far is whining about what clothes people wear and how everything tastes bad etc. This may be true to how a good deal of rich people act (the stuck-up part, not going insane), but it was really just a drag trying to get through what I did. There were exciting parts when they did show up, but I suppose I've lived to o "plain" of a life to even listen to 1 word about clothing and food taste, let alone half a book.

Rating:
Summary: A book you won't forget
Review: This book will make your skin crawl. But it will also make you stop and think. Personally I don't believe Ellis intended it to target just the yuppies of the 1980's. I believe the point is a serial killer could be anyone you know. The descriptions of Bateman and his cronies are very much the same. Bateman is exactly like everyone else. As a matter of fact throughout the entire book he is mistakenly identified as other yuppie men. Likewise, his buddies are always arguing as to who is sitting at the end of the bar.

I think this book should definitely be read by people now. Look around you and you will find people obsessively trying to get more and more of everything. When is it enough? And when it's enough, then what? I think that is the point.

Read if you dare, but be warned there are certainly scenes that will make you cringe.

Rating:
Summary: Several Hours Of My Life Ill Never Get Back
Review: Mental disease has been the meat of many a classic work of art. Whether it is the obsessive guilt-ridden behavior of Lady MacBeth, or the creeping paranoia of Captain Queeg, a mind gone bad holds a grim but compelling fascination. When another Amazon reviewer asked me my opinion as a psychotherapist about "American Psycho," I took on the challenge and diverted from my usual diet of non-fiction. In retrospect, I am compelled to say that this diversion cost me several hours of my life that I will never get back.

What we have here is a slice of life of a late twenty-something stockbroker named Patrick Bateman, a first person narrative of life in the Wall Street fast lane. In truth, Bateman tells little about his hours on job; what the reader can glean about his professional career comes only from inference. Bateman has a lot of money, eats out every night at about $200 a plate, and dotes upon his appearance and apparel to a degree that even George Hamilton might find excessive.

In fact, the clothes fetish is the first hint that all is not right with Mr. Bateman. The mind-numbing detail of wardrobes is mitigated only by the fact that the Hilfiger line had not yet appeared at the time of publication. Clearly the narrator is manic and compulsive, conditions fueled by voracious amounts of cocaine, alcohol, and Xanax. One other early trait is fear: Bateman and his fellow pre-Enron wolves are desperately afraid of falling from their perches into the hell of home cooking, well brand whiskey, and outlet mall shopping.

Through the first quarter of the work the author depicts his subject's anomalies with enough subtlety to make this work at least bearable. But then, with little rhyme or reason, Mr. Bateman morphs from just another annoying jerk in a three-piece suit into a malevolent madman. [Captain Queeg, at least, had his typhoon and his "yellow stain" episodes.] Evidently the violence perpetrated by the subject upon friend and stranger alike evoked a considerable amount of controversy at the time of the book's release. I too found the violence over the edge, but candor compels me to admit that yes, there are real Patrick Batemans out there somewhere. Ask the folks in Wichita about the "BTK" cases, for example.

To borrow a phrase from "Dirty Harry," Bateman kills with such sadistic method because, essentially, he likes it. His cruelties to strangers and down-and-outers are one thing, but his slow and excruciating elimination of his peers-particularly women-is quite another. I do give the author his due that he has created a supporting cast for Bateman of pitiful people who fit the victim mode magnificently. His male associates are socially impotent, greedy, shallow, and incapable of anything akin to genuine relationship. And his women...they whine incessantly. In fact, a better name for this work is "American Borderlines," for Ellis has set the women's movement back to about 1890 with his feminine portrayals.

As Bateman continues his crusade as a one-man wrecking crew, and as "American Psycho" tortures its readers for another three hundred pages, the realization came to me that the narrative is pure concoction of Bateman's inner confusion. The account of police involvement is one of many tip-offs: they don't call them "NY's Finest" for nothing, and the greenest rookie from the academy could have closed this case with the second corpse, and I wish he had. Another nagging question is job performance: how does a guy as unraveled as Bateman ostensibly show up for work-let alone succeed financially-with a major brokerage firm? It is no accident that Ellis never takes us to Bateman's 9 to 5 world.

I have seen reviews that hail this book as a hallmark satire of life in the 1980's, and I would have to agree that the author is probably making a statement of sorts. However, it is arrogant to suppose that the 1980's somehow cornered the market on madness, greed, and violence. The only folks who might disagree are precisely the men and women who people Bateman's world. For the rest of us, we are left to debate at the end whether it is worse to be outraged or snookered by Mr. Bateman's "exploits." Let's take the bus over to Denny's for dinner in our Target shirts, K-Mart slacks, and Pay-Less shoes to ponder this further.





Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, compelling and thought provoking
Review: I haven't read all of Ellis' stuff, but from what I have, and what I've heard about the rest, I strongly suspect that this is his masterpiece. It is alternatingly disgusting and hilarious. It's highly entertaining, a real page turner and manages to provoke thought on our culture. Ellis seems to have a gift for capturing eras and places, and 80s Wall Street is wonderfully illustrated in this work.
While the emptiness and artifice of his characters works beautifully here, it's a shame that he seems unable to create ANY characters with depth.

Rating:
Summary: The life and times of the 80's...
Review: Bret Easton Ellis, I thought did a GREAT job writing American Psycho. Yet some of the things in this novel are very graphic; the sex and the killing scenes. Yet, when Ellis was writing this novel, it took him a week to write the killing scenes. Bret also did some research on serial killers for the killing scenes that Pat Bateman does in the book. The book is pretty much like a diary, Pat Bateman is a successful Wall Street worker who is making lots of money, but Ellis refuses to say what Patrick really does, but all we know is that he works for P&P, and everyone he hangs out with, dresses the same (and Bateman painfully describes what they are wearing and what they are eating) and every paragraph starts out with 'I'm wearing an Aramani shirt with a Polo sweater, with cashmere gloves, and a Gucci suit.' kind of talk. Yet I suggest that you skip the first 100 pages because NOTHING happens during the first 100 pages of the book. Don't worry you are not missing anything. On one chapter, Ellis writes a 5 page paragraph describing Bateman's apartment. Yet Bateman spends his night either with hookers, or killing them with chainsaws, ripping out their arms, and having sex with their dead bodies. There are some funny parts that Ellis writes in there when he is describing the so-called 'hardbodies', oh Bateman and his friends are heavy coke users, and go out to clubs to try to pick up women, but yet the story does put out the issues of the 80's; the yuppies, MTV, Ronald Reagen, and the social deterating with homeless people and the poor being turned out on the street by the thousands.
American Psycho is very orignial, but yet very disturbing. Some of the violence scenes would make Scott Ian of Anthrax and Rob Zombie proud of Ellis because he describes the death scenes like you are right there. The book is rather well written, and definitely worth reading. Take my word for it.

Rating:
Summary: Well....
Review: So Ellis wants to talk about how shallow the wealthy are. He could do it without a greased pipe and a starved rat. The album reviews would do nicely on Amazon though.