Rating: 
Summary: great book
Review: just go out and buy it or check it out at the library what ever just read it
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: Bateman mania justified
Review: Patrick Bateman is 26, handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He works on Wall Street by day earning a fortune. At night he spends it in ways we cannot begin to understand. Patrick Bateman is also a psychopath.Bret Easton Ellis's bitter and aversive second novel takes us on a head-on collision with America's greatest dream - and its worst nightmares.American Psycho contains some of the most horrifying, repugnant, indeed misogynist scenes of torture and murder ever written (the monologue, however, remains aloof, cold and impartial throughout, whether describing drainpipes rammed into vaginas to allow rats access to feast inside, or the cut of a colleague's Armani suit, or the career of Whitney Houston), but they must be read in satirical context of the book as a whole: after all, the horror does not lie in the novel itself, but in the society it reflects. The book is neither pleasure reading nor pornography. Ellis is writing from the deepest, purest of motives. Not only is American Psycho a bleak, pitch-black comedy and disturbing portrait of a madman but also a serious work that exposes the blatant excesses of American vanity 'culture', 80's consumerism and Reaganism. Followed by a superior movie adaptation (2000) that raised the humour stakes and steered (due to director Mary Harron) towards feminist tract. (Note: If you enjoyed American Psycho try The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.)
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.
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.
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