GENERAL INFO:
Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York
Caption: Patrick Bateman is handsome, well educated, intelligent. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. His nights he spends in ways we cannot begin to fathom. He is twenty-six years old and living his own American Dream.
Genre: novel, psychopath, serial killer, gore
Gore score: A+
Scare score: C
Rating: B+
It's so hard for me to rate this book because of how equally creative, accurate, thought provoking - and just plain disturbing - it is. I usually deal well with gore in horror movies, although I admit I'm getting more squeamish as the years move on and the Saw franchise gets more disgusting, but this novel was something else.
Plot Overview: In the late 1980's, Patrick Bateman is a 26-year-old investment banker living in Manhattan. He is extremely wealthy, cultured, attractive, chiseled, and psychopathic. The novel progresses over the course of a year or so in chapters that recount various social gatherings, dinners, drinks; discussions about fashion, art and financial accounts; nihilistic rants; lots of sex and drugs; and extremely graphic murder episodes that Patrick commits for no reason except to try (and fail) to gain pleasure or fill the void inside of himself.
This novel is a fascinating critique of the yuppie culture and of general American materialism in the 1980's. Bret Easton Ellis' fine attention to detail makes the work remarkable, so precise in recounting even the tiniest opinions and criticism of culture at the time, from Manhattan's sky scrapers, to business cards, to restaurants and dishes, female bodies, and cold blooded killing. Regardless of how you feel about the murder content of this novel, you have to appreciate Ellis' style and how much depth - or not - it adds to Bateman's character. At the end of the day, this book isn't so much about murder as it is about death in general: the death of love, the death of society, the death of meaning and purpose.
Onto the gorey stuff. I hate to admit it, but while reading this book a few summers ago I almost passed out on two separate occasions due to the gore. The murder scenes are so chilling, so disgusting and so descriptive, I don't think it's fair to say that anyone can really enjoy them, although I appreciate the creativity (the rat scene - need I say more?) and Ellis' boldness in publishing them. If you love blood and guts, impress your friends and pick up this book: it will look like you're reading a somewhat hefty novel, but little do they know... Each murder scene is different and even more disturbing than the previous one. Bateman never fails to amaze us with pocket knives, bigger knives, chainsaws, axes, broken glass, nails, power drills... the list goes on. You may never want to go home with a stranger in Manhattan again.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Not that you really can spoil American Psycho - he kills people, all the time - but this novel does break one of my cardinal rules of horror. I'm assuming that based on the chapter title "Killing Child at the Zoo" you can guess which rule it breaks. However, I will say that my rules really apply to movies, which I think are made for a more general audiences and have stricter rules to follow than literature does. I will furthermore say that Bateman almost regrets, not that psychopaths possess the ability to feel as we do, killing the child because it "has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost."
That being said, I think this book is important because of the lines it crosses to show us how the line between sane and psychotic is a very fine one. Some of the most famous psychopaths in history have gotten away with their crimes, or would have except they always seem to get sloppy in the end. Like I've said in previous posts, to me, one of the scariest kinds of horror is when there is no reason, no cause, no warning, no cure. There probably is a Patrick Bateman, or several, walking around somewhere in the world right now. Bateman's psychosis is a human version of the decay and emptiness of American society that Ellis critiques excellently throughout the novel in more material ways.
Oh, the movie version? Don't get me started. I'm sure I'll rate it further on down the line, but I can tell you now that my rating will not be a good one.
And remember, with all of today's modern hustle and bustle, all of the people constantly coming and going, maybe we all know a Patrick Bateman.
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