American Psycho

American Psycho is a 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. It is a first-person narrative of the life of a wealthy young Manhattanite and self-proclaimed serial killer. The graphically violent and sexual content was widely commented upon at the novel's release. A film adaptation was released in 2000 to mostly positive reviews.^[1]

Synopsis

Set mainly in Manhattan in the late 1980s, American Psycho chronicles roughly two years of Patrick Bateman's life. Bateman, who is 26 years old when the story begins, narrates his serial-killer antics, though the reliability of his account is intentionally ambiguous, particularly toward its end.

Bateman comes from a privileged background, and is a graduate of Philips Exeter Academy and Harvard (class of '84). He works as a broker at a fictional Wall Street stock firm, Pierce & Pierce, and lives in an expensive Manhattan apartment. He embodies the 1980s yuppie culture. The stream-of-consciousness narrative describes his conversations with colleagues—in bars, cafes, his office, and nightclubs—and satirizes the vain, empty world of Manhattan yuppies.

Bateman's narrative revolves around his murderous activities, but also includes renting and returning video tapes, making and attempting to make reservations at trendy restaurants, the pursuit of cocaine in dance clubs, dates with various women, rivalries with colleagues, parties with vacuous associates, the avoidance of Luis (a homosexual non-love interest), rivalry with Bateman's own brother, and pointless disputes at restaurants and bars over pop culture and fashion trivia.

Bateman dates several women, including his steady girlfriend Evelyn, but has no deep feelings for anyone. He frequently seeks to have sex with attractive women. He spends excessive time perfecting his appearance, and persistently tries to elevate himself above his colleagues. Between social events, Bateman murders and tortures victims. No matter how sincerely he insists that he is a psychopathic murderer, no one listens to or believes him.

In the end, Bateman descends into despair as he reflects on the futility of his actions. He cannot convince his own attorney of his murderous nature, and instead, is mocked for making up an unbelievable and absurd story. His failure is such that not even the thought of killing arouses any feeling. The final image is of a sign in a bar that declares, "This Is Not An Exit." It remains unclear at the end whether anything he mentioned doing actually happened.

Rampage

Bateman tortures and kills several attractive women, usually younger than he; his ex-girlfriend Bethany and prostitutes are among his victims. He also coerces two women into having lesbian sex, whom he later tortures and eventually kills.

Bateman becomes intensely curious about a man named Paul Owen. He has dinner with Paul, leads him to his apartment, and kills him.

In a scene near the story's end, Bateman flees the police and kills a taxi driver, a policeman, a night watchman, and a janitor.

Many of Bateman's victims are random; mostly homeless and unemployed people, whom he disparages as the "genetic underclass."

Whether or not the murders actually took place is debated amongst readers of the novel. Some contend that the murders are merely a figment of Bateman's imagination, while others believe they did happen as articulated in the novel.

Characters

Major characters

• Patrick Bateman
• Evelyn Williams - Bateman's girlfriend
• Timothy Price - Bateman's best friend and colleague
• Paul Owen - Bateman's colleague
• Jean - Bateman's secretary (who is in love with him)
• Donald Kimball - private detective hired to investigate Paul Owen's disappearance

Minor characters

• Marcus Halberstam - Bateman's colleague Paul Owen repeatedly mistakes Bateman for Marcus
• Tom Cruise - Patrick Bateman shares an apartment block with Cruise, and encounters him in the building's elevator
• Christopher Armstrong - Bateman's colleague at Pierce & Pierce

Bateman's personality

Main article: Patrick Bateman

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in the film adaption.

On first appearance, Bateman exemplifies the image of the successful Manhattan executive; he is well-educated, wealthy, unusually popular with women, abreast of cultural trends, belongs to a prominent family, has a high-paying job, and lives in an upscale, chic apartment complex. Bateman passes for a refined, intelligent, thoughtful young man. In contrast to his apparent persona, he murders and tortures victims, practices violent sex, cannibalizes victims, and sexually penetrates body parts of corpses.

Bateman is extremely style-conscious, and appears an expert in fashion and high-end consumer products. In his narrative, he frequently describes his and other people's possessions in exhaustive detail, even noting trivial articles like pens, socks, and pocket squares; he also describes his own wardrobe and accessories, including the material of which they are made, the name of the designer, and the store where they were purchased. Bateman incisively answers his friends' and co-worker's trivial queries, authoritatively explicating the difference between various types of mineral water, which tie knot is less bulky than a Windsor knot, and the proper way to wear a cummerbund, pocket square, or tie bar.

Bateman's job is a sinecure to which he feels no need to apply himself, owing to his family's wealth and influence. He is supreme in his own world; he usually comes to work late—sometimes by more than an hour—and indulges in long lunches. Despite these advantages, Bateman's envy of his peers runs throughout the novel. In a scene in which characters compare business cards, Bateman panics when he realizes a friend's card is superior to his because it includes a watermark.

Themes and symbolism

The dominant theme is violence, shown in extravagant scenes of murder. In one scene, Bateman inflicts a series of axe blows to Paul Owen's head, yet Owen takes five minutes to die; in another scene, Bateman's maid is strangely unperturbed by clearly visible blood, evidence of one of Bateman's murders, while cleaning Bateman's apartment. In the closing chapter, Bateman says a park bench follows him home and an ATM orders him to feed it cats.

Characters' lack of identity is a recurring irony in American Psycho; despite the time, money, and effort characters expend to enhance their personal appearance and stand out among their peers, they often resemble each other, and are mistaken for other people. Bateman himself is frequently addressed by wrong names throughout most or all of a typical conversation; Paul Owen repeatedly mistakes Bateman for a fellow colleague, Marcus Halberstam.

Several leitmotifs appear in the novel and film. First, there are recurring references to a Broadway production of Les Misérables. Second, there is Bateman's urge to "return some video-tapes," which are graphic, paraphilia themed pornography; the 1984 Brian De Palma film Body Double, in which a woman is killed with a power drill, is mentioned most often in the book. Third, Bateman frequently refers to the "Patty Winters Show," a fictional, sensationalistic daytime talk-show, whose topics either exploit its guests or are simply bizarre, like a multiple-personality patient named "Lambchop." Gradually, the guests and topics of the program become increasingly unreal, to the point Patty Winters is described interviewing a Cheerio.

The satire depicts the theme of 1980s decadence, associated with avarice and worldly extravagance. Bateman has no personality of his own, and so seemingly typifies the "plastic" culture of the 1980s. The book often draws parallels between Bateman and his peers, who are obsessed by money, to suggest his sadism and the power of money are likewise evil.

Controversy

• The book was originally to have been published by Simon & Schuster in March 1991, but the company withdrew from the project due to the novel's content. Vintage Books purchased the rights to the novel and published an edited version of Ellis' original manuscript. Some say the book was not changed all that much, while others have contended that the version that is in circulation today is significantly toned down from Ellis' original work.^{[citation needed]}
• Bret Easton Ellis received numerous death threats and hate mail after the publication of American Psycho. [1]
• Feminist activist Gloria Steinem was among those opposed to the release of Ellis' book because of its portrayal of violence towards women. Steinem is also the stepmother of Christian Bale, who portrayed Bateman in the film adaptation of the novel. This irony is mentioned in Ellis' mock memoir Lunar Park.
• In Germany the book was deemed "harmful to minors," and hence its sales and marketing were severely restricted from 1995 to 2000.
• In Australia and New Zealand, the book is sold shrink-wrapped and is classified R18 under the censorship law and may not be sold to those under 18 years of age.

Trivia

• Real-life Canadian serial killer Paul Bernardo was a huge fan of the novel. A copy of the book was found in the bedroom of the home in St. Catharines that he shared with his wife, Karla Homolka. Controversy was generated over whether Mr. Bernardo committed his crimes in response to his fascination with the book's events. The book's main character, Patrick Bateman, operated on his own, whereas Mr. Bernardo's wife played an active role in helping him commit his real-life sex crimes and murder.
• Bateman claims that the saddest song he had ever heard was "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by The Beatles. However it was musical rivals The Rolling Stones who sang the song. He also incorrectly identifies a Ronettes song ("Be My Baby") as a Crystals tune. This is most likely an intentional insight into Bateman's own shallow detatchment or unfamliarity with the musical works that he claims to define many aspects of his life.
• The book features an appearance by Patrick Bateman's brother, Sean Bateman, who was one of the central characters in Bret Easton Ellis's previous book, The Rules of Attraction (1987). Patrick Bateman made a brief appearance in Rules and narrated one chapter, and both Bateman brothers appear briefly in another Ellis novel, Glamorama (1998). The book also features a cameo from Paul Denton, who shared a love affair with Sean Bateman in Rules. Patrick notes how Paul stares oddly at him throughout their encounter, perhaps alluding to a recognized similarity to Sean.
• Pierce & Pierce (the firm Bateman works at) is also the firm of another fictional banker of the late eighties, Sherman McCoy, of The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.
• The name of the real estate agent that Patrick encounters ("Mrs. Wolfe") may be seen as another reference to Tom Wolfe.
• In a case of intertextuality, the character of Alison Poole first appeared as the protagonist of fellow literary Brat Pack member Jay McInerney's 1988 novel Story of My Life.
• In another case of intertextual borrowing, the artist 'Stash' may also be the same character from fellow literary Brat Packer Tama Janowitz's Slaves of New York.
• In the Showtime original series Dexter, serial killer Dexter Morgan uses "Patrick Bateman" as an alias.
• Ellis goes into great detail when describing the clothing in American Psycho; he has admitted that he himself is not fashion-conscious but put in ridiculous amounts of research to get the facts right. In a recent interview he explained how he could write in such detail and how he played a little trick on his readers:

"Research. I don't like clothes. I wrote two novels, one around the fashion industry and one around clothes whores, and it was all research. It was looking through GQ and seeing what the guys on Wall Street were wearing, since every other pictorial during those two years had guys hanging out in front of various office buildings downtown. Also, what a lot of people don't realize, and what I had a lot of fun with, is that if you really saw the outfits Patrick Bateman describes, they'd look totally ridiculous. He would describe a certain kind of vest with a pair of pants and certain kind of shirt, and you think, 'He really must know so much,' but if you actually saw people dressed like this, they would look like clowns. It was a subtle joke. If you read it on a surface level and know nothing about clothes, you read American Psycho and think, 'My God, we're in some sort of princely kingdom where everyone just walked out of GQ.' No. They look like fools. They look like court jesters, most of them." [2]

International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs)

• ISBN 0-671-66397-6 (hardcover, 1991)
• ISBN 0-679-73577-1 (paperback, 1991)
• ISBN 84-406-3712-8 (paperback, 2000)
• ISBN 2-02-025380-1 (paperback, 2000)
• ISBN 3-462-02261-X (paperback, 2000)
• ISBN 0-330-48477-X (paperback, 2000)
• ISBN 0-330-49189-X (paperback, 2002)

See also

• The Ice Storm (1994).
• Cunt (1999).

• Aestheticization of violence
• Nail gun

Notes

1. ^ http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/americanpsycho?q=american%20psycho

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