American Psycho: A Book Review

American Psycho: A Book Review

I'll begin by saying that it took me no less than six weeks to finish reading American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. This isn't because I was busy, couldn't find the time, was reading other things, etc. It's because it was, bar none, the most difficult-to-read book I've ever picked up.

Most of you have heard of this book and may even have seen the movie adaptation, starring Christian Bale. For the rest of you, American Psycho is the story of Patrick Bateman, a handsome, rich, successful 26-year-old working on Wall Street in the early 90s. By day, Patrick is completely interchangeable with all the other self-obsessed yuppies. By night, he is an increasingly ruthless killer, racking up a body count of beautiful women, homeless men, children (rarely), cabbies, co-workers, and cops.

The story is told in Patrick's point of view and is filled with deeply disturbing (and insightful) observations about humanity, written with dryness, wisdom, and beauty entirely uncommon to find in most 26-year-old authors (the age Ellis was at the time of the book's publication in 1991). Ellis also doesn't shy away from describing murders in stomach-turning detail. What makes these descriptions even more horrifying, however, is the lack of emotion/drama with which they're told. Actions are simply actions. And in large part, that's what the book is "about". Consider:

"The Halloween office party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of" (330).

More than Patrick Bateman's story, American Psycho is the story of American culture at a specific time in a specific city. The book is filled with tiring descriptions of characters' designer clothing and their absurd meals at the newest, most expensive New York restaurants. And throughout, Patrick occasionally tries to confide in his friends, lovers, and colleagues. He tells them he isn't human, that he just wants to be loved, that he is incapable of feeling, that he killed so-and-so, that he's killed dozens, maybe hundreds of people. He is always either ignored completely (hilariously), or his confessions are taken as metaphor. So the book is largely a critique of a society in which people are incapable of seeing each other for who they really are--whether monsters or individuals with hearts, dreams, and hope.

A must-read, but be prepared to feel ill, cast suspicious looks around you, and ultimately both doubt and pray for humanity's goodness.

16.12.2009. 22:29

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