Book Review

Interview with Ellis
Alex Marothy

Water

10-25-13


American Psycho


American Psycho is a black comedy, a violently powerful critique of upper-echelon male culture and a mirror for the worst in society. Set in the late 80’s of New York City, the story follows Patrick Bateman, the poster child of privilege with a demented twist. All he knows is the culture he was born into, one of wealth and entitlement, and passes blatant and unsolicited judgement on all others. While he is obsessed with his own appearance, so are his colleagues, such that unique identity is easily lost. 

Through Bateman’s eyes we observe the yuppie culture of the Wall Street businessman, and his growing feeling of alienation from a society of faceless masks. In an egotistical world where Platinum AmEx cards rule and money is a trivial commodity, all that sets the characters apart are their clothes. Throughout, the book stabs at societal ideals and the loss of compassion in a world driven by greed. How easily these characters lose even the last shred of their humanity strikes the core of America’s morality. 

Though satirical in its tone, the story is punctuated by violence, taking a new look at materialism through the eyes of a crazed psychopath. With each page, our sadistic anti-hero is closer to the brink of utter insanity, and composes himself only briefly with thoughts of shopping and returning his video tapes. He is the stereotype of affluence, a glamorous consumer, and has a carnal urge to own only the very best, allowing, even forcing his possessions to define him. Constantly offering advice to his colleagues, and even the reader (another hint at psychosis), about fashion and grooming, doing so as second nature, another piece of his effortless facade.

The book is written with distinct style, a rambling narrative that drags you down with it; a conscious choice that the author, Bret Easton Ellis, made with clear precision. Ellis, born in the early sixties, released the book when he was twenty-seven, startlingly close to the age of the main character. He was born into wealth, and, in the late eighties, was very much a member of the same materialistic culture of yuppie consumerism. At times, Bret has suggested his work to be autobiographical, his characters inspired by different stages of his own life. 

In this rambling tone, Bateman describes only the most mundane of tasks, but in ways that convey an inexplicable fascination he has with them. Things like his shower routine, the deeper messages of the album Abacab, and his aerobics class. The detail with which he describes these is so impeccably deranged, that reading it can give you chills. Yet, at the same time, his mentality rings true for the upper-class male culture of the late 80’s and early 90’s, and their obsessive narcissism. Men had recently been put under the same spotlight that women had been under for years, and they were expected to look good. This not only fueled their egotism, but created a society blinded by appearance, and so shallow in their morality. Throughout the novel, Ellis does a fantastic job of emphasizing this point and showing the readers just how far some men can take it. 

Throughout the novel, though Bateman’s extreme violence is quite prevalent, it goes seemingly unnoticed by his peers. Are they so blinded by their own egotistically introspective gaze they are simply oblivious to the bloodshed before them, or is Bateman so deranged, so unhinged, that his reality is shared by no one else? This question Ellis poses excellently, and is one of the great enigmas of the story.

If the events in the book really are just figments of the anti-hero’s disturbed mind, then the subtleties of the story are easily explained. Instances in which Bateman will say something horrific to another character, and they will take no notice, or how he can walk across town in a bloody raincoat with no one saying a word. These situations, these events, if taken as delusions of a troubled mind, become trivial. Suddenly, the novel becomes boring, and everything that Bateman does means nothing to the reader.

However, if he really is a murderous lunatic, a sickened psychopath, and a bloodthirsty savage, the story comes to life in a way we could never have imagined. We are now on Bateman’s side, in his subconscious, egging him on toward his imminent destruction. We laugh with him, not at him, and sneer at a despicably droll society full of sycophants and disingenuous sloths. 

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