OcUK Book Club #12: Bret Easton Ellis - American Psycho

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Sadly there seems to have been little interest in our last title, so hopefully this will appeal to a few more of you.

Our twelth title as submitted by Gilly and selected by semi-pro waster is the controversial psychological thriller American Psycho written by Bret Easton Ellis and Published in 1991. The acclaimed film adaptation starring Christian Bale of the same name being released in 2000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho

American Psycho is a psychological thriller and satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by the protagonist, serial killer and Manhattan businessman Patrick Bateman. The book's graphic violence and sexual content generated a great deal of controversy before and after publication. A film adaptation starring Christian Bale was released in 2000 to generally favorable reviews. The Observer notes that while "some countries [deem it] so potentially disturbing that it can only be sold shrink-wrapped", "critics rave about it" and "academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities". In 2008, it was confirmed that producers Craig Roessler and Jesse Singer were developing a musical adaptation of the novel to appear on Broadway.
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Ellis describes the development of the novel below:

[Bateman] was crazy the same way [I was]. He did not come out of me sitting down and wanting to write a grand sweeping indictment of yuppie culture. It initiated because my own isolation and alienation at a point in my life. I was living like Patrick Bateman. I was slipping into a consumerist kind of void that was supposed to give me confidence and make me feel good about myself but just made me feel worse and worse and worse about myself. That is where the tension of "American Psycho" came from. It wasn't that I was going to make up this serial killer on Wall Street. High concept. Fantastic. It came from a much more personal place, and that's something that I've only been admitting in the last year or so. I was so on the defensive because of the reaction to that book that I wasn't able to talk about it on that level.
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I look forward to your thoughts on this one!

The OcUK Book Club is open to all members to contribute in any thread at any time. An index of our past threads and discussions can be found via our group here.
 
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Did think about trying to read this again after seeing the thread on the film, but am going to try life of pi instead.

I have read more than half of this book in the past, i found it quite a difficult read due to the fact the main character describes every minute detail of everything especially the clothes people wear, where they bought it from etc, im sure its mean to show the characters obsessivness with products etc but it just got on my nerves and distraced from the storyline in my opinion, so sadly i never even finished the novel :/ i was quite disappointed as I actaully enjoyed the film and was told the book is far better.

overall rating based on what i read 3/10
 
AMAZING book. Some of the torture passages are insanely hardcore. I love the page where he's high on coke and it's all : "I'm thinking, I'm thinking..." and so on.


To uknowist: I know what you mean about his constant descriptions of people's outfits. I think you have to just tune it out and skip those parts if they don't interest you. The book is worth it.
 
Forde said:
To uknowist: I know what you mean about his constant descriptions of people's outfits. I think you have to just tune it out and skip those parts if they don't interest you. The book is worth it.
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hmm maybe I will give it another shot, i go through phases of reading a lot then nothing for like over a year, when i was reading that i was coming to my end of reading a lot phase:p so i shall pick it up and give it another go, I do remember liking the fact he was some yuppie and found it quite amusing when he would talk to his friends but all anyone seemed to listen to was themselves.
 
It's a ferociously dark book set against a 1980's "Greed is Good" Wall Street and featuring one of the best anti-heroes of last century. Far more violent than Less Than Zero and far funnier than The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho continues to provoke debate, disgust and delight depending on who you speak to.

I'm not really sure how these threads work. Do you wait for everyone to have read the book or can I comment on it now, having read it several times over the years?
 
You can comment on it at any time, but if it's early on in the thread, it's generally polite to include spoiler-tags.
 
[FnG]magnolia;19233467 said:
far funnier than The Rules of Attraction,
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Well that's a relief, I didn't think much of that book at all. The book was ordered last night so hopefully early next week I'll be able to start reading.

As Nix said you can comment at any time but it's probably polite to include spoiler tags unless it's been at least a few weeks since the book was selected.
 
I've just been handed the new Donaldson which I've been waiting for my dad to finish with, so AP will have to go on-hold for a week or two.
 
vonhelmet said:
I read it years ago. I found it rather over the top, to the extent that it's message was lost in the gore.

Hey ho.
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Interestingly, that's a key component of the book and raises some very obvious questions.

SPOILERS BELOW


As the book progresses, the violence becomes increasingly more disturbing. There are also more and more situations which call into question whether Bateman is actually living through this or is simply imagining these acts of violence. The recurring motif of individuals being mistaken for others lends strength to the idea that Bateman is a classic unreliable narrator and little, if anything, he says can be trusted.

Some of the events are so far fetched and OTT that there's a strong case for Bateman explaining who he would like to be (powerful, dangerous, sexually attractive) rather than who he really is (someone who doesn't fit in or belong).

The film is far more direct in suggesting that Bateman is making everything up (much to Ellis' annoyance apparently) but the book does a brilliant job of leaving the reader undecided - and ultimately unknowing - of the truth.


SPOILERS END


It really is a fantastic book and will be unlike anything you've probably read before. The repetition of detail, particularly brand names and restaurant names, can either frustrate or amuse the reader (I loved it, for what that's worth) and some of the music chapters (you'll see what I mean) will probably do the same (I also loved those, again for what that's worth).

There are some genuine laugh out loud moments and whilst Ellis again uses the 'drifting sentence' style he so loved at the time - where the sentence begins with one thing but is describing something utterly different by the end - the story, or rather Bateman himself, is the real draw here. Do we like him, even love him, in spite of the terrible things he does because we resonate with what he represents? Or do we hate him for his violence towards women, his contempt for others in general, and the shallow, empty, vicious way he lives his life at others expense?

American Psycho is in my top 10 books list. It can be brutal - horrifying brutal actually - and the sex scenes are even more graphic than the violence but this is also a funny, thought-provoking and clever book.

I'll maybe write some more once you fellas have had a chance to post your own thoughts.
 
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vonhelmet said:
I read it years ago. I found it rather over the top, to the extent that it's message was lost in the gore.

Hey ho.
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Spoiler

Ooh I picked this my English Higher specialist study as I found the form and various themes interesting and open to easy complex sounding analysis. :p

It wasn't the gore descriptions that lost me as I felt it was natural to the attention detail seen through the character who was essentially violent, but more things like the Hi-Fi... two three pages iirc? Maybe an exaggeration, but then the business card and restaurant pre-occupation was amusing but equally conveyed thought process and personality. The gore, in written words, just came across as bizarre at times and sickeningly horrifying at others, like the child in the park.

I've not read it for years but I did enjoy it might see if I've still got it for a refresh.
 
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Forde said:
To uknowist: I know what you mean about his constant descriptions of people's outfits. I think you have to just tune it out and skip those parts if they don't interest you. The book is worth it.
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Don’t miss out / skim read the parts where he’s describing what they are wearing (or indeed where he descreibes everything), its an insight into his unstable obsessive mind. Its an integral part of the book that if ommited leaves you with nothing more than a hack and slash booklet with no meaning to his “insanity”.
 
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It's pretty darn clear he's an obsessive, unstable person after the 1,000th time you read about David Van Patten's Armani underpants... I think skim-reading those parts is up to the reader.
 
I just finished reading this recently, followed by Less Than Zero and then Lunar Park.
American Psycho is the best of them in my opinion, very hard to read in parts but so worth the effort, and this talk of skim reading absolutely any of it is total heresy.
Lunar Park was also pretty good though, if you suspend your disbelief it's pretty creepy too.
 
I though this was a great book, - far, far better than the film adaption.


<spoiler, I guess>




I'd have to admit to skipping most of the ENTIRE CHAPTER ABOUT GENESIS though. Some parts of the book that went into Batemans obsessions where fantastic - the duffel bag comparison, the embossed cards, the daily exercise routines - but after a few pages of what was basically a Wikipedia entry on Genesis (band), I had to skip to the next chapter.
 
Makunouchi said:
this talk of skim reading absolutely any of it is total heresy.
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Oh, get off your high horse. Readers can read their books however they want. Much of the sections under debate are repetitive in the extreme. It's perfectly understandable why BEE included them (and they should be included in my opinion) but while their inclusion is crucial in portraying Bateman's obsessive personality, their actual content becomes far less important as the novel plays out.
 
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