I simply am not there. (American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis)

Member Name: Paradox

Product:	American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Date:	13/06/01 (2131 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Could be used to prop up a table

Disadvantages: Boring, Witless, Futile

This was going to be called, THIS IS NOT AN EXIT, but someone else stole that, so, well...


“ ‘…So what did Ed Say?’ Hamlin asks, interested.

‘He said,’ I begin, ‘When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right.’

I stop, finish my J&B in one swallow.

‘What does the other part of him think?’ Hamlin asks tentatively.

‘What her head would look like on a stick.’ I say. ”


American Psycho, a book released in 1991 and written by one Bret Easton Ellis. A book marvelled over, a book made into a film, and a book that spouts encouragement such as “a black-hearted satire on the terrible power of money” on its back cover.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I don’t really know how to break this to all you people out there, but the book’s total and utter crap.

Yes, there I go again, as with any other opinion that I write, I start with an accusing, sweeping statement like that, and attempt to win people over to my way of thinking, those I can’t woo, I simply insult until they give up.

So here I go.

The book is, like the film, about Patrick Bateman, he is a Wall-Street guy in America, was it New York? I forget?

The book is concerned with the nasty evil side of the power of money, and ‘the mindless preoccupations of the nineties preppy generation’. It’s supposed to be a comedy, which most people forget, of course, if Ellis hadn’t called it a comedy it would have been banned by now.

Bateman is a businessman by day, but as night dawns (can I say that?) he turns into, well, a psycho.

He takes it upon himself to hire prostitutes and pick up people from all over the place, take them back to his house and then kills
them, in really nasty ways, including cutting women’s nipples off and heaving an axe through a co-workers face.
That sounds nasty, but the death scenes in the book are so graphic that it made the majority of people I showed it to feel ill.

The book isn’t divided into chapters so much, as into sections, they could be chapters, but they’re sort of, not supposed to be…. If you follow me here, then well done.

The first chapters start with names like ‘April Fools’ and ‘Harry’s’, moving through the book we change to things like ‘Date with Evelyn’ and ‘Girls’, ending on things like ‘The Best City for Business’ and ‘The End of the 1980s’.

Three chapters are devoted entirely to music, these are ‘Genesis’, ‘Whitney Houston’ and ‘Huey Lewis and the News’ which detail the successes and failures of these particular artists, as well as their growth and discussing their albums.

Ellis tries to emphasise the futility of the white-collar worker in this book, constant references to ‘Les Miserables’ and worrying only about whether they have reservations for lunch. Bateman insists on describing everything that someone is wearing and has a panic attack if his hair is not perfect. The mundane days are broken when Bateman strolls along the street and stabs a homeless person.

Bateman becomes more of a psychopath as the book progresses, and although the death scenes remain as graphic, his general behaviour becomes worse.

I think Ellis has made his point, I think he offers a perspective that many people haven’t considered, but I just think it was a really bad book.

I liked bits of it, the death scenes were funny, and there’s an entire passage towards the end of the book, the one that the film opens with, that sums it all up nicely, I’ll put it in for you at th
e end, but I just didn’t enjoy it, I found the book an effort to read.
The constant describing of the clothes on the people became very, very annoying, you can make a point, and then you can bore people to death with it by repeating yourself, this is what he does.

As I said, the book was fun, it was good in some areas, but I generally didn’t enjoy it, I also didn’t enjoy the film, I dunno, I’m getting tired of all this material possession gunk, haven’t you noticed that everyone’s whining about it nowadays? I have…


“…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman Some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, Something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have, countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed - and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis
. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can he extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing...”

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