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Loading... American Psycho (original 1991; edition 1991)by Bret Easton Ellis
Work InformationAmerican Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. For the most part, this book is a classic satire on toxic masculinity, white privilege, and economic inequality. It is so well written that at times I wondered if Ellis was doing a damning condemnation on these things, or if he was admitting what was going on in the inner recesses of his own id. Obviously, the film, which was written to be a feminist criticism of various structures, has a much better P.O.V. that doesn't force you to wonder if you should be laughing with it or at it. However, my big problem is the length of the book. He really needed an editor to cut down on some things. It starts out okay; with an understanding of Patrick's psyche, snapshots of his life, and the eventual murders. But it becomes far too repetitive in the middle sections. The ending is fine, especially as the writing style--like the voice change and Patty Winters Show--evolve into surrealism. But the repetitiveness, especially on the sex and murder descriptions become a bit too much. The film fixes this however, by having the Psycho style thrills of witnessing a killer being chased after. Still, as we continue to live in a world where social inequalities along gender, race, class, and consumerism continue to upset people's fragile grasp on reality, this holds up as a great book. Recommended. This is a great satire where the bouts of shallow, tedious and uninformed conversation serves to hypnotize you and let the shock and gore come on through with the detached, non-sequitur quality that makes it work. It also has some wonderfully absurd and comedic moments. Unfortunately it really outstays its welcome by hammering the same chord for 400 pages. At 300 this would be a really great, tight novel. Unfortunately you're saying "yeah I get it" a lot before the yup, yup, yup of the end. Very similar to Funny Games. A full third of the way into this novel I was thinking it couldn’t stay this quiet much longer; even with nothing happening though, it was still like sitting watching a loudly ticking unexploded bomb. The author was clearly doing something right, whatever it was, and doing it brilliantly… We’re in the 1980s, Manhattan’s financial district, and the 26-year-old Patrick Bateman works on Wall Street—or at least, he has an office he goes to, because there are no descriptions of actual work. Instead, his life is an endless round of fashionable restaurants and bars; of manicures, facials and work-outs at the gym. It’s not just a particular time and place being described here though—̕80s music, yuppies, the Walkman, the Filofax—because there have always been people in the world like Bateman. To sum him up in a single word: contempt. He has contempt for the homeless begging on New York’s streets every day, contempt for cab drivers and waiters, contempt for anyone who doesn’t share his meticulously detailed eye for designer clothes and accessories, for his obsession with grooming, with style. Because that’s what he is: style with nothing substantial behind it. I’ve heard this novel described as a Clockwork Orange for the 1980s, but it’s nothing like it: there, Alex takes real pleasure in things—in Beethoven’s music, in ultra-violence—while here, Bateman seems incapable of pleasure. He has everything material (looks, money, the freedom to indulge himself any way he pleases) but enjoys none of it. Does he even really do any of the things he eventually describes, the tortures and the murders (they don’t quite add up and he seems to get away with it all far too easily)? Or are these his fantasies of what he’d like to do to the people around him? This isn’t about “the 1980s culture of greed”. What it does do, in razor-sharp prose, is bring to life some of the people who have existed in every decade, in every city, and are still running things now. At one point Bateman says to himself, “It would make absolutely no difference if I was an automaton” and maybe that’s the fascination of this novel. The scenes for which it’s notorious are in fact a very small part of it; my own horrified fascination came from spending a few days inside Bateman’s good-looking, well-groomed but utterly empty, head. Belongs to Publisher SeriesIs contained inContainsHas the adaptationReference guide/companion toNotable Lists
In a black satire of the eighties, a decade of naked greed and unparalleled callousness, a successful Wall Street yuppie cannot get enough of anything, including murder. In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day, while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Some things I noted
-Way too much cleansing and exfoliating, but he doesn't have time to floss?? Also no sun screen but uses anti aging products. He also says to shave the sideburns and chin for last, but upon further research you should shave your upper lip and chin for last.
-Classic business card scene
-Classic dry cleaning scene
-Patty Winters Show reflects his mental state in each chapter
-Christmas Party chapter and Bethany chapter were awesome
-His brother bagged Dorsia first attempt
-The death of the 2 girls in Paul Owen's place were brutal
-The rat scene
-Killing the 5 year old boy was so bleak ( )