American Psycho

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This article is about the 1991 novel. For the film adaptation, see American Psycho (film). For other uses, see American Psycho (disambiguation).

American Psycho
LC Class
PS3555.L5937 A8 1991

American Psycho is a novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first-person by Patrick Bateman, a wealthy, narcissistic, vain Manhattan investment banker who supposedly lives a double life as a serial killer. Alison Kelly of 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".[3]

A film adaptation starring Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman was released in 2000 to generally favorable reviews.[4] Producers David Johnson and Jesse Singer developed a musical adaptation[5] for Broadway. The musical premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London in December 2013.

The book has garnered notoriety for its graphic violence and has led to it being censored in multiple countries.

Development

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 of 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.[6]

— Bret Easton Ellis

Plot

Set in

stream-of-consciousness narrative, Bateman describes his daily life, ranging from a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues—where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette—to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother and senile mother. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s pop music artists. The novel maintains a high level of ambiguity through mistaken identity and contradictions that introduce the possibility that Bateman is an unreliable narrator. Characters are consistently introduced as people other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. Deeply concerned with his personal appearance
, Bateman gives extensive descriptions of his daily aesthetics regimen.

After killing Paul Owen, one of his colleagues, Bateman appropriates Paul's apartment as a place to host and kill more victims. Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. His murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from simple stabbings to drawn-out sequences of rape, torture, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and his grasp on sanity begins to slip. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations and on several occasions openly confesses his murderous activities to his coworkers, who never take him seriously, do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely—for example, hearing the words "murders and executions" as "mergers and acquisitions". These incidents culminate in a shooting spree during which he kills several random people in the street, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched in a helicopter. This narrative episode sees the first-person perspective shift to third-person and the subsequent events are, although not for the first time in the novel, described in terms pertaining to cinematic portrayal. Bateman flees on foot and hides in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses all his crimes to an answering machine.

Later, Bateman revisits Paul Owen's apartment, where he had earlier killed and mutilated two prostitutes, carrying a surgical mask in anticipation of the decomposing bodies he expects to encounter. He enters the perfectly clean, refurbished apartment, however, filled with strong-smelling flowers meant, perhaps, to conceal a bad odor. The real estate agent, who sees his surgical mask, fools him into stating he was attending the apartment viewing because he "saw an ad in the Times" (when in fact there was no such advertisement). She tells him to leave and never return.

Bateman's mental state continues to deteriorate and he begins to experience bizarre hallucinations such as seeing a Cheerio interviewed on a talk show, being stalked by an anthropomorphic park bench, and finding a bone in his Dove Bar. At the end of the story, Bateman confronts Carnes about the message he left on his machine, only to find the attorney amused at what he considers a hilarious joke. Mistaking Bateman for another colleague, Carnes claims that the Patrick Bateman he knows is too much of a coward to have committed such acts. In the dialogue-laden climax, Carnes stands up to a defiant Bateman and tells him his claim of having murdered Owen is impossible, because he had dinner with him twice in London just a few days previously.

The book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues at a new club on a Friday night, engaging in banal conversation. The sign seen at the end of the book simply reads "This is not an exit".

Themes

According to literary critic Jeffrey W. Hunter, American Psycho is largely a critique of the "shallow and vicious aspects of capitalism."[7] The characters are predominantly concerned with material gain and superficial appearances, traits indicative of a postmodern world in which the 'surface' reigns supreme. This leads Patrick Bateman to act as if "everything is a commodity, including people",[8] an attitude that is further evident in the rampant objectification and brutalization of women that occurs in the novel. This distancing allows Bateman to rationalize his actions;[9] in one scene in which he cannibalizes a victim, Bateman remarks "though it does sporadically penetrate how unacceptable some of what I'm doing actually is, I just remind myself that this thing, this girl, this meat, is nothing ..."[10]

Patrick Bateman's consumption of what he views as nothing more than a piece of meat is an almost parodically literal interpretation of a monster created by consumer culture. This, combined with sex, violence, drugs, and other desires of the

id, is how Bateman enacts his sociopathic violence in a superficial world.[11]

Bateman's episodes of schizophrenia also shows clear signs on how he copes with being an affluent person living in a superficial world, fashioned on consumerism. As described by the critic Jennifer Krause in her intertextual analysis of the novel, which relies on the work of postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson, Jameson "blames the schizophrenic's ills on the incoherence of postmodern media and capitalistic consumption".[12]

Jameson's critique is expanded by Krause, who writes: "We can see a distinctly popular culture schizophrenia arise, a disease spread by the postmodern culture industry, which ruptures personality and isolates the fractured self. Though Jameson does not specifically reference two different types of schizophrenia in his writings, he implies an artistic schizophrenia versus a more popular form—one more or less accepted, and the other anathema. This raises questions about how popular culture might act as a potential cure for madness".[13] On the one hand is a rich Wall Street banker, Bateman, concerned and very self-conscious about every detail of his physical appearance, expensive possessions, and control of the people and the world around him. On the other hand, is the inner self of Patrick Bateman, the aboriginal-self, who copes and relinquishes his outer complications and "fake" identity, created by consumerism, through violence on other human beings, who he finds consumable, and expresses absolute control of his desires and true self through his violent fantasies. His consumer, artificial self, proceeding in society as a wealthy consumer would live and spend his income, versus his natural self, who, instead of spending money, would hunt and prey on the weak and vulnerable, usually women (which we observe in the repetitive use of the word "girls"), whom he deems expendable. Bateman treats the people around him just like any other consumer product, because of the void he still battles with and wishes to fulfill from within, hence, having dual personas, having the dull artificial identity, compared to his free limitless persona of his mind.

Observing another side of potential behavior coming from the affluent American society of consumerism is explained through C. Serpell: "Though serialized violence in American Psycho is an extension of the deadening effects of serialized consumer exchanges in an economy where commodities and bodies become interchangeable and indistinguishable, this point largely escaped the notice of the novel's harshest critics".[14] Despite critics arguing over the aesthetic properties of the novel from rapid patterns and transitions of self-consciousness and murder, Serpell claims critics have overlooked the key themes and motives of the novel. Serpell brings to light the patterns and trends Ellis expresses through Bateman, the consequences of how "serialized consumer exchanges in an economy where commodities and bodies become interchangeable and indistinguishable",[14] could affect society, and the way affluent people view others whether they are higher, lower, or the same in wealth or social status. The critic Thomas Heise states that "the uncertainty about the reality of Patrick's violence has become the chief critical debate on American Psycho, and it serves as a convenient introduction to the entanglement of epistemology and ethics in the novel".[15] Bateman's character and traits, according to Heise, challenge what readers understand as the social norms for the way the elite upper class think and react to society on a normal basis. Bateman's epistemology and ethics in regards to his actions and way of thinking throughout the novel is a reflection, through his violence, which raises the questions of the moral and ethical understanding of all individuals in Bateman's position and status, and how they might act and think similar or completely identical in a consumer world built on capitalism as people see in today's American society.

Citing the many bodies that are never found, Henry Bean wonders "is it possible that the murders themselves never occurred?" He continues:[16]

The novel subtly and relentlessly undercuts its own authority, and because Bateman, unlike, say, Nabokov's unreliable narrators, does not hint at a "truth" beyond his own delusions, American Psycho becomes a wonderfully unstable account. The most persuasive details are combined with unlikely incidents until we're not only unsure what's real, we begin to doubt the existence of reality itself.

It has often been noted that Patrick Bateman is an example of an unreliable narrator, and this feature of American Psycho has been the subject of discussion in several academic works.[17][18][19] In a 2014 appearance on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Ellis stated that Bateman's narration was so unreliable that even he, as the author of the book, did not know if Bateman was honestly describing events that actually happened or if he was lying or even hallucinating.[20]

Characters

Major characters

  • Patrick Bateman – the central narrator and villainous protagonist of the novel.
  • Evelyn Richards – Bateman's supposed fiancée.
  • Timothy Price – Bateman's best friend and colleague. Later appears as a teenager in Ellis's novel The Informers.
  • Paul Owen – Bateman's colleague who is later murdered by Bateman.
  • Jean – Bateman's secretary, whom Bateman refers to as "Jean, my secretary who is in love with me".
  • Luis Carruthers – a closeted
    homosexual
    co-worker who is attracted to Bateman, something that disgusts the latter.
  • Courtney Lawrence – Luis' fiancée who is having an affair with Bateman.
  • Craig McDermott – Bateman's colleague, part of a social foursome alongside Bateman, Timothy Price and David Van Patten.
  • David Van Patten – Bateman's colleague, also part of Bateman's main social group.

Minor characters

  • "Christie" – a prostitute, employed and badly abused by Bateman on multiple occasions before he eventually murders her in a grisly fashion. Bateman gives her this name; her real one is never revealed.
  • Elizabeth – a dinner date of Bateman's, drugged and coerced into having sex with "Christie" before being violently murdered.
  • Marcus Halberstam – Bateman's colleague; Paul Owen repeatedly mistakes Bateman for Marcus.
  • Donald Kimball – private detective hired to investigate Paul Owen's disappearance.
  • Harold Carnes – Bateman’s lawyer who misidentifies him then refuses to believe Bateman’s confession at the climax of the novel.
  • Alison Poole – sexually and physically assaulted by Bateman; created by Ellis's friend
    Rielle Hunter, reappears as a main character in Ellis's later novel Glamorama
    , where she is involved with the lead character, Victor Ward.
  • Sean Bateman – younger brother of Patrick Bateman and also the lead character of The Rules of Attraction.
  • Paul Denton – friend of Paul Owen, who also appears in The Rules of Attraction where he is possibly romantically involved with Patrick's brother Sean.
  • Christopher Armstrong – Bateman's colleague at Pierce & Pierce.
  • Bethany – an old girlfriend of Patrick's whom, after a date, he tortures and subsequently murders.
  • Stash – Evelyn's friend, who is HIV positive.
  • Vanden – Evelyn's friend from the East Village who claims to attend Camden College, the main setting of The Rules of Attraction.
  • Al – a homeless man whom Bateman blinds and disfigures with a knife.
  • Tom Cruise – lives in the same apartment building as Bateman, in the penthouse.
  • Bono – the leader singer of Irish rock band U2. Appears in a chapter in which Bateman and his colleagues attend a U2 concert.
  • Patty Winters – the host of a talk show which Bateman frequently views. As the novel progresses the subject of her programs become more and more absurd, implied to be no more than a figment of Bateman's imagination.

Controversy

Ellis later wrote that people assumed that American Psycho would end his career.

Dorian Gray would have written had he been a high school sophomore. But that is unfair to sophomores," and he approved of its canceled publication.[22] Ellis received numerous death threats and hate mail after the publication of American Psycho.[25][26] The Los Angeles Times's review[16]
—"the one good review in the national press", he said—resulted in "a three-page letter section of all these people canceling their subscriptions".

In the United States, the book was named the 53rd most banned and challenged book from 1990–1999 by the American Library Association.[27]

In Germany, the book was deemed "harmful to minors" and its sales and marketing severely restricted from 1995 to 2000.[citation needed]

In Australia, the book is sold shrink-wrapped and is classified "R18" under national censorship legislation (i.e., the book may not be sold to those under 18 years of age). Along with other Category 1 publications, its sale is theoretically banned in the state of

Office of Film & Literature Classification has rated the book as R18 (i.e., the book may not be sold or lent in libraries to those under 18 years of age). It is generally sold shrink wrapped in bookstores.[32]

Feminist activist Gloria Steinem was among those opposed to Ellis's book because of its portrayal of violence toward women.[33] Coincidentally, Steinem is the stepmother of Christian Bale, who played Bateman in the film. This coincidence is mentioned in Ellis's mock memoir Lunar Park.

Phil Collins, whose solo career is referenced in the book, recalled: "I didn't read it. At the time, I just thought, 'That's all we need: glorifying all this crap. I'm not interested'. Then the film came out, and I thought it was very funny".[34]

Connections to real-life crimes

A copy was found in possession of Wade Frankum, perpetrator of the 1991 Strathfield massacre in Sydney, Australia. It was suggested that the novel had inspired Frankum.[35]

During the trial of Canadian serial killer Paul Bernardo, a copy was discovered in Bernardo's bedroom. The Toronto Sun reported that Bernardo "read it as his 'bible'",[36][37] though it turned out it actually belonged to his wife and accomplice Karla Homolka; it is unlikely Bernardo ever read it.[36]

During the Duke lacrosse case, a team member named Ryan McFayden sent a profane email to several of his teammates alleging he was going to kill and skin some strippers. The administrators asserted the email was an imitation of Bateman. McFayden subsequently received numerous death threats.[38]

Adaptations

2000 film

Main article: American Psycho (film)

In 2000, writer

R-rating for the film.[41]

It polarized audiences and critics with some showering praise, others scorn.[42] Upon its theatrical release, however, the film received positive reviews in crucial publications, including The New York Times which called it a "mean and lean horror comedy classic".[43] Ellis said, "American Psycho was a book I didn't think needed to be turned into a movie", as "the medium of film demands answers", which would make the book "infinitely less interesting".[44] The film received generally positive reviews.[45]

A direct-to-video sequel, American Psycho 2, was released and directed by Morgan J. Freeman. This film was not based on the novel or the original film, as its only connection with the original is the death of Patrick Bateman (played by Michael Kremko wearing a face mask), briefly shown in a flashback.

Other adaptations

In 2009,

Audible.com produced an audio version of American Psycho, narrated by Pablo Schreiber, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.[46] A Hungarian version of the novel was written by Attila Hazai (1967–2012) called Budapesti skizo ("Budapest Psycho", 1997); it was Hazai's best known work but as of his death never translated into English.[47]

In 2013, a Kickstarter campaign was launched by Ellis and others to get a

Riverdale.[51]

In April 2021, Lionsgate Television chairman Kevin Beggs confirmed a TV series is in development.[52]

In 2023, Sumerian Comics published a sequel comic adaptation that includes new narratives surrounding Bateman's murders. [53]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Marshall Arisman illustrations". Marshallarisman.com. Archived from the original on March 30, 2012. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  2. ^ Cohen, Roger (March 6, 1991). "Bret Easton Ellis Answers Critics of 'American Psycho'". The New York Times.
  3. ^ Kelly, Alison (June 27, 2010). "Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on June 30, 2010. Retrieved July 28, 2010.
  4. ^ "Metacritic reviews for American Psycho". Metacritic.com. Archived from the original on December 6, 2008. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  5. ^ Kepler, Adam W. (April 22, 2012). "'American Psycho' as a Musical". The New York Times.
  6. ^ Baker, Jeff (July 2010). "Q&A: Bret Easton Ellis talks about writing novels, making movies". OregonLive. Retrieved July 9, 2010.
  7. ^ Contemporary Literary Criticism. Jeffrey W. Hunter (ed.). Vol. 229. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007, pp. 228–294. From Literature Criticism Online.
  8. ^ Contemporary Literary Criticism.
  9. ^ Brock, Leigh (January 1994). "Distancing in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho". Notes on Contemporary Literature. 24 (1). Carrollton, Georgia: West Georgia College: 6–8.
  10. ^ Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Page 345
  11. S2CID 161130128
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  12. JSTOR 488367
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  13. S2CID 147597210
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  14. ^
    S2CID 143613558
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  15. S2CID 143076157
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  16. ^
    ISSN 0458-3035
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  17. ^ Lundberg, Robin (September 1, 2014). "Unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and Jeff Lindsay's Darkly Dreaming Dexter" (PDF). Retrieved September 3, 2022.
  18. ISSN 1837-0314
    .
  19. ^ Thompson, John Bryan. 2020. Subtle Sign Posts: Uncovering Moral Meaning in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School.
  20. ^ "WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 552 - Bret Easton Ellis". wtfpod.com. November 20, 2014.
  21. New York Magazine. August 6, 2008. Archived
    from the original on August 7, 2008. Retrieved August 6, 2008.
  22. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved April 17, 2019.
  23. ^ "American Psycho". centipedepress.com. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  24. ^ Benatar, Giselle (November 30, 1990). "American Psychodrama". Entertainment Weekly.
  25. ^ Messier, Vartan (2005). "Canons of Transgression: Shock, Scandal, and Subversion from Matthew Lewis's The Monk to Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho" (PDF). Dissertation Abstracts International. 43 (4): 1085 ff. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 24, 2010. Retrieved April 16, 2006. (University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez). Chapter Pornography and Violence: The Dialectics of Transgression in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho provides an in-depth analysis of the novel.
  26. IMDb
  27. ^ Office of Intellectual Freedom (March 26, 2013). "100 most frequently challenged books: 1990-1999". American Library Association. Retrieved June 15, 2021.
  28. ^ "Police ask for new edition of American Psycho to be removed from Adelaide bookshelves". ABC News. July 17, 2015.
  29. ^ [1] [permanent dead link]
  30. ^ "Bret Easton Ellis Slams Self-Censorship Among Artists". YouTube. Archived from the original on November 18, 2021. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  31. ^ "American Psycho Author Bret Easton Ellis: In Conversation". FORA.tv. Archived from the original on October 16, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  32. ^ Valjak, Domagoj (March 8, 2017). "Bret Easton Ellis's novel "American Psycho" is sold shrink-wrapped in Australian bookstores to prevent minors from reading it". The Vintage News. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
  33. The Los Angeles Times
    . Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  34. ^ White, Terri (December 2014). "Cash for questions". Q: 33.
  35. ^ "Reliving an Australian massacre only a few people seem to remember". News.com.au. Retrieved May 29, 2022.
  36. ^ a b Harron, Mary (April 9, 2000). "FILM; The Risky Territory Of 'American Psycho'". The New York Times. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  37. The Toronto Sun. Archived from the original
    on January 28, 2012. Retrieved December 28, 2018.
  38. ISBN 1-4392-3590-2
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  39. ^ Howell, Peter (March 8, 2000). "American Psychos Web Promo Sickens Star". Toronto Star. Toronto.
  40. ^ "American Psycho hits Sundance". The Guardian. London. January 26, 2000. Retrieved July 27, 2010.
  41. ^ "American Psycho cut to appease censors". The Guardian. February 29, 2000. Retrieved July 27, 2010.
  42. ^ Corliss, Richard (January 24, 2000). "Sundance Sorority". Time. Archived from the original on October 23, 2007. Retrieved April 8, 2009.
  43. ^ Holden, Stephen (April 14, 2000). "Murderer! Fiend! Cad! (But Well-Dressed)". The New York Times. Retrieved April 8, 2009.
  44. ^ "Bret Easton Ellis talks film adaptations at SCAD". Creative Loafing. Archived from the original on June 24, 2010. Retrieved June 19, 2010.
  45. ^ "American Psycho". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 20, 2022.
  46. ^ Audible Announces New Modern Vanguard Line of Audiobooks. International Business Times
  47. complete review
    , "The Literary Saloon", April 10, 2012.
  48. ^ "AMERICAN PSYCHO". Kickstarter.com. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  49. ^ "American Psycho". Almeida.co.uk. Archived from the original on June 1, 2013. Retrieved May 23, 2013.
  50. ^ Viagas, Robert (June 5, 2016). "American Psycho Ends Broadway Run Today". Playbill. Retrieved December 11, 2018.
  51. ^ Nemetz, Dave (April 9, 2022). "Riverdale: Kiernan Shipka to Return as Sabrina – Plus, Season 6's Musical Episode Will Tackle American Psycho". TVLine. Retrieved April 10, 2022.
  52. ^ "Lionsgate TV's Kevin Beggs Talks Indie Studio's Expansion, Deal Strategy, Covid Impact, 'The Continental' Details & 'Saw' Series Rumors". Deadline.com. April 23, 2021.
  53. ^ "Patrick Bateman returns in 'American Psycho' comic book". EW.com. Retrieved November 9, 2023.

Further reading

Wikiquote has quotations related to American Psycho.

External links

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