K-SCORE: 91
Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Spoiler Level: Major
American Psycho is the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. It’s also, in a twisted way, fantastic. Bret Easton Ellis appeared to have one goal in mind when he wrote it: create a convincing portrait of a dangerous psychopath and the modern world in which he can thrive. He got it done. Please… please… don’t read it. And certainly don’t read it aloud on the fifth floor of Inova Women’s Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia, in a nursery surrounded by newborn babies, to a priest who optimistically thought he could bless you with the grace of a Christian God that you don’t believe in, if only he could engage you in conversation for a few minutes. Not that I know what that’s like or anything.
Here’s what you get in American Psycho: (Spoilers from here on, but, if you’re of the faint of heart and don’t have much interest in serial killers or the depths of depravity to which a work of literature can sink, by all means, keep reading.) The novel follows the life of a young Wall Street executive who doesn’t need to work very hard at his job of no specific nature in order to make enough money to buy all the clothes, electronics, art, drugs, and gourmet food that he wants, which is a lot, because Patrick Bateman wants more and more of these things constantly for none of them give him any sense of satisfaction. About ten percent of the novel is simply Bateman describing what he and the other social / corporate elite are wearing at any given time, in incredibly specific detail, with judgments thrown in. Another ten percent of the novel is him making or cancelling dinner plans at fancy restaurants around the wealthiest areas of Manhattan. Another ten percent is him eating at those restaurants with people that often don’t even know him by his real name, talking in circles about clothes, restaurants, and women, and most importantly making reservations and cancelling reservations at other restaurants. Another good chunk of the novel is taken up by personal essays from Bateman’s perspective on the careers of various famous musicians and singers. During these sections, there is no action, no plot, no development of any kind, for Bateman interjects them without any regard for what’s happening in his life lately or what will happen soon. An equally large percentage of the novel is occupied by Bateman renting videos, usually the film Body Double, if he’s unable to find pornography or slasher horror films that suit his needs. At least once a chapter, Bateman stops talking about what he’s doing or whatever subject he was on to comment on what occurred on The Patty Winters Show that morning. Sometimes the book just has hateful homophobic or racist rants. A lot of the book sees Bateman working out or mentioning that he has plans to work out or is sore from working out or debating internally the best ways to work out. His life is cyclical. He doesn’t connect with any of the people in it. No section leads naturally to another section. If Ellis wrote at the end of one chapter that Bateman had plans to see a girl named Courtney for dinner the next night, don’t expect the following chapter to be about that dinner, but expect it to be about a dinner with some girl because there are lots of those. And the rest of the novel is graphically described murders, assaults, dismemberment, acts of necrophilia, torture, and cannibalism of prostitutes, the homeless, dogs, the corporate elite, vain models, and anyone else Bateman decides he needs to ruin.
“Ellis embodies the old writing adage that an author should show and not tell.”
This novel is close to merely being the first-person ramblings of an utter lunatic, and were it that, it would be of little value. It’d still be affecting, for delving this deep into such a disturbed mind is upsetting enough to shake any rational person to his or her core, but I wouldn’t be able to call it good. Stories of just torture aren’t high quality art, much like porn isn’t often either, even if such things accomplish their goals. Yet American Psycho has a fucked-up brilliance to it, since it's such a scathing criticism of materialism and people’s inability to connect with one another. Ellis embodies the old writing adage that an author should show and not tell. He doesn’t do any work for his reader. If you want to extract any commentary, any meaning, any valuable insight into the human psyche out of this, then you have to do the work of deciding what any of it means. Is Bateman telling the truth that one time when he says, “I just want to be loved?” Is he a product of his environment or is it just in such a shallow environment that someone like him could possibly hide? Why does he care as much about having sex with the severed head of his old college girlfriend as he does about the musical genius of Whitney Houston? How could someone be so focused on the proper way to wear a pocket square in one moment and whether or not to cut out a homeless man’s eyeballs in the next? I find that I’ve been thinking about such things a lot since I put the book down.
The power of the descriptions and the impact of them is impressive, no doubt, but the best aspect of the book is how Bret Easton Ellis is able to make his readers hate the characters that aren’t Patrick Bateman without ever really fleshing them out. There’s a ton of them and very few get many paragraphs. Even the secretary, Jean, who appears to be a good-hearted woman and who gets more page time than everyone else, is guilty of not listening to Bateman when he tries to show others the person he is on the inside. The whole society is intricately involved in one another's personal and professional lives, and the people treat themselves to endless luxuries constantly, but nothing they do brings them closer to one another. Bateman tells people what heinous acts he has committed or has plans to commit and almost never do they even hear what he is saying. If they do, they don’t believe him or think it’s a joke. In my favorite chapter, one woman he has violent sex with pays attention to him when he says he doesn’t know what he’ll do if she stays the night, so she leaves. She’s the best of all of them, but even she makes no attempt to know the real Bateman, turn him in, kill him, or find out about his crimes. She just flees. No right-minded reader would blame these vile characters for Bateman’s actions, but collectively they’re convincing that they’re also evil. They surround themselves with distractions - the music, the cocaine, the meals, the art, the parties, the limousines, the sex without love, the clothes, the alcohol - and consequently they can’t get to actually know and care for each other. I don’t think Ellis is claiming that this stuff is what brings out the evil, but I think he is claiming that enough of it has a tendency to obfuscate what’s actually important in people’s lives, and, even though the book is almost thirty years old, that point is as relevant ever.
It could be better. It could have been as disturbing and even more affecting if Ellis had figured out a way to tie this idea to a functioning narrative. I’m not suggesting that he change the ending or have a strong detective story thrown in, something that forces Bateman to start focusing his attention on destroying evidence. No. That would ruin the point. But in the fictional life of Patrick Bateman, he would naturally hit barriers and landmarks along his personal psychotic timeline that would change his violent behaviors in some way, even in the cyclical, blind world he describes. You don’t have to have a normal narrative arc to satisfy the simple storytelling goal of describing “what happens.” Any story that escalates in intensity (which is nearly all of them and American Psycho as well), makes you wonder what comes next. Why did Ellis stop where he did? I felt that the reason was simply because he no longer had the creativity or energy to up the ante on Bateman’s deranged behavior, nor could he think of any other suitable conclusion to this man than: it goes on. If he had, American Psycho would be even better, and sickly satisfying as well. As it is, it’s just impressive, and it made me worry that I, who have nightmares about so many things so often, didn’t dream at all during the days where I was reading it. Am I broken inside?