American Psycho (1991) is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis about a young Manhattanite serial killer. A film adaptation was released in 2000.

Contents

1 The novel 1.1 Plot 1.2 The nature of the novel 1.3 Bateman's personality 1.4 Opinions about the kind of society that is described in the novel 1.5 Symbolism 1.6 Relationship of the novel to other literature 2 The movie 3 Footnotes 4 ISBN numbers 5 See also 6 External links

The novel

Plot

American Psycho is set in the late 1980s, mainly in Manhattan. The novel describes roughly two years of the life of Patrick Bateman, the first person narrator. Bateman, 26 years old at the beginning of the story, is a serial killer and cannibal who remains undetected throughout the novel and is never brought to justice. Coming from a rich WASP background, Bateman has studied at Harvard (he is one of the class of '84) and has turned into a seemingly prototypical yuppie. He works as a Wall Street banker at the firm of Pierce & Pierce.

In the novel, Bateman describes how he kills and tortures several people:

• beautiful young women ("hardbodies"), never older than Bateman himself, whom he "punishes" for being what they are: either friends or former friends of his. Examples are his ex-girlfriend Bethany, prostitutes, and escort girls.
• business rivals (in particular a man called Paul Owen, whom he kills in his own apartment);
• the poor, homeless and unemployed he stumbles across in the streets of Manhattan, generally people to whom he refers as the "genetic underclass" (for example an African American beggar whom, on a whim, he blinds and whom he meets again at the end of the novel);
• people from different ethnic backgrounds (apart from the beggar mentioned above, a Chinese delivery boy, whom he mistakes for a Japanese);
• innocent people he comes across in the street (including a boy he stabs at the zoo in Central Park — a gay man with a dog, and a saxophonist);
• people he shoots at one point in the novel where he is being chased by the police (a taxi driver, a policeman, a night watchman, and a janitor).
• Bateman also tortures and kills animals such as dogs or rats.

One of the things that remains a mystery is what happens to the mutilated bodies of two escort girls which Bateman leaves in Paul Owen's apartment. When he wants to let himself into the dead man's apartment again he encounters a real estate agent and a young couple, her clients, with Owen's furniture still there but everything completely intact and clean. On asking the real estate agent what is going on, he is just told not to make any trouble and to leave again. Some people think that this means that the real estate agency has removed the bodies in order to avoid troubles. Others think that this shows that Bateman has not really committed these murders, he may have been dreaming or lying about them.

The nature of the novel

Some people think that the author puts the reader to a test, by alternating graphic scenes of torture with harmless humorous passages. In their opinion, the author tries to make the readers think about what their reactions to the various passages of the novel reveal about their own morals.

Some passages, in both the movie and book version, suggest that Patrick Bateman is imagining at least some if not all of his horrific existence. This would explain part of the seeming ignorance of people, as well as the illogical actions and disappearing bodies. A line in the book, at one point, even breaks the middle of a scene with the phrase "... but since this is all a dream anyway ..."

Bateman's personality

Some people think that Bateman has an antisocial personality disorder, because of the crimes he commits, and his apparent indifference to the suffering and death of his victims. Others think that Bateman is 'just' an extreme example of Kant's dictum that the world is highly cultivated and civilized but not yet moralized ¹. Kant clearly sees that there is a dichotomy between culture and civilization on the one hand and morality on the other. In American Psycho, all the Wall Street people dress perfectly, eat only the best and most expensive food and keep their bodies in shape by working out in exclusive health clubs. In the course of the novel Bateman discusses things like which brand of bottled water is the best, how to wear a cummerbund, or which tie knot is less bulky than a Windsor. Bateman knows all the answers and could pass for a very refined and also intelligent and thoughtful young man. This, his "public persona", is sharply contrasted with his alter ego: Bateman not only drinks his own urine, he also bites off and swallows one of the nipples of a girl he is having sex with; he cuts out Bethany's tongue while she is still alive; he eats a girl's brain after he has slaughtered her; and he decapitates a woman, puts his erect penis into the mouth of her severed head and walks around the room with it, laughing.

Some people think that Bateman's view of himself exemplifies Jean Baudrillard's notion ² that our whole lives are fake rather than real (see also: hyperreality). Whatever we do or feel, Baudrillard argues, we experience a simulation rather than the real thing. In the same vein, Bateman experiences at least major parts of his life as if he were watching a movie. Actually, Bateman uses a camcorder to film most of his deeds.

Bateman is not at all interested in homosexual activities. He abhors all advances by "faggots". He is especially offended by Luis Carruthers, who confesses his love for him but who ends up marrying a woman out of a combination of convenience and peer pressure.

One of the inconsistencies in Bateman's life is that he is, on the one hand, very health conscious. For example, he is a militant non-smoker and works out fanatically. On the other hand, he consumes large amounts of alcohol and drugs. This inconsistency is shared by other characters in the novel.

Bateman is a music fan. He does not like rap music because for his taste it is too "niggerish", but otherwise he closely follows the pop and rock scene of his time. Some chapters are exclusively dedicated to analyses of the careers of pop groups and singers such as Genesis, Whitney Houston, and Huey Lewis and the News.

Opinions about the kind of society that is described in the novel

One question that has often been asked by readers is why Bateman is never caught, let alone convicted. As it turns out, he does not even become a suspect. Bateman never goes to great lengths when disposing of the bodies of the people he has killed. He also keeps the videos of the killings he has taped right in his apartment. According to some people, the author tries to show that people in contemporary postmodern society only care about themselves and their appearances. For example, the characters in the novel regularly address each other by the wrong name, showing that they don't care much about whom they are talking to. In fact, Bateman repeatedly confesses his crimes to other people, but they do not appear to listen, or they don't take him seriously. He even goes to a Halloween party at his place of work "disguised" as a mass murderer, with his suit covered with real blood and himself wearing a real finger bone, cooked, in his buttonhole. Bateman's maid regularly cleans up the mess in his apartment without asking any questions. His Chinese dry cleaners clean his blood-stained clothes without suspecting anything. Even the women Bateman associates with most closely or for a longer period of time do not become suspicious of his personality. It is not explained why the police fail to track Bateman down.

Symbolism

Several leitmotifs have been pointed out. Firstly, there is the recurring reference to a Broadway production of Les Misérables. The title of this musical lends itself to a comparison with the Wall Street yuppies depicted in the novel who, it might be argued, are the real miserable ones. Secondly, there is Bateman's urge to "return some video-tapes"—an excuse he frequently uses when asked by jealous young women what he was doing last night or what he is going to do tonight. In the novel this phrase is used as a euphemism for what he really does mostly at night: torturing and killing people.

Relationship of the novel to other literature

Some people think that, in a way, American Psycho continues the tradition of the social novel. They think the book shows the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, although no serious solution is provided. The Wall Street yuppies in the novel firmly believe that "economic success equals happiness". They do not care about inequality, or about poor people.

At one point in the novel Bateman says that "there are no more barriers to cross". According to some, this statement does not only apply to his own life. They think it also applies to the novel as an art form: everything has been done, and formerly controversial subjects areas such as crime and sex have been exhausted.

The movie

American Psycho was turned into a movie in 2000 by Mary Harron. The screenplay, based upon Ellis's book, was written by Harron and Guinevere Turner. The film starred Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Bill Sage, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon, Willem Dafoe, and Samantha Mathis.

The movie debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. Mary Harron had previously directed the story of Valerie Solanas, called I Shot Andy Warhol. Like many movies, there were a myriad of scripts from which to pick (four, in this case). Author Bret Easton Ellis contributed one; however, it ended up not being the one which was the easiest and most effective to conceive. According to Guinevere Turner, the script ended with a giant musical number. When she asked Ellis about it, he admitted that he couldn't think of a good way to end the script.

As a promotion for the movie, one could elect to receive e-mails "from" Patrick Bateman. In this way, people could find out what happened to some of the characters of the movie.

A direct-to-video sequel, American Psycho 2: All American Girl followed. This sequel was not based on the novel and cannot be reconciled with subsequent novels by Bret Easton Ellis, as its only connection with the original is the death, in flashback, of Patrick Bateman himself.

Footnotes

• [1] Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbuergerlicher Absicht, Siebenter Satz
• [2] L'echange symbolique et la mort, 1976

ISBN numbers

• ISBN 0671663976 (hardcover, 1991)
• ISBN 0679735771 (paperback, 1991)
• ISBN 8440637128 (paperback, 2000)
• ISBN 2020253801 (paperback, 2000)
• ISBN 346202261X (paperback, 2000)

See also

• Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), a short novel about a kind and intelligent physician who turns into a psychotic monster after imbibing a drug intended to separate good from evil in a personality
• the novels of Stewart Home, for example Cunt (1999)
• the list of banned books (More information is needed here on the banning of this particular book.)

External links

• stills from the movie (http://www.allmoviephoto.com/photo/2000_American_Psycho_photo.html)
• Collected e-mails of the film promotion campaign (http://www.briankotek.com/psycho/movie/am2000.cfm)
• NotAnExit.net - Weblog discussion of American Psycho and other Ellis projects (http://www.notanexit.net)