Ellis researched murders at the New York Public Library. His first draft of American Psycho left all the grisly scenes until last, to be added in later. To one reviewer, Ellis comments:
| “ | [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 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.[5]Synopsis
Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho is about the daily life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his late 20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite of New York to his forays into murder by nightfall. Through present tense 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 such devices as mistaken identity, and contradictions which introduce the possibility that Bateman is an unreliable narrator. Characters are consistently introduced as other people, people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. Whether any of the crimes depicted in the novel actually happened, or were simply the fantasies of a delusional psychotic, is deliberately left open.
Bateman comes from a privileged background; he works as a vice president at a Wall Street investment company and lives in an expensive Manhattan apartment on the Upper West Side, where he embodies the 1980s yuppie culture. As Bateman describes his day-to-day activities, the mundane details become interspersed with descriptions of brutal murders he carries out in secret. After killing one of his colleagues, Paul Owen, one evening, Bateman appropriates his apartment as a place to kill and store more victims. In addition to describing his daily life, Bateman also details his sexual relationships. He is dating a fellow yuppie named Evelyn, though he possesses no deep feelings for her. He frequently solicits sex with attractive women, whom he refers to as "hardbodies." Bateman also documents his interactions with his estranged family, specifically his mother and his brother, Sean Bateman, who is a main character in Ellis's The Rules of Attraction.
Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. The description of his murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from stabbings to drawn out sequences of torture, rape, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and the separation between his two lives begins to blur. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations, and on several occasions openly confesses his murderous activities to his co-workers, who never take him seriously, do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely, hearing the words "murders and executions" as "mergers and acquisitions", for example. Bateman 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. 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. Bateman flees on foot and hides in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses all of his crimes to the answering machine.
Later, Bateman confronts Carnes about the message only to find Carnes is amused at what he considers to be a good joke. Carnes tells Bateman that he is too much of a coward to have committed such acts and claims that he had dinner in London with Paul Owen a few days previously. Bateman re-visits the murdered Paul Owen's apartment, where he had killed and mutilated two prostitutes. Bateman enters the perfectly clean, refurbished apartment which shows no trace of decomposing bodies, but is filled with strong-smelling flowers, as though meant to hide a bad odor. He runs into a real estate agent showing the apartment to prospective buyers, and who appears suspicious of Bateman.
The book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues in a club on a Friday night, engaging in mundane conversation. Bateman comes to the conclusion that he is proud of who he is, but fails when he attempts to articulate why.
[edit][edit]Controversy
The book was originally to have been published by Simon & Schuster in March 1991, but the company withdrew from the project because of "aesthetic differences." Vintage Books purchased the rights to the novel and published the book after the customary editing process. The book was never published in hardcover form in the United States, although a deluxe paperback was eventually offered.[7] Ellis received numerous death threats and hate mail after the publication of American Psycho."[8][9]
In Germany, the book was deemed "harmful to minors," and its sales and marketing were severely restricted from 1995 to 2000. In Australia, the book is sold shrink-wrapped and is classified "R18" under national censorship legislation. The book may not be sold to those under 18 years of age, or criminal prosecution may result. Along with other Category 1 publications, its sale is theoretically banned in the state of Queensland and it may only be purchased shrink-wrapped. In Brisbane, the novel is available to those over 18 from all public libraries and can still be ordered and purchased (shrink-wrapped) from many book stores despite this prohibition.[10] Bret Easton Ellis has commented on this, saying "I think it's adorable, I think it's cute, I love it."[11][12] In New Zealand, the Government's Office of Film & Literature Classification has rated the book as R18. 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. In Canada, the book generated renewed controversy during the trial of serial killer Paul Bernardo after it was discovered that Bernardo owned a copy of the book and had "read it as his 'bible'."[13]
Feminist activist Gloria Steinem was among those opposed to the release of Ellis' book because of its portrayal of violence toward women. Steinem is also the stepmother of Christian Bale, who played Bateman in the film. This coincidence is mentioned in Ellis' mock memoir Lunar Park.
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