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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679735779
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 0679735771
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: March 01, 1991
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: March 06, 1991
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The controversial novel about a handsome serial killer who moves among the young and trendy in 1980s New York.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I came across this author's name in a crossword puzzle and was intrigued by this title.
I never saw the movie so have no way to compare the two.
The story does convey the cool detached attitude of a sociopath toward his fellow man and his victims. I feel the author spent too much time making sure you knew the compulsiveness of the psycho. Entire chapters were devoted to his detailed descriptions of his fashionable attire and his analysis of pop music.
The book could have been half as long while still having the impact.
If you want details of torture and murder then this book is for you.
Frankly it was more than I needed to know.
How does one recommend a book like this without seeming to be a psycho yourself?
Rating:  -
You'll need a dark sense of humor to enjoy this book, but it is very funny and entirely over the top. Much better, and much more violent than the movie, American Psycho will you turning the pages and wondering about the mental health of the author.
Rating: -
In Ellis' first truly "political" literary work, his aptly titled third novel, "American Psycho" (1991), the white, rich and impossibly handsome Wall Street yuppie Patrick Bateman is, strictly speaking, the "perfect" American - and the "perfect" representative of a "perfect" world. He has no flaws. He's a trust-fund baby with an immensely well-paying job that seemingly requires no effort; women fall for him wherever he goes; he is young and beautiful. He lives at the center of American culture and, for this reason, wants for nothing. And yet the tragedy of his (and of all) "perfection" is that it must constantly reestablish itself: No one who is "perfect" can afford not to be vigilant.
Patrick Bateman is "perfect" - and also perfectly vicious. He is a murderer - and also at the center of American culture. These statements are not contradictory.
The following question plagues the readers of "American Psycho": How is it that others are seemingly oblivious of, or indifferent to, the murders that Bateman commits? The answer is obvious. There is nothing extraordinary about homicide; indeed, homicide has become completely normalized. Whether one has committed homicide is less significant than whether one wears Armani. Throughout the novel, descriptions of dismemberment occur in the same paragraph as discussions of insipid, 1980s pop-music kitsch. In fact, much of the book is a recitation of such trivia interspersed with gruesome descriptions of the mutilation of women. What is one to make of this? Is Ellis a violent misogynist, as many have claimed?
On the contrary, "American Psycho" is the most radical critique of American culture in general - and of American misogyny, in particular - in novelistic form. American culture is "evil," the novel suggests, because "evil" no longer matters. One's moral value is insignificant in relation to one's physical appearance and the size of one's bank account. The smug, self-preening Bateman is able to commit the most ghastly and monstrous acts imaginable with impunity, precisely because he looks good and has a hierarchical position in society. When Bateman "dissects" his victims - who, for the most part, are homeless people, prostitutes and ethnic minorities - the reader should remember that such acts are "business as usual" in the United States. There is nothing unusual about anything that Bateman does; his murderous behavior is representative of the mainstream. If he dissertates on the greatness of Genesis, Huey Lewis and the News, or Whitney Houston before slicing up a prostitute, this is because there is no essential difference, the book suggests, between the stupidity of American pop culture and the monstrosity of evil. "Evil," the book suggests, is not some Mephistophelean figure that springs up from the depths of hell. Nor may be it explained by the Kantian concept of "radical evil," in which the senses are maximized and elevated to the basis of moral decisions. No, for Ellis, "evil" is the money-grubbing, racist, homophobic and misogynistic yuppie businessman: the axis and apotheosis of American culture.
Bateman, the "American psycho," is perfect, and perfection is the American psychosis. More specifically, the American psychosis is the drive to be perfect, to have an apartment more expensive and better situated than Paul Owen's. Anyone outside of the sphere of perfection is regarded as trash. "You are not ... important to me," Bateman says to his equally materialistic and vacuous fiancée: Such is the ethos of Reagan's '80s. And it is precisely this maxim of conduct that Ellis represents in "American Psycho."
The eerily open-ended "conclusion" of "American Psycho" ominously hints at the impending apocalypse of heterosexual white upper-class male domination. A Middle-Eastern taxi cab driver and a homeless woman - evocative of the disenfranchised minorities killed off by the hard-hearted yuppie earlier in the novel - take their symbolic revenge on the majoritarian Bateman. As he enters his 28th birthday, he faces the inexorable demise of his regime and his self-deceptions.
Dr. Joseph Suglia
Rating:  -
If you can handle it this book is worth reading. Ellis' attack on society is incredible as well as the psychological journey on which he takes his readers. It was difficult to read at times but so worth it.
Rating:  -
Honestly, I was very disappointed in this book. I read it when it first came out years ago and it has now been revised to nothing more than porn. Very disappointing - Im sorry I wasted my money on it.
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