Ellis, American Psycho

The main character of the book is Patrick Bateman. He is 26 years old, works on Wall Street, is immensely rich, in short: he is the paragon of a yuppie. He is a very good-looking guy and the girls call him “very sweet”. That is what you see of him at first sight. But what you don’t see is his mind. And the thoughts describe a climax from quite mad at first to absolutely horrifying.

The only person for that Patrick Bateman feels interest is himself. So, as a consequence, he is the one who tells us of his life – from his point of view. We don’t know exactly why he has so much money – it has something to do with his job on Wall Street but in the entire book there is no clear description what he really does (we get no situation when he is really working) - but he has it – and that is the point.

But he is not the only one who is rich, on the contrary, there are many. The whole society is separated in people who can pay 400$ every evening for a dinner for two (like Bateman and his colleagues) and those who can’t, in those who pay 5000$ annually for their membership in a health club and those who don’t. The supreme goal for Bateman and his colleagues is good-looking: “Design is everything”. So Patrick Bateman informs us about his morning program (an excerpt from the book):

"After I change into Ralph Lauren monogrammed boxer shorts and a Fair Isle sweater and slide into silk polka-dot Enrico Hidolin slippers I tie a plastic ice pack around my face and commence with the morning’s stretching exercises. […] I pour some Plax antiplaque formula into a stainless-steel tumbler and swish it around my mouth for thirty seconds. […] I take the ice-pack mask off and use a deep-pore cleanser lotion, then an herb-mint facial masque which I leave on for ten minutes […]. Then I use the Probright tooth polisher and next the Interplak tooth polisher (this in addition to the toothbrush) which has a speed of 4200 rpm and reverses direction forty-six times per second. […] In the shower I use first a water-activated gel cleanser, then a honey-almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub."

That’s just to get a first impression, of course his “program” is described far more intensively.

When Patrick Bateman sees a person or describes a person, he first does not say anything about his character or his interests but what the person is wearing:

"He’s [Price] wearing a linen suit by Canali Milano, a cotton shirt by Ike Behar, a silk tie by Bill Blass and cap-toed leather lace-ups from Brooks Brothers. I’m wearing a lightweight linen suit with pleated trousers, a cotton shirt, a dotted silk tie, all by Valentino Couture, and perforated cap-toe leather shoes by Allen-Edmonds. […] Van Patten is wearing a double-breasted wool and silk sport coat, button-fly wool and silk trousers with inverted pleats by Mario Valentino, a cotton shirt by Gitman Brothers, a polka-dot silk tie by Bill Blass and leather shoes from Brooks Brothers. McDermott is wearing a wovenlinen suit with pleated trousers, a button-down cotton and linen shirt by Basile, a silk tie by Joseph Abboud and ostrich loafers from Susan Bennis Warren Edwards."

But for Patrick Bateman life becomes boring, there are no new “kicks” he can get. He has so much money that he can do whatever he wants to do. He uses drugs nearly every night and has big sex orgies whenever he wants to have some. If a girl/friend bores him in the restaurant, he says he would go to the toilet but instead of that he picks up one or two whores.

So he needs something new, something that thrills him. And the result of that search is killing. The first victims are animals he tortures with hydrochloric acid and knives. But soon the first “bum” loses his eyes because Patrick Bateman “visited” him in the evening.

The problem is not only Bateman himself but also the people who surround him and don’t really notice or care about his mad behavior and remarks. So during a dinner with his friend (?) – it is difficult to say if she is a real friend of Patrick Bateman because his idea of “friendship” is quite different from the idea we all have which for example includes regard – Evelyn when she bores him he tries to spit a cherry stone on her blouse. While she is talking about something he is not interested in he is thinking of two black kids he killed another night and slightly drunken – perhaps intensified by a few drugs – Evelyn does not notice at all that he is not listening. Vice versa, she is not listening when he dreams loudly what he would like to bring to a marriage Evelyn suggested:

“I’d want to bring a Harrison AK-47 assault rifle to the ceremony with a thirty-round magazine so after thoroughly blowing your fat mother’s head off with it I could use it on that fag brother of yours.”

These cynical phrases first let you laugh just because it is so weird to imagine that someone dares to say such things in general and especially during a dinner with a girlfriend and then you realize that he really would do that.

So for everyone in this circle of society “charity begins at home”. And Patrick Bateman begins his killing odyssey now. The last thrill that rests to him is to torture and to kill – mostly – whores but also his colleague Paul Owen has to die. But where does this way go? You can have a small notion when he says: "I don’t think I can control myself…"

The book brutally shows the consequences of a way of living of a person who always searches the ultimate thrill and who has everything we like and we work for in abundance so that he is totally bored by these things and for whom traditional values like regard and loyalty don’t exist and of a consumer society in which life and success are ruled only by outward appearance of a person and not by inner values.

I think that the idea of the novel is very good but as the book goes on the deeds of the main character become too disgusting and awful – wich I think lowers the quality a bit – but in spite of that they are described to the last detail for example when he puts the brain of a killed woman into the microwave and eats it. So it’s a book only for people with good nerves. The others who are interested in the idea of the book but are scared away by the brutality should watch the movie which is a very good screening of the book with only moderate scenes of blood and killing.

To view a trailer of “American Psycho” click: http://darkhorizons.com/trailers/index.htm then go to the bottom of the page and click on the 2000 Trailer Index. There the trailers are listed alphabetically.