Customer Reviews

Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

American Psycho is one of the few books I have read more than once. I realized upon initially reading it that there was much going on beneath the surface that I was probably missing due not only to the extreme violence but also to the relentless focus on the superficial details that the main character, Patrick Bateman, describes. An excellent essay by Elizabeth Young in the book Shopping in Space allowed me to better appreciate the book the second time around. I was therefore excited when I saw the instant reader's guide by Murphet. Unfortunately, it was a letdown.

There are a couple of bright spots. Murphet does a fair job (but no better) of placing the book into the historical and social context in which Bateman existed. Murphet also does a good job of demonstrating that many events that are described in the book are probably occurring only within Bateman's head. Particularly noteworthy is pointing out that the real estate agent at Paul Owens' apartment, after Bateman allegedly killed him, was named Mrs. Wolfe. This is a reference to Tom Wolfe, the author of the realistic novel Bonfire of the Vanities, and provides a clue that that particular episode is "real." Combined with other clues, this calls into question the accuracy of Bateman's description of the murder itself.

Unfortunately, this reader's guide usually disappoints. As an initial matter, it is written in the pretentious language all too typical of literary criticism from people trying to show how smart they are. Such high-falutin' language does not impress me and others should not hesitate to say that the emperor has no clothes.

Murphet also strikes out frequently, as when a minor character mistakes Bateman for someone else and proceeds to describe Bateman in unflattering terms. Murphet believes this is noteworthy as it is inconsistent with the perception the reader has formed of Bateman. This is incorrect. Even a casual reader will recognize well before this episode that Bateman's inner view of himself is not matched by others' objective view of him. Check out what a fool Bateman makes of himself at McDonalds immediately after his attack on the homeless guy Al.

Murphet does little better when analyzing social critics of the novel. Bateman attacks both men and women in the novel, which Murphet acknowledges. Yet in discussing allegations of anti-woman sexism, Murphet focuses on whether this is attributable to the character Bateman or the author Ellis. How could anyone miss a softball like this? The better analysis is that the novel's violence may not be anti-woman, but critiques along such lines speak volumes about the callousness of such critics towards men. Further, Murphet's discussion questions regarding consumerism would be laughable if one could keep one's eyes from rolling at, again, the pretentiousness.

Ellis has written an important book skewering a noteable segment of our society. I have given the current reader's guide two stars, rather than only one, because of the paucity of literary criticisms of the novel and because a fan may get something out of it (though I would recommend Elizabeth Young's aforementioned essay over this). American Psycho deserves intelligent analysis. It deserves better than this.

We have been in need of a series like Continuum Contemporaries for a long time. Unlike the watered-down reader's guides produced by York Notes (and in the US `Cliff's Notes') these little books tackle text's which have gained something of a cult status in the late twentieth century, and do so from a perspective which is at once approachable enough for the recreational reader, and rigorous enough for the advanced student. It is therefore fitting that a text so widely, and wildly, misunderstood as Bret Easton Ellis's `American Psycho'. should be included amongst the Continuum survey.

Julian Murphet is one of the foremost critics of Ellis's work, and what you get here are all the benefits of the breadth and depth of his knowledge, boiled down into a slim and precise volume. He provides us with a short biography of the author; an exploration of the narrative voice at work within the text; a discussion of the themes of alienation and reification and a survey of critical responses. He is, however, at his most engaging in his discussion of violence and politics, the real heart of the novel itself.

He tackles the central, consuming question of whether the protagonist Patrick Bateman ever actually commits the murders so graphically rendered in the text's pages, in a manner that is exploratory and revelatory without ever being proscriptive. Thus we see an argument develop from the tentative suggestion that `everything could well be contained to the level of fantasy,' to the final assertion that the violence within `American Psycho' is `an act of language' and never really happens at all. He ties this argument in very neatly with an understanding of the text in its political context, seeing Bateman as a `pin-up boy for the establishment Right' during the Reagan era, and reading the real `murder' within the novel, not as that projected by Bateman, but rather as the `murder of the real' the erasure of all social difference and threat - what he terms `the gentrification of the city.'

Murphet rounds this off with a great critique of the film version of the novel, his genuine academic appreciation of cinema in general, making this more than just a fan's opinion.

No reader of `American Psycho' will ever wholly agree with any one theory, and indeed it is the paradoxical beauty of the novel that is never really gives you a definitive answer either way. Murphet's argument is one reading, but it is a very convincing one, and this text is a must for anyone who remains challenged by, and curious about, this work.

Been puzzled for a while as to why there aren't more scholars working on BEE - what, they don't think the books stand up to close analysis? - so was keen to get my hands on this. It's much better than I expected. Even the biographical chapter at the start got me thinking, and I don't normally care for author background. The influence of Joan Didion on BEE is well dealt with. The whole book is beautifully written. Check this out, from p.17: 'The temptation to ascribe the gruesome violence of the text, its often nauseating and explicit detail, to Ellis's mental state, however, must be firmly resisted. It has been far too easy for moralistic critics of the novel to latch on to these passages (which constitute less than 10% of the text) as instances of Ellis's own misogynistic bile and disturbed imagination. In fact, these are some of the most factual and research-based sections of the novel - literally the furthest from Ellis's own imagination.'

The whole of this short book is as fluent and thoughtful as that. I won't discuss Murphet's analysis of the novel any further here, I recommend you read it for yourself. Yes, even if you hated American Psycho. This could well make you think again.

I found this to be a book about how too much of anything can cause a life
to become off track. It is a book about a man living in the Postmodern
Era who thinks he is living the American Dream, only it becomes the America Nightmare. He is cut off from reality, can buy whatever he wants,
and satisfies all his desires and cravings with little effort. This is a book that is and should be written about America. It seems to be about how so much affluence can create a subhuman society that has little or no empathy for anyone regarless of politics. The story is about a man who has lost any trace of compassion for his fellow human beings. You could say he is a victim of our industrial capitalist society who has lost his
humanity. He is representative of Western Progress. He is not human anymore, he is artificial. Liberals living in Hollywood can be just as artificial as the Wall Street CEO as represented by P.Bateman.

About to begin an academic study of Bret Easton Ellis myself, I was more than interested to read this, the first critical book on the man (and just why has it taken this long?). This is a well researched, well written account of one of the great novels of the 20th century, and will prove useful to scholars and armchair fans alike.

Now, lets see some stuff on the rest of his work!

In this small book, Julian Murphet makes an excellent analysis of Ellis' work "American Psycho". Particularly interesting is the way Murphet focuses on the class and cultural context that serves as a backdrop in the story. Bateman, the main protagonist of Ellis' book, is representative of this new sector of the society composed of "yuppies" who are strongly impregnated with the neoliberal mentality. In this study, the reader will find a good interpretation of the symbolism used by Ellis, especially in the scene confronting two entities of the capital's representatives: the world of Finance and the world of Real Estate. Both are serving the same objective: accumulating surplus-value, one through Wall Street and the Stock-exchange and the other one through an exacerbated valorization of real estate patrimony. In this moment of history characterized by the severe crisis of mass production, both fields are becoming the core of a renewed form of accumulation of capital. As a matter of fact, we witnessed in the 1990's - which is the time period covered by Ellis' story - the increasing negative impact of financial globalization on low and middle wage earners, together with the strengthening of the real estate's power.
In the middle of the wealth produced by this world of speculation, Bateman is guided by clichés and brands that serve as criteria to his meaningless and dead boring life. In a sense, his behavior could be interpreted as the denunciation of the lack of transcendental ideals from which the emerging class of new rich suffers. More precisely, through his depraved way of life he can be viewed as an alienated victim of a society lost in the pursuit of money and of purely materialistic objectives and where killing provides the murderer a feeling of "acting", of "being someone". Nevertheless, one should not overlook the fact that a lot of images in Ellis' book are phantasms that emanate from Bateman's mind, which makes it difficult to distinguish fiction from reality. But as many writers state: "fiction is always based on reality and reality nourishes itself from fiction".

Ellis's writing manages to convey complex themes with simple minimalist writing. I wish this Reader's Guide would have done the same.

I expected something on the lines of Cliff or Spark Notes and got worse. No individual Character, theme, motif or plot analysis. The analysis is less than half of the brief 100 pages and often jumps into the realm of personal opinion, criticisms of the Ellis and the characters. The analysis seems to only focus on sexist/political issues, and diction with 101 level marxist consumerism theory sprinkled in. The analysis tends to guide the reader down one very specific interpretation of the novel.

What the analysis lacks in substance it makes up for in pretentiousness. Complete with complex sentence structures interrupted with multiple clauses, obscure novelist references and scrabble worthy words. The book points out that most of American Psycho is mere list making and a lesson in bad writing. The Reader's Guide is the same but on the opposite end of the spectrum: overwritten. Far too often I had to look up a word in the dictionary just to realize that the author chose to use an obscure synonym of a simple word.

The book is a good summary of Ellis's works and influence. It also does a good job at framing the novel in a historical/cultural sense. The guide also unnecessarily covers the adaptation the book into a movie.

The guide does bring up some valid points and interesting ideas but no more than a few. Scouring the internet for analysis might be more useful. American Pyscho deserves more.

Brett Easton Ellis shows a very dark character in the book American Psycho. The movie did not even begin to scratch the surface of Patrick Bateman's "odd" personality. After reading this book, the movie adaptation is unbelieveable. You understand the pain that Bateman is going through when asking for reservations. He is so deeply disturbed that he onoly lives for outward apperances. If you only read one book this summer, and you really want to be shocked, pick up American Psycho