American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

There is just one word that I can use to accurately describe this book:  ROUGH. I had been meaning to read American Psycho for quite some time, and I found it to be the most disturbing book I have ever read, by long shot.  I thought that after Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted, nothing could phase me.  I mean, nothing could possibly be worse than a guy getting his intestines sucked out his ass by a pool pump.  I was wrong.  Boy, was I wrong.

You have Patrick Bateman, an all-American guy who works on Wall Street, dines at the best restaurants, and loves his cocaine.  He has an upscale apartment in New York City filled with the latest, trendiest furniture and electronics.  He’s fit, handsome, and has a beautiful girlfriend who he cheats on with a friend’s beautiful girlfriend.  He’s just about got the perfect life.  Except for his hobby.  Seems Pat Bateman is a psychotic sadist, taking a terrifying joy in brutally torturing and killing…well, everyone.  Animals, the homeless, women, colleagues.  All the while everyone around him goes on living their dreamlike lives, wearing the trandiest clothes, going to the most exclusive clubs, teasing the homeless, and constantly mistaking everone for everyone else.  It makes you ask yourself, who is really crazy?

American Psycho takes a little while to get moving.  Ellis goes into extreme detail, listing the brands and colors of everyone’s clothing, entire restaurant menus, daily beauty regimens, and the features of Bateman’s state-of-the-art electronics.  It serves to establish the character’s obsessiveness and attention to detail, though I believe that Ellis could have cut many of the descriptions down to as much as half and still achieved the same effect.  It’s not a book for the impatient reader.

Many people read this book just for the gore.  There is plenty of it.  When I say that it’s rough, I am not kidding in the least.  Let’s just say that I will never look at a Habitrail the same way ever again.  Ellis goes into just as much detail with every murder as he does when describing the brand, material, and cut of a colleague’s attire, and describes it just as calmly.  In fact, it’s partly the calm tone in which he describes the murders that makes them so difficult to stomach.  And the way in which some of the people are killed is just horrific.  I…I can’t even say it, you just have to read it for yourself.  Anyway.  Yeah, it’s a really gory book.  However, it is also an impressive representation of the glitz and materialism of the eighties.  The Whitney Houston, the Oliver Peoples glasses, the Evian, and the lines of people waiting to do cocaine in the club bathroom.  It all contrasts startlingly with the bloody scenes in Bateman’s apartment.  You can’t have just the gory parts and leave the rest.  It just wouldn’t be as striking that way.

Regarding the film, this isn’t one of those books where you can just watch the movie and get the gist of it.  No, the movie doesn’t even touch the book.  I promise that this has nothing to do with my aversion to Christian Bale (he didn’t do too bad as Pat Bateman).  The film just doesn’t give the viewer the full measure of Bateman’s psychosis.  You don’t get to see him try to make meatloaf out of a girl’s corpse.  You don’t witness his helplessness as he realizes that he has to kill just to feel okay.  People said that this book was “un-filmable,” and while Hollywood gave it the old college try, it really doesn’t do the book justice.

While I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to read this book again (did I mention that it was rough?), I’m really glad that I did read it at least once.  My disturbing literature collection wouldn’t be complete without it.  And now I’m pretty confident that I can stomach any gruesome novel on the market.