American Psycho - Too much?

[TylerDurden]

I know that much of the point of the book is the shock of the extreme violence against the everyday consumerism blahdyblah but did anyone else find it a bit too much? I'm about thirty or so pages off the ending but the violence has gotten so extreme that it has turned the book from something I was really enjoying into something that I'm not so sure about any more. Any one else feel the same? Maybe I'm just a softy :(

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I saw the movie, but I haven't read the book, though, by your description, it sounds as if the book isn't far off the mark of the movie. I'd have to read it, but I've never been a fan of shock for shock's sake, which seems like what you describe.

[manuscript]

i too had troubles with the book and although i am reluctant to start a new thread especially since this one is so close to the topic i would start, i would be interested to see what others who have read it think.

i watched the film when i was about 19 and i can barely remember it. i am sure i would remember more of it if it could be compared to the book. i think the book is really very different to the movie. the graphic descriptions of violence are so very extreme, i think it is actually not possible to depict that level of violence in a film.

the sexual violence towards women depicted in this novel seems too extreme to be to be directly related to the concerns about capitalism raised by the novel. the hatred directed towards women is so focused and specific it seems to be a sort of separate entity from concerns about market deregulation, with a life of its own. i just find it very difficult to reconcile the two as existing in the same novel together. i have to really concentrate in order to do so. did anyone else have this problem?

maybe Ellis's point is exactly that in these sorts of economic environments, something like extreme hatred of women is able to flourish and take on a life of its own. could this be the case?

i also have a problem with the idea that the book is black comedy. i did find the obsession with commodity and branding quite humorous. and at first i think i found the mild violence humorous. but i ran into serious problems with this when Bethany was trapped in his apartment. the last chuckle this novel got out of me was when Bethany says something like "please don't hurt me Patrick". but after that, when he detaches her arm and bashes her with it, and in later chapters, to do with drills, acid, rats, dismemberment, rape, and cannibalism, i could not laugh, i just felt like i wanted to throw up, i could not believe what i was reading. i can appreciate slapstick, like when Bulgakov has Margarita's hand kissed raw at the ball, i laughed until i cried - this seems to have a deep purpose and meaning. but i dont understand how anyone can categorise those features of American Psycho as black humor. and yet two friends of mine who have read the book told me that they thought it was very funny. maybe i am overly sensitive?

behind it all, the attitude of Ellis seems to be snidely lurking in a disturbing, untrustworthy, "knowing" way. this is merely my subjective impression. the novel seemed so very long, to just go on and on and on, selfindulgently, for 400 pages. i have tried to imagine composing that sort of literature, and i find that i just cant imagine actually thinking those things up, i would not know where to begin or how to do it. i realise that this is not a very sophisticated way of looking at the work of Ellis, but at the same time, i cant help trying to place myself in his shoes and understand his intentions.

i dont think it is without literary merit, especially where it becomes confusing as to whether we are reading Patrick's internal monologue or perhaps some writing he has done, this is very interesting to think about. (and maybe i should think about it more.) but i do think the novel is overappreciated. i question whether it was worth depicting pornographic violence towards women in this very extreme way in order to achieve the aims of the novel. regardless of whether or not people actually purchase and read it, does this novel really deserve to be circulated in a readership, or does it deserve to go out of print and fade into obscurity?

i would love to hear what others think.

[Desolation]

I like David Foster Wallace's comments on the book and on Ellis as a writer:
DFW: ...You can see this clearly in something like Ellis’s "American Psycho": it panders shamelessly to the audience’s sadism for a while, but by the end it’s clear that the sadism’s real object is the reader herself.

LM: But at least in the case of "American Psycho" I felt there was something more than just this desire to inflict pain—or that Ellis was being cruel the way you said serious artists need to be willing to be.

DFW: You’re just displaying the sort of cynicism that lets readers be manipulated by bad writing. I think it’s a kind of black cynicism about today’s world that Ellis and certain others depend on for their readership. Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly ****ty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what’s always distinguished bad writing—flat characters, a narrative world that’s cliched and not recognizably human, etc.—is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. You can defend "Psycho" as being a sort of performative digest of late-eighties social problems, but it’s no more than that.

[Dark Muse]

I have to say that I loved it. I found the novel to be both quite disturbing, and at moments extremely hilarious . Being that I grew up in the late 80's-90's I thought that Ellis captured the 80's culture so well that It was kind of nostalgic reading for me. As far as the violence goes, well I myself do tend toward the macabre, and am a great lover of horror so needless to say part of the reason why I wanted to read this book was for its disturbing moments. So the book was pretty much what I wanted and expected it to be.

[WyattGwyon]

I like David Foster Wallace's comments on the book and on Ellis as a writer:


Early in this thread I was wishing I knew where to find DFW's take on Ellis (which I had seen quoted on another forum). Thanks! Devastating and right on target.

[manuscript]

i think DFW has a point. but to be fair to Ellis, i think he may be attempting to draw certain ideas together, beyond purely documentary functions, to suggest what might become possible in certain human environments. i think there is value in analytical or critical documentation of this nature. but i think that in order for it to be truly literary, it should propose a solution for the problems it poses. maybe if i applied myself to it again and read it more carefully i might see that it resolves its quandary? what about the final words, "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT"? does it mean that the problems can only be resolved by society and not within literature? i dont think i will read it again though.