Bret Easton Ellis’s controversial 1991 novel, American Psycho, is a torturous text, not only for the characters involved, but also the reader. Set in Manhattan in 1987 and ending at the offset of the following decade, the narrative follows the daily routine of one Patrick Bateman, a late twenties, Harvard-educated investment banker and Vice President of a Wall Street firm, Pierce & Pierce, as the stresses of his job and social life culminate in an unabated homicidal rage.
Ellis, one of the pretty boy postmodern (or “Pomo” for the in-crowd) figureheads of contemporary literature, takes on too much for his above-average writing abilities with American Psycho. Granted, his schema–to satirize yuppie culture of the period while making poignant, scathing comparisons to modern-day society–is admirable and intriguing. However, from attempting to pen the work in present tense (a forced Ellis trademark) to trying to do too much in too little time, the work loses much of its potential potency as the reader becomes lambasted with vague (or nonexistent) referents while the tale itself fails to retain his audience’s interest midway through the text. This is more readily apparent at the end of the text when, excruciatingly, Ellis eschews the use of transitions as the reader is left to ascertain when characters are responding to one another and when they are commenting on a television broadcast. And, no, the author isn’t being creative by allowing for the two to comment upon one another for, by this time in the tale, to do so would be to beat a dead horse. Such is all-too-often the case with the whole of American Psycho.
In many respects, American Psycho ceases to be effective in its satirical agenda, which becomes the work’s downfall considering such is Ellis’s primary itinerary, in that the novel is too literary. For black humor and satire to function to the greatest of their abilities, indeed, a degree of subtly must be incorporated but the problem herein lies that such can oftentimes become too understated. When the line of demarcation between seriousness and underhanded ribbing is blurred, the reader becomes lost. Granted, Ellis’s audience is alerted to the fact that Bateman is full of himself early in the text when he reports that he can do 2,000 stomach crunches in one sitting, yet frequently we are unable to determine if there is a degree, however slight, of levity involved with the narrator’s subjective reporting. This problem could have easily been superceded if Ellis would have allotted himself time to pause and note nonverbal cues more often, as evidenced by the effectiveness of Christian Bale’s virtuoso performance as Batmen in Mary Harron’s 2000 adaptation of the novel, but Ellis seems to be chomping at the bit as 399 pages is not enough to convincingly meet his ends. (Granted, this complaint could be filed against the narrator, Bateman, yet it is the author’s responsibility to evaluate if such a character’s transcription would succinctly meets the creator’s ends.)
It is with this that Ellis fails for, being unable to discriminate between what is real from what is delusional fantasy (and, yes, we are left to conjecture if any of what Bateman tells us is factual), his criticism loses a large degree of its potential impact as well as import. That said, American Psycho’s execution becomes a double-edged sword for, where the satire becomes diluted, the writer’s motions to make sure the reader is aware of his conceit becomes paradoxically heavy-handed. Case in point, Bateman frequently loses himself in the haze of details as inconsistencies arise in his narration but it is when Ellis shifts the work to third person that we are left rolling our eyes wondering why he doesn’t merely repeat the excerpt which opens the text pertaining to the Archetypal nature of the main character from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground to save time.
Yet, for all of its flaws, American Psycho, amid all of its huffing and puffing as it esteems to literary relevance, does pause (natch, a tad too frequently) to highlight the hollow nature of individuals who find money to be the sole source of happiness. “Surface surface surface” Bateman utters twice during the novel as the Reagan Era is put on the stand. The epitome of such is seen during brief interludes in which Bateman ironically analyses albums by pop bands as if they were great works of art. In the process, the reader is forced to question how culpable Bateman is in the end for, given all of his shallow philosophies, he is irrefutably a product of his culture. Moreover, and as much a credit to his agenda as a criticism, we are unable to verify whether Bateman’s jaw-dropping confessions in standard conversation go unheard or are unvoiced (Harron has them unvoiced) as, mockingly, Bateman is able to commit his atrocious acts largely due to the carbon-copy nature of all characters involved. The central figure, alongside everyone else in the novel, perpetually mistakes one person for another, which is easy to do given that their personalities are the same (ergo, Bateman as Everyman), from vapid conversation and uniform, standardized dress, all the way down to having the same barber. Interestingly, this speaks volumes for Ellis’s criticism of materialism and consumerist society for, though Bateman continually switches one high-priced product for the next, we (as well as his peers), are unable to tell a difference.
Ironically, we come to paradoxically sympathize for the shell of a man which society has lead around as, though Bateman innately desires to remove himself from the fray (or, perhaps, if he is not Bateman and a merely common laborer, bemoan and lament that anyone dreams of esteeming to such artificiality), he is so locked into routine, goaded by his own self-perpetuating ego, that he automatically follows the motions which cause his mania as he spends countless hours keeping abreast of the latest fashions, restaurants, jobs, trends, dietary plans, and music. Ironically, even the methods by which the character kills his victims is rote for many of his more “creative” homicidal tactics can be traced to literary and historical predecessors, the foremost of which is Marquis de Sade.
Much like Alfred Hitchcock, Mary Harron took a less-than-perfect novel and polished its edges in order to make a superior product with her cinematic rendition of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. This does not mean to imply that the work did not find its proper medium, that it should have been a screenplay first and foremost, but that the director had the presence of mind to sand the work’s rough edges in order to do what the author had intended but ultimately botched because, in the end, we are left to contemplate which is worse: The thought of a person who would commit acts of carnage without knowing why he does so (or care) or the fact that we are undoubtedly surrounded by such people on a daily basis. Our colleagues, coworkers, and peers might well stagnate and never so much as utter a “fuck you” of distain even when it is most merited, yet the fact remains that, at any moment, they could do much, much worse while having more than an ample alibi as the pressure value of society continues to wince under compounding compression. Though, admittedly, the most harrowing aspect to the novel is not the extents to which Bateman goes to get noticed, but that Ellis, much like his character, penned the book with the same agenda in mind and, sadly despite the work being a par, moot effort in the end, achieves his goal. With this, perhaps American Psycho does speak volumes, but, unfortunately, its words aren’t self-contained . . . .
Conversation piece: American Psycho was the focus of much feminist distain at the time of its release as critics cited the work as being misogynistic. However, an even number of males and females are slain between the covers. True, Bateman dedicates more time in describing the deaths of his female victims, yet, given gender relations and Bateman’s jealousy of his male peers, coy dismissal can be given as plausible justification for cursory notes in respect to the latter. As such, the psychological realism of the text is to be applauded whereas, if the author would have forced the text to be politically correct (something his narrator is not), the novel’s effectiveness in his respect would have been subsequently diminished.
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