Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho

by Julian Murphet

This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from 'The Remains of the Day' to 'White Teeth'. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826452450
• ISBN13: 9780826452450
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Continuum
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.4" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

I didn't find it republican or racist

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.

American Pyscho: Uncovered

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.

Opinion on Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide

Very good analysis of Ellis' work American Psycho. Particularly interesting is the way the author, Julian Murphet, focuses on the historical and social conditions of American Psycho. The author puts it back in a class context, Bateman being representative of a yuppie class, issued from the Reagan's era: republican, racist, classist, hating the working class victim of Reagan's measures in the frame of the application of an extreme neoliberal economic program. In this study, the reader will find a very good interpretation of the symbolism used by Ellis, particularly in the scene confronting two entities of the capital's representatives as rivals: The world of Finance and the one of Real Estate, both 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. In this time of history, consequences of a time of 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 will witness in the 1990's the crushing negative impact of financial globalization on low and middle classes, that is identical to premeditated human slaughter, together with the strengthening of the pitiless real estate's power, ready to chase people from their home to use the premises as grounds for speculation. Bateman's robot-like attitude, his behavior directed by clichés and brands that are indispensable criteria to his meaningless and dead boring life are typical of those emerging classes, products of a world without transcendental ideal, reduced to obey the imperatives of money and of a consumerist society, where killing becomes one of the favorite leisure and gives the one that assassinates the feeling of "acting", "being someone", token of sick societies enslaved by the pursuing of money.This kind of critical analysis published by Continuum Contemporary is indispensable to anyone who wants to heighten one's level of reading and pass from passive to active reading, i.e. not only getting to know the story in itself as a pastime, but also the author, his motivations and the social and political context that determined the writing of the book.

Excellent all round

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!

sharp, honest, intelligent writing

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.