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Title: American Psycho
ISBN: 0679735771
Author:
Bret Easton Ellis
Publicate Date: 1991-03-01
Publish: 1991-03-01
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.94
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Its all about the clothes.
I'm guessing that this book was suppose to be about Bateman living in a society where everyone is fake. But all I got out of it was whole chapters on Whintey Huston and several pages out of fashion magazines. Along with the graphic scences and odd writing style, this book is very hard to get into.
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2: Worth reading even if you don't like the genre
Truthfully this is a brutal book about a psychopath. It is also a compulsively readable book. I find violent movies and violent books repulsive as a rule, but sometimes I come across one and give in and read it. And then put it down as unbearable because the story or the character is not good enough to outweigh my revulsion at the topic. I guess I have a nervous stomach or a vivid imagination. I know the genre has it's fans and I don't want to denigrate that.
American Psycho was an exception for me. I put it back on my wish list to remind myself that this is a book I plan to re-read. I also want to read other books by Brett Easton Ellis.
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3: Not just another slasher.
American Pycho is not your check out/super market thriller/horror. It's a thriller meant for people who seem to have a serious chip on their shoulder about the 80s and the thoughs who are young urban professionals. And it is defiantly not a book for people who have short attention spans.
Ellison writes in the form of 1920 satires, where that narrator describes things to death. Mind numbing detail about things that on the surface don't have anything to with the story of homicidal maniac Patrick Batemen, and obviously because of this type of narrative the book is extremely slowed paced.
However if one understands what Ellison is trying to do, this type of satire fits right in. Bateman is hopelessly obsessive with his appearance and is constantly measuring himself up to his peers, if he feels annoyed or extremely angry at any of them he will not hesitate to kill them. His serial rape and murder of various women has no real set pattern. The detail enriched narrative focusing on fashion and chic restaurants and clubs is right for the story about a psychopathic materialistic yuppie
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4: Examines the dark side of the mind
A main feature of American Psycho, is how Bret Easton Ellis is capable of including the reader as a part of the story. By his several pages descriptions of his morning dressing, exercice and make up, the dishes they get served in fancy New York Restaurants and the songs on the albums he listens to Eliis succeeds to make the reader as bored as Bateman is. Because for the first several hundred pages of the book, bored, rich and not too empathic toward people worse off than himself is what Patrick Bateman - and probably many of the readers is.
When Patrick Bateman finally puts imagination into practice and starts elimintating what he regards as the trash of society - prostitutes, beggars, black people and colleges standing in the way for him making more money, Bret Easton Ellis manages to make the observant reader to realize that the descusting monster Patrick Bateman might has more in common with the dark side of their own personality than they care about. One of the most magnificant ways that Ellis illustrates this point is by the many comments he acomplishes to make people complain about their stomach - as if they got a unsatisfactory meal in a restaurant - rather than identifying how relevant his objections really is. This projective way of writing makes Ellis a part of the inherritage of James Joyce, who in Ulysses introduced this litterary tradition of combating rather than amusing and entertain the reader, while the reader's reaction to what he reads works as an integrated part of the story the writer wants to tell.
On this basis of this same tradition of I regard many of the objections about American Psycho - as boring, a challenge for the stomach etc as rather irrelevant. They can simply not have understood that this feelings that Ellis novel provoces in the reader, is the Writers aim. Alternatively they can not recognize that the dark side of the mind has a place in litterature. If you agree on this view, American Psycho is not a book for you. If you belive that the dark side of the mind indeed has a place in litterature, even that the dark side of the mind indeed can be the subject of some of the greatest litterature, if you are ready to spend some time on puzzeling with understanding what the writer is aiming at and may be even is ready to identify and take in that you, yourself might be a part of the problem that the book identifies, this is definately a book for you.
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5: not everyone can stomache it
i really love this book. this is a very discriptive and detailed book, and not for weak stomaches. its grotesquely detailed. but wonderfully written. i highly suggest it if you can stomache it. some desctiptions are along the lines of being x-rated
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