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American Psycho
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American Psycho (1991) (edit title/settings)

by Bret Easton Ellis (Author) (edit contributors)

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The controversial novel about a handsome serial killer who moves among the young and trendy in 1980s New York.

Summary edit see section history

Set in Manhattan and beginning on April Fools' Day 1989, American Psycho spans roughly three years in the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, 26 years old when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his daily life among the upper-class elite of... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Set in Manhattan and beginning on April Fools' Day 1989, American Psycho spans roughly three years in the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, 26 years old when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his daily life among the upper-class elite of New York to his forays into murder by nightfall.

Bateman comes from a privileged background, having graduated from St. Paul's School, Harvard (class of 1984), and then Harvard Business School (class of 1986). He works as a vice president at a Wall Street investment company and lives in an expensive Manhattan apartment on the Upper West Side, where he embodies the 1980s yuppie culture. Through present tense stream-of-consciousness narrative, he describes his conversations with colleagues in bars and cafes, his office, and nightclubs.

The first third of the book contains no violence (except for subtle references apparent only in retrospect), and is simply an account of what seems to be a series of Friday nights, as Bateman documents travelling with his colleagues to a variety of nightclubs, where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette.

Beginning with the second third of the book, Bateman begins to describe his day-to-day activities, which range from such mundanities as renting videotapes and making dinner reservations to committing brutal murders. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which Bateman directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s musicians, specifically Genesis, Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston.

In addition to describing his daily life, Bateman also speaks about his "love" life. He is engaged to a fellow yuppie named Evelyn, though he possesses no deep feelings for anyone; additionally, he frequently solicits sex with attractive women ("hardbodies"), manipulates his secretary's feelings for him, and tries to avoid the attention of Luis Carruthers, a closeted homosexual colleague who confesses his love for him. Bateman also documents his relationship with his estranged family, including his senile mother, whom he visits in a nursing home, and his younger brother, a hedonistic college dropout (Sean Bateman, one of the protagonists from Ellis's earlier novel The Rules of Attraction; Patrick Bateman himself also briefly appears in said novel).

As the book progresses, Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. The description of his murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from stabbings to drawn out sequences of torture, rape, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia. His mask of sanity appears to slip as he introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations, and confesses his murderous activities to his co-workers. People react as if Bateman is joking with them, appear not to hear him, or otherwise completely misunderstand him ("murders and executions" is mistaken for "mergers and acquisitions", for example). As the book nears its conclusion, Bateman describes incidents such as seeing a Cheerio interviewed on a talk show, being stalked by an anthropomorphic park bench, and being ordered by an ATM to feed it a stray cat. Bateman's mental state appears increasingly questionable, and the events in the novel draw into question whether he has actually committed any of the murders he has described.

Towards the end of the novel, he visits an apartment where he has been stockpiling mutilated bodies; to his amazement, Bateman enters a perfectly clean, refurbished apartment with no trace of decomposing bodies, but with many strong-smelling flowers, as though meant to hide a bad odour. He runs into a real estate agent showing the apartment to prospective buyers. The estate agent asks him if he saw the advertisement in the New York Times. When Bateman pretends that he did, the estate agent says that there was none, and that he should leave and not cause any trouble.

Bateman confronts Harold Carnes, his lawyer, on whose answering machine he has previously confessed all his crimes; Carnes, who mistakes Bateman for someone else, is amused at what he considers to be a good joke. Carnes reproaches Bateman for laying the list of crimes at his feet, and further says that Bateman is far too much of a coward to have committed such acts. Challenged by Bateman on the disappearance of Paul Owen – a colleague whom Bateman hacked to death out of professional jealousy – Carnes unexpectedly claims that he had dinner, in London, with Paul Owen a few days previously. The ambiguity is heightened by the fact that mistaken identity is a recurring theme throughout the book. Characters are consistently introduced as other people, or argue over the identities of people they can see in restaurants or at parties. Whether any of the crimes depicted in the novel actually happened, or were simply the fantasies of a delusional psychotic, is deliberately left open.

The opening lines of the book have Timothy Price staring at graffiti on a Chemical Bank building, reading Abandon all hope ye who enter here, an allusion to the gates of hell portrayed in Dante's Divine Comedy; the book ends with a similar scene, as Bateman sits in a bar, staring at a sign that reads "This is not an exit", which is a direct reference to Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit (from which the famous quote "Hell is other people" is derived).

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  • “This is what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, or receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliche, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire -- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathizing, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt any more. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was a”
  • “How could she ever understand that there isn't any way could be disappointed since I no longer find anything worth looking forward to?”
  • “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping you and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”
  • “" 'Hey asshole, I wanna watch you die, motherfuck-aaahhh,' and then I start screaming like a banshee, moving across Fifty-eigth, banging my Bottega Veneta briefcase against a wall."”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • This is true: the world is better off with some people gone. Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is a crock. Some people truly do not need to be here.
    Highlighted by 124 Kindle customers
  • … there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.
    Highlighted by 123 Kindle customers
  • There wasn’t a clear, identifiable emotion within me, except for greed and, possibly, total disgust. I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning. Something horrible was happening and yet I couldn’t figure out why—I couldn’t put my finger on it.
    Highlighted by 122 Kindle customers
  • My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have, countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing.…
    Highlighted by 101 Kindle customers
  • “Because,” I say, staring directly at her, “I … want … to … fit … in.”
    Highlighted by 97 Kindle customers
  • Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in … this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged …
    Highlighted by 85 Kindle customers
  • I have no patience for revelations, for new beginnings, for events that take place beyond the realm of my immediate vision.
    Highlighted by 80 Kindle customers
  • And later my macabre joy sours and I’m weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing “I just want to be loved,” cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer—all of it was wrong, without any final purpose. All it came down to was: die or adapt.
    Highlighted by 74 Kindle customers
  • It’s not the seals I hate—it’s the audience’s enjoyment of them that bothers me.
    Highlighted by 69 Kindle customers
  • I missed the fucking sale, and dwelling over this loss while wandering down Central Park West somewhere around Seventy-sixth, Seventy-fifth, it strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.
    Highlighted by 67 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.

Table of Contents edit see section history

April Fools
Morning
Harry's
Pastels
Tunnel
Office
Health Club
Date
Dry Cleaners
Harry's
Deck Chairs
Business Meeting
Video Store then D'Agostino's
Facial
Date with Evelyn
Tuesday
Genesis
Lunch
Concert
A Glimpse of a Thursday Afternoon
Yale Club
Killing Dog
Girls
Shopping
Christmas Party
Nell's
Paul Owen
Paul Smith
Birthday, Brothers
Lunch with Bethany
Thursday
Whitney Houston
Dinner with Secretary
Detective
Summer
Girls
Confronted by Faggot
Killing Child at Zoo
Girls
Rat
Another Night
Girl
At Another New Restaurant
Tries to Cook and Eat Girl
Taking an Uzi to the Gym
Chase, Manhattan
Huey Lewis and the News
In Bed with Courtney
Smith & Wollensky
Something on Television
Sandstone
The Best City for Business
Working Out
End of the 1980s
Aspen
Valentine's Day
Bum on Fifth
New Club
Taxi Driver
At Harry's

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 185 of 200 in BBC 'Big Read' Top 200 Novels, 2003. (authoritative list)
This is book 78 of 97 in Waterstone's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)
This is book 240 of 1286 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)
This is book 7 of 10 in 10 most disturbing novels. (community list)
This is book 76 of 100 in 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction. (authoritative list)
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 53 of 100 in ALA's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 1990-1999. (authoritative list)
This is book 186 of 199 in Newman and Jones 200 Best Horror Novels. (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Bret Easton Ellis (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Vintage
Country: United States
Publication Date: 1991
ISBN: 0679735771
Page Count: 416

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3555.L5937
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

sexual violence, Violence against an animal, Extensive drug use, Violence against women

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Layer Cake
  • Story of My Life
  • Last Exit to Brooklyn
  • The Last King of Scotland
  • What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer (Vintage)
  • Time's Arrow
  • Sold
  • Suicide Casanova
  • Last Tango in Aberystwyth
  • The Cowards
  • Glamorama
  • Fight Club

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)

Books Influenced by This Book edit see section history

   
  • Lunar Park
  • Slaughterhouse

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • Lunar Park
  • Ed Gein--Psycho!
  • The Monster Show

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