very interesting Bu kitap özellikle wall street teki dünyayý yönettikleri düþünen traderlarýn dünyasýna çok çarpýcý bir yaklaþým sergiliyor....para kazanma ve yükselme hýrsýnýn kontrol edilemez boyutlara ulaþtýgýnda insaný nasýl akýl almaz bir deliliðe sürüklediðini ve tatminsizliðe ulaþtýrdýðýný da çok etkileyici bir anlatým tarzýyla ifade ediyor.
I couldn't stop laughing American Psycho is one of the few books I have ever read that REALLY made me laugh out loud. Patrick Bateman is like so many people that I met whilst climbing the corporate ladder in the eighties (I even saw some sad, long forgotten reflections of myself in there). Yes it's graphic. Yes it's violent. It's also funny in a way that few other satires are. Do yourself a favour and read the book!
Somewhat Interesting I guess I read this book a few years ago after a woman living next door recommended it to me. It starts out fairly normal, but then after about 200 pages it gets extremely disturbing. It's the most graphically violent book I've ever read. I didn't really see the purpose of some chapters. One chapter if I remember correctly was a review of a whitney houston album. I guess it was supposed to be a satire? Maybe you weren't even really supposed to read chapters like that. Not my favorite book, but maybe I just didn't get it, I don't know.
An engaging social satire I relaxed on my Ethan Allen couch to read Bret Easton Ellis's late-1980's Manhattan-of-yuppie-excess thriller, American Psycho. I had to put it down to dine on quail sashimi with peach ravioli and baby soft-shell crabs with grape jelly, and after dinner I noted that the Vintage Contemporary cover was a far from ideal surface to snort cocaine off. After donning my Valentino Lycra sports outfit, I resumed reading on the Lifecycle in my $500/month health club. As a whole, I found the financial district consumerist novel to be a brilliant social satire in the tradition of Swift, with lyrical genius comparable to a finely crafted Genesis song. I dropped the title in conversation over Absolut double martinis at the cigar club the following night, and I was secretly delighted that my archnemesis at the firm fumbled when trying to debate its relative merits with me.
[This is where I transition back to reality as Jessica Lux-Baumann, book reviewer.] Twenty-seven year-old Patrick Bateman is a Wall Street mergers and acquisitions executive who spends a few hours a day in his stark Manhattan office and the rest of the time at his exclusive gym, in clubs, clamoring for reservations at the hottest restaurants, cheating with his friends' fiancées, and, oh, murdering socialites and the homeless. Everyone in his eighties NYC life is too self-absorbed to notice his true character (in fact, a Realtor gladly cleans up carnage to make a sale on a hot piece of property). Bateman embodies yuppie ideals while mocking the inferiority of everyone else in his circle. Girls are "hardbodies" or "bitches," reduced to physical measurements and shagability (although Bateman uses considerably less polite terminology).
The book consists of short chapters--diary entries, if you will--of scenes in Bateman's life. At times, he lapses into eloquent yet fanboyish soliloquies about bands like Genesis, Huey Lewis and the News, and Whitney Houston. He thinks about mutilation and torture while debating the relative merits of different brands of sparkling water or discussing the proper way to wear a sweater vest.
I've seen Mary Harron's film adaptation of the book several times, and it is a true, but condensed version of the novel. The novel is far darker, with graphic descriptions of torture and murder (eyeballs dripping like runny eggs, and so forth).
Wolfe, McInerney, Dunne . . . Ellis American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, is a very well written, even clever, time capsule of affluent New York in the 80s and 90s. Ellis, clearly with his own style, will appeal to those who enjoy Tom Wolfe (especially Bonfire of the Vanities), Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City), Dominick Dunne's portrayal of the wealthy in virtually all of his fiction and any writings on New York in its state of heightened self-importance (coming from a native and long time New Yorker).
Ellis's novel clearly has a twist, a psychotic murderer among its fast moving Wall Street, uptown societal crowd. The protagonist. Written in the first person. At the same time the conspicuous consumption and vacuous living is both revolting and quite funny. Really more the latter. But very realistic given the time frame. Even today, not that much has changed. So, a story within a novel that gives the reader a flavor for a world unto itself, Manhattan.
Ellis's writing is, quite often, crisp, erudite and superb. ". . . 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. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, and all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have no surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless."
While much of the writing is more of the New Journalistic variety of Wolfe, the above describes the author's protagonist superbly well. The introspection of Bateman there, while deeply flawed, is at the same time, strangely true. All the warnings about the graphic nature of this book not withstanding, it is brilliantly written and a great and disturbingly funny read. It was, strangely, my first read of Ellis, it will not be my last.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
