April '03: American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

Alright, now some time ago, there were some kids itchin' to discuss this book. Where are they now? I'm ready. Bring it on. Let's discuss something. Oooo, here's an idea. Did Bateman dream the whole murder sequences and whatnot up or was it all real? I'll give my opinion when I've heard some others.

i think bateman didn't hurt a fly, I mean he couldnt even bring himself to hurt carruthers, he cant kill someone who loves him. Even at the end of the book, "This is not an exit" refers to everything Bateman does in his life videos, clubs, restaraunts, hookers, tanning beds, phil collins, and imaging murders, theyre not an exit for Bateman theyre only ruining his life. Any thoughts?

that's an interesting idea--the "it was all a dream/sick fantasy" approach, but i think he really did it all. "this is not an exit" to me refers to the fact that he is not caught or punished at the end. it's not a morality tale. the horrors of what he does in his life aren't resolved at the end. the reader is given no explanations--this is not an exit.

although in a way the videos, clubs, restaraunts, hookers, and tanning beds work in the way you describe as well.

personally, i think the whole theme of this book is the shallowness of the 1980's and post-modern America...the fact that bateman confesses in a million ways, a ton of times, to different people in the book, and he still isn't caught...he says at the end, "even my confession doesn't matter". it's an exploration of nihilism and the moral relativity that is the essence of our age. image is everything--it's more important than life itself.

in my humble opinion, of course.

I have to agree with Kitty on this one. I think all of it was done but the society he was a part didn't want to see it fall apart so they pretended like nothing happened. The even covered up after him or just ignored what he was saying when he confronted them. (I feel somewhat ignorant right now because I don't have my book, but I shall return with a vengeance when I've got my book we've gathered more intelligent posts like those made by Goodfella and Kitty.)

one thing i have trouble with is the utter disgustingness of some of the murder scenes. i mean, i'm no prude, but i wondered what the point was of BEE making those scenes so gratuitous.

My interpretations of the insane amount of detail was just to really show the reader what this guys world was like, where bateman saw the detail. Interests include: music, clothes, violence, and sex. Oh and the weird food he'd get some places. And I seem to remember Bateman saying it wasn't so much the acts of violence that he loved, but the sick feeling he got afterwards. I'm gonna have to go look that up to be certain. If that's the case, it makes it seem even more likely, imo, that it's the reason for the detail. To give the reader that same feeling of disgust. I loved that horrible horrible detail.

i thought maybe it was so you couldn't romanticize bateman. you couldn't see him as a spoof or a parody or a cartoon. obviously there's debate about this (see above) but i think it's essential to the book that he actually kills these people, and does it in these horrible ways. it creates internal conflict for his character, and it creates internal conflict for the reader, too. this book reminded me of nothing so much as lolita by nabokov--the whole pedophilia/child rape thing is inescapably disgusting, and it was meant to be. but then the writing, the art of it is so beautiful--almost as if it's an experiment into whether or not art can redeem or at least capture any experience. i wrote a paper on just that topic once.

i think as far as AP goes, the gratuitousness of the killing is like shoving the american appetite for idealized violence in people's faces. i have to admit that i read this book in the first place with a kind of sick curiosity, having heard that it was violent, and i kind of had the attitude of, "bring it on." and then the first like, half of the book was dining at trendy restaurants, to the point where i was like, "is he actually a serial killer? i mean, does he kill anyone, here, or what?" and right at about that point, almost as if the book read my mind, was the first of the progressively worsening murder scenes. after one of them (i think the one with the drill and the nail gun) i felt physically ill, and it was almost as if the book had thrown my own bloodlust back in my face.

this is one of the reasons i prefer the book to the movie overall--obviously, the movie can't attain the kind of violence the book does and still be shown to anyone given the MPAA rating system--but without the gratuitous violence it becomes more of a caricature. although the movie does a better job of integrating the long-winded rambles about the different musical acts into the character. i only really understood those, actually, after watching the movie.

speaking of long-winded rambles, i think it's getting ot be about time for me to STFU.

I'll start by saying that this book was not what I was expecting! The amount of descriptive detail that went into every page made the book seem more like a diary then a novel, and hence made it more believable and the murder scenes all the more gruesome. I didn't find it all that shocking but I did find it strangely compelling. By the time I finished it I felt strangely attached to P.B.'s lifestyle (not the killing) and when I noticed a bottle of Corona in the pub I HAD to buy it!

It almost makes you contemplate the merits of mass-murder and allows you to see things from a TOTLLY new perspective. It was enough to cause my friends to ask me to stop talking about the events that took place in this book in such a passionate way!

I also think the actions of C.P.'s ambulance driver in Choke was a silent nod to this novel.

Rob

P.S. This is just a collection of random thoughts, reactions and typos that have spilled from my finger tips randomly.

P.P.S. I am not convinced P.B. killed all those people. The fact that the taxi driver spotted him for a murderer made it seem to me that you CANNOT get away with murder, and hence the only REAL murder he committed he was almost caught for (and he only committed that murder by mistake - trying to run away.) I may not have remembered this rightly as I actualyread A.P. a few months ago.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Rents [/i]
[B]My interpretations of the insane amount of detail was just to really show the reader what this guys world was like, where bateman saw the detail. Interests include: music, clothes, violence, and sex. Oh and the weird food he'd get some places. And I seem to remember Bateman saying it wasn't so much the acts of violence that he loved, but the sick feeling he got afterwards. I'm gonna have to go look that up to be certain. If that's the case, it makes it seem even more likely, imo, that it's the reason for the detail. To give the reader that same feeling of disgust. I loved that horrible horrible detail. [/B][/QUOTE]

I think it has more to do with what even Palahniuk wrote about in Lullaby about attetion to the detail to forget the bigger picture: Bateman had very cold clinical way of reciting the details which was portraited in the movie very well I´d like to point out eventhough it wasn´t very good (movie).
I mean: It was he´s only way of coping to the sitsuations he encountered I mean he wasn´t to blame for these acts.
He was just mentally Very stressed man which is a understatement but íts the least labelling thing I came up now....
Hope somebody understood what I meant.

The detail in teh murders was sort of necessary. Necessary in the sense that, if this yuppy can ramble on and on about the works of PHil Collins and Whitney Houston, then he's going to give insane detail about something as importnt as murder.

Or maybe that was the point - that to him, the murders were just yet another thing to get so obsessed with.

I didn't catch on to the (possible) "he imagined all of the murders" theme, but my friends mentioned it to me (after they watched the movie) as if it was patently obvious. I'm not so sure about it though.

Honestly, the biggest impression I got from American Psycho was a complete lack of fulfullment. At the end, it just sort of...ended. Nothing was particularly resolved, nothing was really changed, and I had a vague memory of a collection of details from the story, but no general theme or philosophy. BUT, considering it was pissing on the 80s, that is the PERFECT ending for the book.

Anyone notice how Patrick doesn't actually describe anyone (except women he lusts for) in the book, but he exhaustively describes what they are wearing?
It gives the creepy mental impression of empty suits and dresses walking around - which is precisely what the characters really are.

Motherfucker, this book is brilliant. It's so rewarding to see that it's been given second life in the internet age after the shit it took when it was first published.

[QUOTE]Honestly, the biggest impression I got from American Psycho was a complete lack of fulfullment. At the end, it just sort of...ended. Nothing was particularly resolved, nothing was really changed, and I had a vague memory of a collection of details from the story, but no general theme or philosophy. BUT, considering it was pissing on the 80s, that is the PERFECT ending for the book.
[/QUOTE]

i agree. at the end of both book and movie bateman even says, "my confession means nothing."

i love the ending too, but i still think bateman made up every murder. remember how he couldnt kill carruthers, this proves he cant kill anybody, hes harmless, hes pathetic, he cant get into restaraunts so as an "exit" he fantasizes about murdering people. thats why his confession would mean nothing cause he did nothing. although, it makes sense for his confession to mean nothing because people dont care or they want to ignore it and pretend they dont hear it. it really is open to the reader, its hard to decide now that i think about it.

vennuth - did you mean the ambulance driver in Lullaby? I don't remember that part of Choke, but I may be wrong - if so, remind me what you are referring to.

I do agree with your theory about him only committing one of the murders - the cab driver. That scene begins with him shooting the saxophone player, which may or may not have been imagined. Either way, that particular scene was just so different from all the other murders - it seemed real, while the other killings had a surrealistic aspect to them. As soon as he fires the shot, a policeman is on to him because his silencer malfunctions (or did he just *think* he had a silencer on the gun?). Things don't go his way at all and he immediately has to run away, getting into the cab.

The other street crimes are pulled off flawlessly - like the scene with the gay guy walking his dog...he pulls out the knife "without even looking up to check to see if other people are walking down the street". No one ever notices him killing the dog or the man. In another scene, he puts Paul Owen's dead body in a sleeping bag and drags it through the lobby of his condo, down the street (where he runs into a couple he knows) and then into a taxi. It's the calm, confident way he carries out these things that makes me believe it's all a part of delusional mind. And we know he's good at imagining things...he sees a Cheerio being interviewed on TV...a park bench that follows him for several blocks, speaking to him. He's...well...he's psycho.

Even the cab driver murder could have been imagined, I guess. When Abdullah steals his watch at the end, the "truth" could be that it was simply a robbery aimed at practically any rich person that may have gotten into his cab. All the talk about murdering Solly and the Wanted poster with Bateman's picture on it - all that could have been made up in his head too, his own way of rationalizing why this was happening to him.

I have thought long and hard on the consequences of joining this discussion and have come to the conclusion that it must be done, if it is not done I will go utterly insane...

Is the violence real? Take these two scenarios into consideration...

Scenario #1... Imagine you are watching a cartoon and a character gets its cartoon head lopped off with a cartoon ax.

Scenario #2... Imagine you are walking down the street and you hear faint screaming coming from the abandoned warehouse building opposite you. You turn to run towards the noise and crossing the street you come to an open window at the corner of the building. You look inside and see that it is a renovated apartment and directly in front of you is a man standing over a naked woman duct-taped to the hardwood floor. The man bends over, holding in his right hand a hacksaw, and grabs the woman by the hair and yanks her head forward. He begins to saw into the yielding flesh at the base of her neck, roughly and without finesse since he is sawing through flesh, muscle, gristle and bone. The woman is still screaming but as the wound opens wider she is unable to make noise except for a grainy gurgling and choking sound. Blood and bodily fluids began to spurt and seep out of the gaping gash. As the neck begins to become two separate entities the man starts to tear instead of saw because he has already done the hard part and the skin gives way to his pull. He holds up the head in the air while the torso slumps back onto the floor in a twisted position, the bowels giving way so that the smell of urine and feces hangs so thickly in the air that even you can smell it. The man proceeds to bite off the nose and the pulpy lips surrounding the mouth. Then he begins engaging in oral sex with the decapitated, lipless head. You notice that where the teeth should be there are only fragments of white and bloody gums where some blunt object smashed through earlier. After he has consumated the relationship he proceeds to reach for a small blow torch with which he aims the thin blue flame for the eye sockets causing the eyeballs to implode and slide down the face like runny eggs. He then takes a rusty spoon and scoops what is left of them out into his mouth. Be kisses where the lips should be, biting off the tongue the spitting it so hard into the wall that it sticks before slowly slipping down the wall to land with a moist, faint slap on the floor. He then sets the head on the floor and proceeds to take a hunting knife out of his overnight bag and begins cutting strips of flesh from the hips and chest cavity, which he cuts from groin to sternum before yanking out the intestines, for making jerky in his new food dehydrator he purchased off of QVC with a credit card he took from one of his victims and kept in his wallet made from two vaginas he had sewn the labia together on and made a festive design on with some brunette and blonde pubic hair held firmly in place with dried semen...

I would argue that scenario #2 is more sickening and distressing than scenario #1. That is why the violence is most definitely intended to be real. BEE's satire and wit is used to offset the brutish reality of the violence causing a gore-fest to become a meaningful piece of contemporary american literature. If the violence was not real than it would just be another story of a demented man wandering the streets and taken up space in society while having disturbing dreams and fantasies but never having the balls to do anything about it. Patrick bateman does have the balls to do something about it and does. He is compelling to read about because he is not the stereotypical american serial killer (you know the type:withdrawn, nerdy, loner, recluse, bad with women, unable to fit in) but in fact he is outgoing and able to blend into his surroundings (as proven by his anonymity among his peers). The violence HAS to be real for the story to work. If it were not real than it would be a waste of time and effort on the part of the author and reader. If you want light entertaining reading go buy "Chicken Soup for your Anus" but if you want an important and compelling piece of literature than American Psycho is the book for you...

This commentary applies only to the BOOK. I do not have time or the energy to argue with people who have only seen the movie and claim the violence was all in his head. The movie was director-biased (Mary Harron directed and co-wrote) and was completely different from the book in many aspects. The movie was not bad, it just had nothing to do with the book except for some details and names (which were not all correct anyway)...

Note: Dig... Scenario #2 is not the best explanation, but I'm no proffessional writer either, like I just thought of things that might be American Psycho-esque or Ed Gein-ish... pardon the ish and esque... fuck it...

[QUOTE]I do agree with your theory about him only committing one of the murders - the cab driver. That scene begins with him shooting the saxophone player, which may or may not have been imagined. Either way, that particular scene was just so different from all the other murders - it seemed real, while the other killings had a surrealistic aspect to them. As soon as he fires the shot, a policeman is on to him because his silencer malfunctions (or did he just *think* he had a silencer on the gun?). Things don't go his way at all and he immediately has to run away, getting into the cab.[/QUOTE]

i'm chuckling to myself right now, because i thought the murder of the cab driver was the only part of it that WAS imagined. it's so hallucinatory and chaotic, that whole scene. and it's a total caricature of a lethal weapon type action movie. i thought he was dreaming up that whole thing.

maybe he can't kill carruthers, but he sure as hell killed that guy--name escapes me, how ironic--whose apartment he took over.

[QUOTE]This commentary applies only to the BOOK. I do not have time or the energy to argue with people who have only seen the movie and claim the violence was all in his head. The movie was director-biased (Mary Harron directed and co-wrote) and was completely different from the book in many aspects. The movie was not bad, it just had nothing to do with the book except for some details and names (which were not all correct anyway)...[/QUOTE]

funny how even we are getting confused with the names.

i definitely thought the movie was a lot different. i actually laughed out loud at a lot of the speeches bateman makes in the movie, esp. when he's about to kill the guy with the axe, and the guy's like, "is that an axe?" and he's like, "YES!!! it IS!!!" i always like gleefuly-insane people, like when brad pitt as tyler durden says in fight club, "the question, RAYMOND!!! is..." but the book's a whole nother kettle of entrails...and i'm pretty firm in my conviction now that the violence, like brock said, is so vivid, because it makes it difficult to make it into a cartoon or see it for something other than what it is...

hey brock, ive read that exact same "theroy,' word for word from an AP discussion, pal, is that really your idea?

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Goodfella [/i]
[B]hey brock, ive read that exact same "theroy,' word for word from an AP discussion, pal, is that really your idea? [/B][/QUOTE]

Sure is, Goodfella... admittedly I first wrote it in the year 2000 on the This Is Not An Exit: Bret Easton Ellis website... as my signature on this site was "This Is Not An Exit" before I originally left. My user name on that site was BRODY in all capital letters, as my e-mail address is [email]bro_dy@hotmail.com[/email], and has been that way for years. I spent a while on that site ranting and raving and most of my long, incessant posts under the name BRODY are still there in the AP Discussion forums. That makes me smile, that someone has actually read some of my superlong theories I have posted all over that site... wow, three years ago... small world I guess... in fact if I may be so bold as to say, that site is full of "classic Brock", as I really use to go on and on and on about all kinds of crazy whacked-out shit...

wow, um, thats cool. yeah, i used to hang out at that site alot, thats a great theory by the way.

I haven't actually read this book yet, but because you wonderful people have mentioned it, I picked it up in the store the other day.
I read a chapter in which Batemen carries around a decapitated head on his erect penis. And then the chapter where he stabs a child in the throat at the zoo, feeling that the kill was a waste because the child hasn't much of a life to destroy.
You guys are just...crazy.
I'll read it soon.

Brock, with his action-hero good looks and intense writing style, is my new hero.
'Cept, well, kl0pper might be mad.

i defintely am rethinking the book from new perspectives now due to some well thought out comments on this thread debating whether the crimes took place or not. i'm toying around with the idea that the "no exit" refers to the entire book being a dream fantasy. im not exactly sure. i think that maybe the reason no one noticed anything is because in the upper class patrick resides in, everyone confuses everyone for other people and there so fake that they trully notice nothing, just as no one ever catches on to patrick's side remarks in coversations about his violent behavior. thats the sadness to the character is that he is trying so hard to fill a void in himself and fell something but can't, while other people live their facade lives blabbering on never noticing anything; patrick lives in a perpetual "blah blah blah."

as for the violence, im studying to be a criminal profiler working specifically serial killers so nothing really bothered me expect for the kid at the zoo. i was actually pissed at ellis for writing that because it felt to be too much.

my favorite part though is the chapter where patrick and sean go to dinner which is the same scene from rules of attraction and its interesting to see the other perspective of the dinner.

B.E.E has gone on record to say that he intended the murders to be imagined - they're all in his head. After all, he's psycho...

Here he is responding to the movie sequel, American Psycho 2:
[url]http://www.jamshowbiz.com/JamMoviesFeaturesA/americanpsycho_1.html[/url]

Here's a quote from that interview:

-----
"In the first movie version and in my novel, all that actually ever happened to you if you ran into American Psycho is that he might have horrible thoughts and then make a gruesome drawing of you," Ellis said.
-----

Still...I must say that by simply reading the book, that scenario his hinted at but by no means is it nailed to the wall for everyone to read. So even with the author telling us what he intended, I like the fact that it can still be read either way.

Yeah... Ellis is a fine writer and all, but I think he's full of shit. Besides, American Psycho is a story with a life of it's own. Sure, he penned it, his ideas and others ideas [plenty of things in AP that are in earlier works by other authors] that he used were written by him... but AP has become much more than a book in the world. There's the movie. There's the speculation. The questions. The real-life serial killers and rapists whose houses have been searched after they have been caught, and copies of American Psycho have been found on bedside tables and in RV torture chambers, in drawers of gynecological rape devices, etc... and you try and tell me that everyone should think the same, that people don't take American Psycho literally... and in the end, as with all good books, it should be up to the reader to interpret. I think Ellis is entitled to his own opinion about the book, but by no means does he have the final say for everyone else. American Psycho is much larger than Ellis will ever be. It's like an artist who creates a work of art that overshadows him. Bateman was Ellis' bastard son who stepped over his stepdaddy like he would step on a roach. Yeah, Ellis is great, but American Psycho is its own entity, greater than he will ever be. Think of ellis as one of those songwriters who writes a huge hit that everyone loves, yet very few people have a clue or even care who wrote it...

did anyone else notice how he only had those thoughts only after taking drugs

i totally agree with BitofaFinger and Kitty, in that i felt totally unfulfilled at the end. nothing had changed, except bateman breaking up with bethany.

also, the book didn't piss me of as such, but i was pissed of at myself for the same reason i was pissed of at myself after reading Choke; I believed all the blatant crap in them!

Quick elaboration on my earlier Art Imitating Life Imitating Art post ... the notorious Schoolgirl killer Paul Bernardo claimed to have been directly influenced by 'American Psycho'. And used this as an excuse for his violent crimes against women. In 1991, he kidnapped, raped and dismembered local schoolgirls Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Paul Bernardo called 'American Psycho' his bible and identified with the Yuppie Stockbroker, Patrick Bateman, calling him a ''mirror image' of himself. The original author of the book on which the film is based, Bret Easton Ellis, gave a startling reflecting of our society when he described the violent influences his book, by saying:

"There is a level of human savagery and cruelty that is undeniable. If we can't reflect it in our culture, if we're intolerant of it, what does that mean? Do we want evil diminished in art because we don't always get that in our everyday life?"

I really enjoyed American Psycho. With the exception of the oral-sex-with-decapitated-head scene I didn't find the violence to bad. it was more the unrelenting continuous nature of it that did at times, I must admit, make me question why I was reading it.

I like the ambiguity in it, you finish the book being unsure whether he actually committed any crimes. Part of me likes to think he did, and part of me suspects that it was all a mind-job. Does it make the violence any less involving though? Knowing that it might not be real (obviously being a fictional novel it isn't real, but in the context of the story).

We've just had Ken Park (the movie) banned in Aus because the non children actors play children and have (pretend) sex. So what they're doing is perfectly legal, but because for the purposes of the movie they are underage, it's illegal. It's fucking bullshit is what it is. I don't know if that's related, but I'm pissed off.

american psycho is an amazing book to say the least, i read it awhile ago so everything is kind of blurry. but the murder scenes were gruesome better than any commercial movie could ever re-create. the social commentary is amazing, although i wasnt really conscious during the 80's i can still imagine some of those things going on (no, im not talking about the murders). but thats the same with all the easton ellis books, all of his books are a cry for help for all the characters within them. everyone one of his books has a sad, sadistic person in them and he is just covering their life every minute at a time.

FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MARCH 2000

Copyright (c) 1998

Here I am, years late. Fuck it...

I think the novel is brutal and evil and inescapable. I know few that have ever read it and been able to give a proper explanation as to exactly what it is that they just read (or, TRIED to read). Context helps an interpretation of the book, but in the singular, all that one needs to understand it is within the book. Ellis went from [B]The Rules of Attraction[/B] and its multiple POVs and fairly simple storyline to create [B]American Psycho[/B], which shows an amazing leap in his abilities. It is a difficult thing--a balancing act--to try to write a novel like this, one that HAS to stay true to the narrator's personal perception of what is occurring. One is immediately presented with an unreliable narrator, because for all he SEEMS to know (clothing, music, serial killers, everything), he is terribly fallible (unless the reader is buried in the other detals and fails to notice--or already knows more than Bateman portrays and likes to think he knows about a subject). Example, in the first sequence (APRIL FOOLS) he mentions the song "Be My Baby" as being by The Crystals instead of The Ronettes and later in the book even mentions that "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is by the Beatles... Point? Bateman is fallible, and he is so surface that he likes to give out details whether he knows they are correct or not--so long as he ACTS like he knows, others (the audience, reader, et cetera) will automatically try to believe him... and the rest of what he claims as mere fact. Note the changing of clothes in certain scenarios, the MAJOR factual mistakes in the three "music"-titled sequences, the combinations of foods and how incredibly insane they are at times (though Bateman seems to notice nothing odd about them), the mention of streets being traveled that--in reality, in NYC--are one-way streets that lead the opposite direction than is being described, EVEN the misquoting of a murderer (from a person with an obvious and admitted intense interest in the subject...). Unless the reader questions Bateman and his claims, then the claims become part of a false-reality, Bateman's reality. Does the Patty Winter's Show get as interesting (or, insane) as he flippantly reports?

I don't think the novel is to be taken literally, nor is it just a satirical fable against the Reagan years or 80s America or serial killer obsession by the public or a metaphor for AIDS, so much as a character study where the only "facts" are what is intuited. Parkaboy and I discussed this the other night--Bateman is vacuous and dull in reality, but wants to be more. Unlike the characters in Ellis' other novels, Patrick Bateman is the one character that--however sick or crazed or just socially bitter--isn't desirous of being in the position he is in. He is the most human character Ellis has written, and he is also--according to Ellis--the most "autobiographical" character he has created. All question of whether the crimes are real, or if some are and others aren't, or if it's all "in his head" are not important, in the end. By the novel's end, Bateman has given up in his struggle to seperate himself from the niche of culture and society that he had alternately tried so hard to maintain. He wanted to be part of the scene, but he saw through it at the same time. And unlike Price, he doesn't have the courage to just fucking leave. So he tries other routes to humanize himself (even allowing primal instinct to take him over at times), but fails because he is still seen as the same entity by those around him (cardboard as they themselves are) throughout. He bases his own idea of self on how those around him view him (Price, instead, just leaves and returns when he WANTS to--and Bateman sees Price as the "only interesting person" he knows...). Mainly, my belief is that Bateman is a pathetically-sympathetic character. Murderer or not, he tries to break out of the insane-asylum-of-80s-Wall-Street and fails because he is not strong enough (murder--real or not--as compensation...?) to do what he shows the reader he wants to do. He fails because he gives up his own humanity (and YES, Bateman is the most human character in the novel, more so that Jean even, because she is only what HE sees her as and WE know no more than that ideal he relates), and allows himself to be defined by the void he KNOWS (and has fought throughout the novel, while also courting...) surrounds him in the culture.

As far as the "perfect ending": as the novel begins with a quote from Dante's [B]Inferno[/B] (or, part of [B]The Divine Comedy[/B]), signifying--or warning of--the entrance
into Hell, I would consider this to have relevance at the end. In the novel, Bateman (in one of his freak-out-but-attempt-at-kindness-moments) mistakes a young girl for a beggar, sitting and reading on a stoop, and he drops money into her coffee cup--he notes that she is reading Sartre (which shows that Bateman knows at least the name...), only to discover he dropped his money into the girl's cup with actual coffee in it--an embarassing attempt at kindness thwarted--and unlike the beggars presented before and after, she is a college student, not a beggar. This reference to Sartre could be the key to the final "This Is Not An Exit"-phrase: Sartre's 1944 play [I]No Exit[/I].

[INDENT]This play, an example of expert craftmanship so organized that the
audience learns very slowly the facts concerning the three characters,
is Sartre's indictment of the social comedy and the false role
that each man plays in it. The most famous utterance in the
play, made by Garcin, when he says that hell is other people,
l'enfer, c'est les autres, is, in the briefest form possible,
Sartre's definition of man's fundamental sin. When the picture a man
has of himself is provided by those who see him, in the
distorted image of himself that they give back to him, he has
rejected what the philosopher has called reality. He has, moreover,
rejected the possibility of projecting himself into his future and
existing in the fullest sense. In social situations we play a
part that is not ourself. If we passively become that part, we
are thereby avoiding the important decisions and choices by which
personality should be formed.

( [url]http://www.theatrehistory.com/french/sartre002.html[/url] )[/INDENT]

Maybe. Or... Maybe not.

Just a few of my thoughts.

[QUOTE=vennuth;39780]

I also think the actions of C.P.'s ambulance driver in Choke was a silent nod to this novel.

[/QUOTE]

I just finished Choke and I saw no mention of an ambulance driver.

I'm really glad that I was never aware of the "Bateman is imagining all of these murders" theory back when I read [I]American Psycho[/I]. What a way to take the steam out of an intense novel...

Also, anyone with interest in Ellis, PLEASE get over to the August bookclub thread for [I]The Informers [/I]and help us discuss.

[QUOTE=Caligula7;1016309]I'm really glad that I was never aware of the "Bateman is imagining all of these murders" theory back when I read [I]American Psycho[/I]. What a way to take the steam out of an intense novel...

Also, anyone with interest in Ellis, PLEASE get over to the August bookclub thread for [I]The Informers [/I]and help us discuss.[/QUOTE]
I just read The Informers for the sole purpose of the discussion. I'm waitng until I have the time to adequately post.

i just bought this book, i star reading it in some days when i finish Salems lot i be back!

I think that it doesn't even matter whether or not Patrick committed the crimes. Either way, the point is that this man is disturbed and his internal conflict of wanting to fit in or wanting to be noticed as an individual drives him to express himself violently and secretly. The facade he puts on for much of the book is so meticulously created that one could think that he is just as shallow as everyone else around him. However, I think that his violent side shows us that he yearns for more, something real and visceral. In the end, his confession seems to indicate his choice, but even though he tries to distinguish himself from the other yuppies they fail to acknowledge it and he is trapped. And, perhaps "this is not an exit" is just a visual representation of Patrick's inability to find a way out, rather than having "this" refer to anything specific.

I hope this made sense and contributes something new to the discussion. But, just for kicks I'd like to add that I believe he was probably imagining it all. Kind of like how you can reflect on a situation and dream up the perfect thing that you should have said or done at the time, and wishing that you had.

satire is suppose to be offensive to people who do not get it as satire

i am currently a little over half way into reading this book. i am really liking this novel, being my first bret easton ellis work that i have read.
I agree with those that have said its no so much the importance of whether patrick bateman commited those crimes or not. I see it as more about what are the driving forces that are causing pat to have homicidal thoughts. His longing to fit in with the ultra competitive world he lives in. The fact that with all that money he cannot always get his way, he also is hated for being such a yuppie both others such as the couple at the club he starts a fight with. He cannot be excepted by his peers yet is hated by his enemies.
This are the things that are interesting me more at the moment