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American Psycho

American Psycho
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis first US paperback edition 1991.jpg
First American paperback edition (1991)
Author Bret Easton Ellis
Cover artist Marshall Arisman
Genre Transgressive fiction, postmodern novel, satire
Publisher Vintage Books, New York
Publication date
1991
Pages 399
ISBN
OCLC 22308330
813/.54 20
LC Class PS3555.L5937 A8 1991

American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a serial killer and Manhattan businessman. The Observer notes that while "some countries [deem it] so potentially disturbing that it can only be sold shrink-wrapped", "critics rave about it" and "academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities."

A film adaptation starring Christian Bale as Bateman was released in 2000 to generally favorable reviews. In 2008, it was confirmed that producers David Johnson and Jesse Singer were developing a musical adaptation of the novel to appear on Broadway. The musical premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London in December 2013.

Ellis researched murders at the New York Public Library. His first draft of American Psycho left all the grisly scenes until last, to be added in later. In 2010, in conversation with Jeff Baker, Ellis commented:

Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho follows the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his mid-20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite of New York to his forays into murder by night. Through present tense stream-of-consciousness narrative, Bateman describes his daily life, ranging from a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues — where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette — to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother and senile mother. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s pop music artists. The novel maintains a high level of ambiguity through mistaken identity and contradictions that introduce the possibility that Bateman is an unreliable narrator. Characters are consistently introduced as people other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. The question of whether any of the crimes depicted in the novel actually happened or whether they were simply the fantasies of a delusional psychotic is only perpetuated further by the cinematic adaptation.


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