[.ca] Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide (ISBN 0826452450)

Opinion on Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide:
Very good analysis of Ellis' work American Psycho. Particularly interesting is the way the author, Julian Murphet, focuses on the historical and social conditions of American Psycho. The author puts it back in a class context, Bateman being representative of a yuppie class, issued from the Reagan's era: republican, racist, classist, hating the working class victim of Reagan's measures in the frame of the application of an extreme neoliberal economic program. In this study, the reader will find a very good interpretation of the symbolism used by Ellis, particularly in the scene confronting two entities of the capital's representatives as rivals: The world of Finance and the one of Real Estate, both serving the same objective: accumulating surplus-value, one through Wall Street and the Stock-exchange and the other one, through an exacerbated valorization of real estate. In this time of history, consequences of a time of severe crisis of mass production, both fields are becoming the core of a renewed form of accumulation of capital. As a matter of fact, we will witness in the 1990's the crushing negative impact of financial globalization on low and middle classes, that is identical to premeditated human slaughter, together with the strengthening of the pitiless real estate's power, ready to chase people from their home to use the premises as grounds for speculation. Bateman's robot-like attitude, his behavior directed by clichés and brands that are indispensable criteria to his meaningless and dead boring life are typical of those emerging classes, products of a world without transcendental ideal, reduced to obey the imperatives of money and of a consumerist society, where killing becomes one of the favorite leisure and gives the one that assassinates the feeling of "acting", "being someone", token of sick societies enslaved by the pursuing of money. This kind of critical analysis published by Continuum Contemporary is indispensable to anyone who wants to heighten one's level of reading and pass from passive to active reading, i.e. not only getting to know the story in itself as a pastime, but also the author, his motivations and the social and political context that determined the writing of the book.

Ellis is a sicko, but it is great:
Brett Easton Ellis shows a very dark character in the book American Psycho. The movie did not even begin to scratch the surface of Patrick Bateman's "odd" personality. After reading this book, the movie adaptation is unbelieveable. You understand the pain that Bateman is going through when asking for reservations. He is so deeply disturbed that he onoly lives for outward apperances. If you only read one book this summer, and you really want to be shocked, pick up American Psycho

EXTRA CREDIT:
Having read American Psycho several times since it's release, I'm surprised that it's taken somebody (anybody) this long to put together something (anything) that delves deeper into this book. This reader's guide is broken down into 5 sections (the novelist; the novel; the novel's reception; the novel's adaptation; and further reading and discussion questions) and is followed by brief notes and bibliography pages. Like Anthony Magistrale's The Shining Reader and David Sexton's The Strange World Of Thomas Harris, I can further explore my favorite books. A little extra credit for the fans and a little insight for those who are not.

Concise & Well Researched:
Ironically enough I learned about this on GQ's website. This is an excellent critical review of American Psycho. It features the same format as the rest of the Continuum essay books: a short biography of Ellis and his influences; a critique of the book; a section on how the book was recieved by the public; and finally a section about the movie adaption. Well worth purchasing. I hope Continuum takes on the rest of Ellis' work

American Pyscho: Uncovered:
We have been in need of a series like Continuum Contemporaries for a long time. Unlike the watered-down reader's guides produced by York Notes (and in the US 'Cliff's Notes') these little books tackle text's which have gained something of a cult status in the late twentieth century, and do so from a perspective which is at once approachable enough for the recreational reader, and rigorous enough for the advanced student. It is therefore fitting that a text so widely, and wildly, misunderstood as Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho'. should be included amongst the Continuum survey. Julian Murphet is one of the foremost critics of Ellis's work, and what you get here are all the benefits of the breadth and depth of his knowledge, boiled down into a slim and precise volume. He provides us with a short biography of the author; an exploration of the narrative voice at work within the text; a discussion of the themes of alienation and reification and a survey of critical responses. He is, however, at his most engaging in his discussion of violence and politics, the real heart of the novel itself. He tackles the central, consuming question of whether the protagonist Patrick Bateman ever actually commits the murders so graphically rendered in the text's pages, in a manner that is exploratory and revelatory without ever being proscriptive. Thus we see an argument develop from the tentative suggestion that 'everything could well be contained to the level of fantasy,' to the final assertion that the violence within 'American Psycho' is 'an act of language' and never really happens at all. He ties this argument in very neatly with an understanding of the text in its political context, seeing Bateman as a 'pin-up boy for the establishment Right' during the Reagan era, and reading the real 'murder' within the novel, not as that projected by Bateman, but rather as the 'murder of the real' the erasure of all social difference and threat - what he terms 'the gentrification of the city.' Murphet rounds this off with a great critique of the film version of the novel, his genuine academic appreciation of cinema in general, making this more than just a fan's opinion. No reader of 'American Psycho' will ever wholly agree with any one theory, and indeed it is the paradoxical beauty of the novel that is never really gives you a definitive answer either way. Murphet's argument is one reading, but it is a very convincing one, and this text is a must for anyone who remains challenged by, and curious about, this work.