Book Review: American Psycho

This is another of ALA’s most frequently challenged books, and this is the first book I encountered where I sympathized with the challengers. This doesn’t mean that I would support the banning of this book–it just means that I think it’s a vile piece of writing and the reasons for challenging the book are clear-cut and defensible.  Here we go–

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I read this book for the same reason that many of you will hopefully read other banned books that I discuss–because someone told me I shouldn’t.  Here’s how it happened:

A lovely young lady that I was quite smitten with some years back was reading American Psycho. I wasn’t familiar with it and said “What’s that?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, hiding it behind her back.

“What is it?”

“You’re not old enough for this yet,” she said, running away to hide it.  I chased her down and grabbed the book from her.  Didn’t look so bad. I was familiar with Brett Easton Ellis from the so-so The Rules Of Attraction and the much better Less Than Zero.

“Seriously,” she said. “I hope you don’t read it.”  I could tell she was serious but I didn’t have the sense to stop.  I’d been challenged in a way that only the insecure man understands.  It didn’t help that she was only 4’9″ to my 6’8″ and was a few years older than I was.  I didn’t want to be mothered, especially by a tiny playwright.

She went to work, I grabbed the book, and by the next morning I didn’t like much of anything anymore.  I felt disgusted with myself for plowing through it and not listening to her.  I felt disgusted by Brett Easton Ellis and vowed never to read anything by him again (I broke this rule pretty quickly).  I hated the knowledge that real depravity exists and I had spent upwards of 300 pages participating in a relentless horrorshow that others have described to me as a vicarious “thrill.”

I’m not going to go into detail except to say that American Psycho is about a yuppie Wall Street type who murders women at night.  The murders go on for pages and pages and pages , as do the really twisted sex scenes, which nearly all end in murders.  Children and animals are not spared either.

I have nothing else to say about this book. Its defenders talk about how AP is performance art, or how the experience of reading it is akin to la la la and how Ellis wrote it the way he did to stick it to his publisher and how he’s so courageous because blah blah blah–whatever.

“No, you’ve just got to look at it like this, then you see what he was getting at.”

Nope.  I don’t care.

I have no problem with works that are supposed to be “edgy,” although the word means little these days.  But there is the edge and then there is revolting, self-serving messes that pass themselves off as “daring.” So what if it is daring?  Should you get a trophy for penning the most repellent book of all time?

Anyways, that’s enough of that.  I wish I’d been secure enough to take my friend’s advice.  But I suspect that many of you can’t turn down a dare.  But I’m not going to dare you to read American Psycho. Leave it alone.  It shouldn’t be banned, but I hope it is eventually forgotten.

I don’t hate it because I don’t “get it,” as some will suggest.  I hate it because it is hateful.

Turn down those dares.  I’m embarrassed that I couldn’t.

If you are looking for a great banned book that is equal parts beautiful and distubing, check out Golding’s Lord Of The Flies.  I read it once every year. And if you like Lord Of The Flies, you might get a kick out of The Hunger Games.

Josh

PS: The movie of American Psycho is actually quite good, but it is satirical and has some funny moments.  More like Dexter than ramped up Marquis De Sade.

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Tagged as: book reviews, Fiction, serial murderers