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ter? "AMERICAN PSYCHO" AS SOCIAL REIFICATION DRAWN TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION
And though he does his dirty work in a pair of Manhattan apartments, nobody ever hears any screaming and nobody ever smells anything funny. This particular aspect Batemans seeming invisibility to others in the face of his crimes, his unexplained ability to get away with just about anything of the book struck me also whilst reading the novel. However to charge the book with being too unrealistic for this reason is to miss a central theme a theme which I would here like to use as a tool by which to read American Psycho. Although on one level the text seems amoral, meaningless, and unresolvable and its depictions of violence opportunistic and gratuitous, I will argue that the book is nonetheless not without its particular central concern, or message: that of the abject dehumanization of people by commodity culture.
A contradiction appears to the reader: on the one hand, the text is unrelenting in its depiction of the most inane details, and their repetition, which seems to indicate a style of hyper-realism, of intense detail as to facts. Over and over again the reader is presented with characters, who have concern only for what people are wearing and whether what theyre wearing is designer fashion or not, whos carrying on affairs with whom, whether restaurant reservations have been made at the most fashionable New York dining places, whos handling whose account at work, and where to score drugs. This is brought to an almost hilarious intensity in the Chapter Concert [Ellis B. E. (1991) American Psycho, New York: Vintage hereafter referred to as AP], on pages 136 142. Patrick Bateman and his friends are attending a concert by U 2, at which they dont really want to be. After an intricate listing by wearer and brand of everyones attire (e.
g. Evelyn's wearing a cotton blouse by Dolce & Gabbana, suede shoes by Yves Saint Laurent, a stencilled calf shirt by Adrienne Landau with a suede belt by Jill Stuart, Calvin Klein tights, Venetian-glass earrings by Frances Patiky Stein AP, 138), Bateman and his friends end up screaming at each other in the front row, once again about whether reservations have been made, whether a certain character Paul Owens is still handling the Fisher account, and the fact that they need drugs (AP, 139 - 140). It becomes hilarious when, The lead singer reaches out to us from the stage, his hand outstretched and I [Bateman] wave him away (AP, 140). This, because Bono Vox dares to interrupt this banal, inane conversation which seems to be forever repeated throughout the book. On the other hand, the text seems to be fragmented, and identities unstable. Bateman is forever being mistaken for other people, something he doesnt attempt to rectify, indeed he seems to encourage it.
At the Christmas party (AP 173 - 191), first Donald Petersen mistakes him for someone called McCloy (175), after which Paul Owen mistakes him for Marcus Halberstam (178). He almost panics when hes addressed by his real name: At the mention of my real name I immediately start blabbering, hoping that Owen didnt notice (179). When Bateman embarks on a killing spree and is chased by the police (Chase, Manhattan 333 339) the chapter literally ends on an ellipsis halfway through the episode, with Bateman holing up in his office, making a telephone confession of his murders to an acquaintance. What follows this chapter is, of all things, a discourse on the aesthetic merits of the rock band Huey Lewis and the News. The chase or its final outcome is not referred to again in the book and the reader is left to conclude by her or himself how Bateman managed to evade the police, or perhaps that it was all just a fantasy in the head of Bateman, whose reality has become unstuck. Two other such discourses occur in the book the first is on the band Genesis (128 131) which follows upon a description of the cruel, violent killing of a homeless man and his dog and the second is on Whitney Houston (242 245) which follows upon a graphic description of Bateman standing over the dismembered body of his high-school girlfriend Bethany.
These passages illustrate how the text refuses the reader any psychological depth, consequence or resolution. If the reader is meant to be drawn, by shock, into the narrative at these points, she or he is almost immediately forced back out by the sheer contradictory context, the blandness of these passages, which read almost like album reviews in music magazines. Similarly, one of the most intensely psychological and anxious chapters in the book, A Glimpse of a Thursday Afternoon (143 147), which apparently sees Bateman on the verge of a complete mental breakdown comes out of nowhere between the U 2 concert and the Yale Club episodes. The chapter begins and ends in mid-sentence, refusing any resolution and any depth, and hence, its contextual value seems precarious.
To claim that these are simply technical or formal failings on Ellis part as Teachout does seems to be purposely misreading the novel, for the novel itself does indicate, as in the important passage from which I quote below, that its narrator views the world in a particular way, reflected in the fragmented and deathless formal style Ellis text employs: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through ones taking pleasure in a feeling or look or a gesture, or receiving another persons love or kindness Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire meaningless. Intellect is not a cure.
Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore Surface, surface, surface, was all that anyone found meaning in this was civilian...
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