I’ve finished the last book I was reading, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and just picked up a new one, namely American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. It is by no means related to my author study, but it’s a book I’d been meaning to check out for a long while, so why not? The book is a tale about 80s excess taken to the extreme, and the hypocrisy and irony of the general lifestyle and society of the time.  On a deeper note, it’s a book about our secret vices, and how they play a role in shaping our society.  We follow Patrick Bateman, a wall-street golden boy, as he goes about his business while secretly indulging in his own “hobby” of sorts.  To put it simply, mass murder.  Bateman is a textbook psychopath who gets off on causing harm to others, whether out of greed, jealousy, or just for kicks. Ellis introduces us to the mind of this character brilliantly.  The story is told from a first-person perspective which Ellis does, I think, to put us into Patrick’s mind, to really understand his thought process.  He handles this with an expert hand. Throughout the first five or so pages of the book, there is only Bateman’s descriptions of what goes on around him. We get no sense of internal feelings or emotion, and not once does Ellis use the word “I” outside of dialogue.  There is one simple reason for this. Bateman has no emotions, save for the seven deadly sins.  This is an ingeniously simple way to put us in the shoes of an emotional blank slate. However, as a book centered around a completely flat protagonist is no fun, Ellis instead prefers to shape Bateman’s character through his actions and the occasional thought. So then, with such a cold character, why would Ellis decide to write the book using a first person perspective?  My theory: yes to get inside his head, but also to show us Bateman’s selfish, detached nature.  We feel distant from all the goings on in the book, as if we, like Patrick, are merely cold observers. And it works.  In addition to Ellis’s top-notch craft of his characters, what I really love about the book is the small metaphorical details he throws in. For instance, at one point they see a cop car cruising the wrong way down a one way street. I took that as a metaphor for how during the 80s in New York, those with power thought themselves above the establishment, and also how the society was sort of regressing, or going the wrong way, if you will.  In the same chapter, a sign on a bus for Les Miserables, the great operatic musical, a brilliant work of art is defaced with an offensive sexual slur, juxtaposing the beauty and high society with the ugly and awful truth of the excessive lifestyle, a theme that constantly repeats itself.  The book may be called American Psycho, but it is very much an anti-American piece about the downward state of affairs in our country and lost social values, a theme which I am also incorporating into a pretty big piece I’m planning, so it’s great to have another source of inspiration. Also, the book is just fantastically well-written, so I would definitely say check it out if you are not easily disturbed.