American Psycho is a satirical horror novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis , published in The story is told in the first-person by Patrick Bateman , a wealthy, narcissistic, and vain Manhattan investment banker who lives a double life as a serial killer. Alison Kelly of 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 Patrick Bateman was released in to generally favorable reviews. The musical premiered at the Almeida Theatre , London in December The book has garnered notoriety for its graphic violence and has led to it being censored in multiple countries.
Bateman was crazy the same way I was. He did not come out of me sitting down and wanting to write a grand sweeping indictment of yuppie culture. It initiated because of my own isolation and alienation at a point in my life. I was living like Patrick Bateman. I was slipping into a consumerist kind of void that was supposed to give me confidence and make me feel good about myself but just made me feel worse and worse and worse about myself.
That is where the tension of American Psycho came from. It wasn't that I was going to make up this serial killer on Wall Street. High concept. It came from a much more personal place, and that's something that I've only been admitting in the last year or so.
I was so on the defensive because of the reaction to that book that I wasn't able to talk about it on that level. In an interview with November Magazine 's Emmanuel Olunkwa , Ellis notes that while on a visit to a multiplex during the mids, the theater's marquee simply read out "American Psycho", as the titles of American Anthem and Psycho III would not properly fit on it. Ellis remarks, "When I saw that, I said, 'Boom! Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late s, American Psycho follows the life of wealthy, young investment banker named Patrick Bateman.
