Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

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Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho is a fictional novel set in New York City in
the late 1980s. Patrick Bateman, its protagonist and narrator, is a Wall Street Golden Boy
who is also a brutal psychopath and gruesome murderer. The totally uninflected first-
person narrative unfolds in a precise, detailed, and seemingly objective fashion. All
traces of affect and any references to feeling are stripped away from his voice, a voice
which seems to indicate that in Bateman’s mind, the line between consciousness and
unconsciousness seems to be blurred. This is amplified by the ambivalent relationship
between reality and fiction that characterizes American Psycho, an ambiguity which
becomes particularly prominent—and rather mystifying—at various moments throughout
the novel. Consequently, Bateman’s interior monologue could be described as stream of
both consciousness and unconsciousness. What is particularly remarkable, and perhaps
even shocking or disturbing, is that while the text clearly represents what Michael
Bakhtin calls a heteroglossia of speeches, Bateman displays the same matter-of-fact
affective filter to describe in detail music albums, waking up and exercise routines,
clothing, and restaurant scenes, as well as his barbarous acts of mutilation and murder.
Because of its matter-of-fact descriptions of graphic violence, American
Psycho was surrounded by much controversy even before its release in 1991 by Vintage
Contemporaries. Upon receiving the manuscript Simon & Schuster, the publisher of
Ellis’ previous books, withdrew from its engagement (and forfeited a $300,000 advance)
to publish and distribute American Psycho, fearing a national uproar over the novel’s
overtly explicit scenes of sexual violence. The novel’s meticulous and uninflected prose
was construed by a considerable contingent of readers and reviewers as reflecting a total
lack of decency and morality. Some of the most controversial excerpts of the book had