Author Bret Easton Ellis: An Artist in Motion

When American Psycho was first released in 1991, to a tumultuous frenzy of readers both balking and rejoicing at the celebration of violence and rage in one of Ellis's most classic work, the American public was exposed to an otherwise modestly-known Los Angeles author with a unique style and epicly Dickensian wit. His penchant for anti-materialism and lamentation for America's upper class had lead some to comment that he was becoming a simple, one-track author. His two previous works, Less than Zero (1985) and The Rules of Attraction (1987), were both relatively non-assuming interior analyses of the rich, college-age American, and so it was a surprise to some critics that, in Psycho, Ellis's characters had not only grown up, they had shed their introversions in favor of sweeping social archetypes. But what did this represent for Ellis's development? Where has he gone since then? And where will he be going in the future?

Ellis's ability to evolve as a writer is astounding. Just when it seems he is becoming bogged down in the youth-drugs-sex-money culture of Los Angeles, American Psycho comes out and everything changes. Instead of merely recognizing the existence of superficiality in high society, as with his Los Angeles works, Psycho explores what it means in terms of us, as people. He shows us what happens to the soul of a man when the weight of appearances and greed deplete him of all emotion. His Patrick Batement character, immortalized by Christian Bale's stellar performance in the 2000 movie adaptation of Psycho, thus beomes a figure for us, for all the darkness that grows inside us when our environment becomes as passive-oppressive as that of Ellis's New York.