American Psycho – an Audiobook Review

I started listening to this audiobook a couple of weeks ago, and I have gotten steadily more disgusted with it as the time passed.  I still have about half an hour left, and I’m deleting it.  I would never have gotten that time back.

Seriously.  I have now read maybe a dozen reviews of this book.  Some try to call it a satire.  One guy says it’s just a poorly edited fantasy.  People say – there’s way more degrading violence to women in “Silence of the Lambs,” or try to say it’s just a commentary on our times.

I am running up the bullshit flag.  Any of the above stated goals could be achieved without describing in detail making a woman eat a chocolate covered urinal cake, or describing in even more vivid detail ripping flesh from all imaginable body parts with the teeth.  You can almost imagine the author sitting there and going… and then he YEAH!  and then YEAH!  It’s not a satire, it’s an exercise in how far an author can go with gratuitous, pointless descriptions of acts that aren’t really unspeakable, because in a lot of cases they aren’t even possible.

That we would sit around and try to find some artistic reason not to call a naked emperor for his lack of clothing sickens me.  If you have to try as hard as reviewers and critics have tried to find the “deep hidden meaning” or the justification behind “American Psycho,” or any other work of fiction, it is not an indicator that all of the reviewers and critics are less intelligent than the author.  It’s an indication that there’s nothing there to be found.

Satire could have been accomplished in the same way the aforementioned Silence of the Lambs accomplished terror – with some subtlety and craft.  For those who consider it a “fantasy,” I have to say – really?  Never had any fantasies remotely as over-the-top as that.  I’m not a squeamish reader, and I seldom hold back in my writing, but this book just gives me headaches with its pointless, detailed depravity.  If you want to call it art, be my guest.  Prop it up next to the silly-assed art by that guy who did “Piss Christ”  – the emperor has no clothes, and just because someone has a sick mental image to share doesn’t make it art.  Calling it a “modern classic” don’t make it so, Joe.

This same story – handled with any sort of utensil other than a literary chainsaw – might have served a purpose.  If nothing else you could clip out parts and use them as a GQ guide for how men dressed in the days when Sony Walkmen were “hip”.  I don’t know the author, but I did hear an interview with him before I read the book.

Some reviewers say it is clearly a story about a real killer.  Others say it’s all in Bateman’s head.  The author himself says he never could make up his mind, though I doubt that.  I think he feeds the argument because it keeps things “alive” for the book, and it makes the work seem more “artistic” if people debate over the whether the events are supposed to have happened, or not. I say it doesn’t matter, because there is nothing useful gained by sharing Bateman’s acts, or fantasies – whichever they are.

The narrator, oddly, is compelling and very good. If I ever hear him narrate again, I hope I can keep this silly thing out of my head.

I give this no stars at all. I do not recommend it even slightly.  It will be the first audio book in the history of my listening to audio books, that I will delete without finishing and just eat the cover price.

–DNW