It wasn't that I was going to make up this serial killer on Wall Street. That is where the tension of American Psycho came from. 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. It initiated because of my own isolation and alienation at a point in my life. He did not come out of me sitting down and wanting to write a grand sweeping indictment of yuppie culture. The musical premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London in December 2013.īateman was crazy the same way I was. Producers David Johnson and Jesse Singer developed a musical adaptation for Broadway. Ī film adaptation starring Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman was released in 2000 to generally favorable reviews. Alison Kelly of The Observer notes that while 'some countries so potentially disturbing that it can only be sold shrink-wrapped', 'critics rave about it' and 'academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities'.

The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a wealthy, narcissistic, vain Manhattan investment banker who supposedly lives a double life as a serial killer. Easton Ellis is regarded as one of Generation X’s most notable literary figures, and is the host of his eponymous podcast where he interviews cultural greats from every field.Ĭlick here to read the introduction of Brett Easton Ellis and The Shards by moderator Joost de Vries.American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. As Bret’s obsession with the killer grows, he spirals into paranoia and isolation.įiltered through the imagination of a teenager gifted in constructing narratives from the threads of his own life, this mesmerizing novel is a vivid and nostalgic fusing of fact and fiction at the borderlands between the real and the imagined.īret Easton Ellis is a notable American novelist, known for his now-iconic book American Psycho (1991). In Los Angeles in the autumn of 1981, a local serial killer known only as The Trawler draws ever closer to Bret and his friends, seemingly taunting them with grotesque threats and acts of violence. A group of superficially sophisticated children not yet baptized in the ‘real world’, the lives of Bret and his friends were shattered by a series of terrible events. It centers around what happened to him and a group of friends at the end of high school, in the height of their teenage years.

In his latest novel, The Shards, Bret Easton Ellis confronts a story that had been running around his mind for decades.

American psycho by bret easton ellis