Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103200306
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Mike Mayo/ Book Page Editor
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Cold Fire/ By Dean R. Koontz. Putnam. $22.95.
The First Deadly Sin./ By Lawrence Sanders. Berkley. $5.50 (paper).
"American Psycho" is a bad book.
That ought to be the end of it - hundreds of bad books are published every year - but this one has become such a cause celebre that it can't be dismissed out of hand. It's getting more attention than it deserves, and almost everyone who has been associated with it has wound up looking bad. First, a little background for those who came in late:
Author Bret Easton Ellis is a member of the New York literary brat pack with two moderately successful novels to his credit: "Less Than Zero" and "The Rules of Attraction," both about alienated young people wasting their empty lives on drugs and sex. Gossip had it that his publisher was unhappy with the poor sales of his second book. But late in 1989, Simon & Schuster accepted "American Psycho" and paid Ellis $300,000. A few months later, Spy magazine published some of the more graphic bits of violence from the manuscript, and people at S&S took a more serious look at it.
According to some sources, executives at Paramount, the company that owns S&S, disapproved. For whatever reasons, though, in the fall, the publisher announced that it had decided to withdraw "American Psycho" from its list. (Ellis got to keep the money.) Knopf then bravely leapt into the breach and announced that Vintage Books would publish the novel. Soon thereafter, the Los Angeles chapter of N.O.W. called for a boycott of Knopf and Vintage based on the excerpts, not a reading of the entire novel. More recently, Norman Mailer defended the author and the book in Vanity Fair magazine.
Now, "American Psycho" is in the bookstores. Anyone willing to pony up 11 bucks and wade through 395 pages of butchery can judge Ellis' literary efforts. The book is the story of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy young New Yorker who kills men, women and children for thrills, and lists brand names (and often price) for virtually every object he encounters. His sexual quirks and perversions are described in dispassionate clinical detail, as are his baroque murders. The novel is told in the present tense. Presumably, it is meant to be taken as serious art, not slasher claptrap.
But about the best that can be said is that "American Psycho" is, at times, disgusting. Just as often though, the action is so unrealistic that it's not even disgusting. As a writer, Ellis is not good enough to get beneath the surface of his subject. He describes horror, but offers no insights into its causes, though he suggests that it's all based on greed: the Donald-Trump-Made-Me-Do-It defense.
All in all, this is a shabby story. Had the book not come from a "name" author, almost certainly Simon & Schuster wouldn't have accepted it in the first place. But, having paid for it, the publisher's most honorable course of action would have been to consign it to mid-list limbo, a small initial printing with an appropriate lack of publicity. Knopf will probably make a lot of money, and N.O.W.'s knee-jerk reaction certainly won't hurt sales, either. "American Psycho" should not be boycotted; it should be ignored. And it will be forgotten quickly.
In a curious bit of coincidence, Dean R. Koontz's best seller, "Cold Fire." is the opposite of Ellis' work. It's the story of a man who is driven by forces he cannot understand to save lives, not to take them. Jim Ironheart is subject to trancelike visions that force him to go to the scenes of impending disasters - a car accident, a gas explosion - and to rescue some of the people involved. With the help of a reporter, he attempts to find out what is happening to him and why.
For my taste, Koontz tends to be a bit slow when he's attempting to milk every drop of suspense from his big scenes, but that's a quibble. He's an inventive, yet solid, craftsman who knows how to tell a good story. And though he aims to entertain, his real purposes are just as serious as Ellis' and they have a stronger moral underpinning.
Near the beginning of "Cold Fire," Ironheart rescues a young girl from a pair of murderous child molesters. Immediately afterward, he realizes, "that what those two men had done to her - and what they wouild have done to her, given the chance - was somehow the responsibility of all men, and that at least a small stain of guilt was his as well." Ellis's novel never comes close to that kind of insight.
Also, in light of all the attention it's getting, some mention should be made of the fact that "American Psycho" is hardly breaking new ground. Lawrence Sanders told virtually the same story 17 years ago in "The First Deadly Sin." That novel paved the way for all the serial killers who inhabit popular fiction and film today. But Sanders' examination of Daniel Blank, a well-to-do young New Yorker who becomes a random murderer, has yet to be equalled. His descent into madness, and its sexual consequences, are thoroughly fascinating. It's a complex, richly deatailed novel that's well worth another reading. Forget Ellis' overhyped, trendy excesses. Pick up a copy of Sanders' masterpiece in a library or seconf-hand paperback store, and unplug the TV.
by CNB