Psyched on ‘Psycho’

Has Amy Wallace actually read Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho” (“Is It a Deal? Maybe, Maybe Not,” June 4)? It is fairly clear to any discerning reader that it is a vicious satire on America in the ‘80s--you could substitute an E for the final O in the title, which surely was an intentional pun by the author, to get an accurate summary of the book.

Wallace’s article dismisses Ellis’ novel as “a catalog of brutal killings,” suggesting that the screenwriters somehow infused the material with socially redeeming significance. The satire was already there in abundance--to me, there is no greater novel that sums up the greed, vanity and hypocrisy of the United States in the 1980s than “American Psycho.”

It is doubtful that any Hollywood movie will be able to successfully present the dreamlike confusion of reality and hallucination that pervades “American Psycho.” If anything good comes of this project, it will be that this underrated book gains the larger readership it so justly deserves.

CHRISTIAN HERTZOG, San Diego