European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - March 31, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Books a Amore than Gore a american psycho has a lot to say Henry  the los Angeles times h a Ere it is at last the unspeakable thing. Is there anyone in America who does not yet have an opinion t about this Book whether they have read it or not ? this is the novel Simon amp schuster refused to publish that inspired the National organization of women to Boycott not merely this title but everything to be issued in 1991 by Alfred a Knopf Parent of Vintage its new publisher that was excoriated in reviews and a think pieces Quot before it Bret Easton Ellis. Was even in the bookstores to defend itself now is your Chance. Despite rumours of heavy editing Vintage has brought out the Simon amp schuster text of a american psycho virtually unchanged All the infamy remains. It is the mid-1980s, the Boom years for Young traders and investment Bankers. Our narrator is. Patrick Bateman 26, handsome Harvard b.a., mba a Wall Street scion who wears a limitless wardrobe of designer fashions cats a Pilot fish with tulips and cinnamon buys quantities of top end audio visual equipment and offs a Blond big Quot everyone of them the Best. In Short he has does and is everything the children of Reagan were promised they could have do and be. True he a sort of alienated and also commits serial murders some of which he describes in disturbing detail but hey in deregulation you live with the bumps. Let the marketplace take care of it. What a rarely said in All the juror Over this novel is that its a satire a hilarious repulsive Boring seductive Deadpan satire of what we now Call a As if it were something in the past a the age of Reagan. The Miracle of its author Bret Easton Ellis is that without a plot without much in the Way of characters and with a throwaway non style that renders the luxurious the erotic and the grotesque in the same in inflicted drone a prose that is pure Exchange value he nevertheless makes it virtually impossible to Stop Reading. He is Abe to do this in part because he knows so Well what we want. His endless lists of Brand names Chic restaurants and thoroughly accessible hard bodies is the stuff of our fantasy life a the lower floors perhaps but we spend a lot of time there. The Book satisfies those desires in fantasy at least and keeps satisfying them until our cup run Neth Over and we re sickened by what we want and we go on wanting it anyway. Balanced against this seductiveness is the fact that Ellis is first and last a moralist. Under cover of his laconic voice every word in his three novels to Date Springs from grieving outrage at our spiritual condition. That impulse is More measured Here More withheld than in a less than Zero 1985 or a the rules of attractions 1987and the restraint turns the adolescent complaint of the earlier books into the maturer satire of this one. But in All of Ellis work the Force comes from this pairing of seduction and disgust pan Dering and judgment. Which makes it hard to understand How this Book has become such a scandal. Compared with other literary renegades from sad on who by now occupy an accepted place in the modernist Canon Ellis seems almost a Choirboy. Maybe that a his problem. Ferocious monsters Gore dripping from their grinning jaws amuse us. They tickle our own too bridled lusts and we re flattered when they ask us in William Burroughs famous line a would no to you Quot but a melancholy fiend like Bateman is a party Poopor. He gets us All worked up then Sermon izes. A american psycho has been called a sadistic Book and that a True if we mean sadism toward the Reader. Like the pc scar face Brian Depalma Ellis shoves our faces into our own appetites forcing us. To see How much Well Swallow include ing Gross implausibility is just to get off. We forgive him because he always implicates himself he Isnit looking Down on the venality of mortals he a Here in the glitzy Gutter with us. The loudest attacks have accused the novel of misogyny exploitation of and unremitting violence toward women. Yet of the 18 people not to mention assorted animals tortured and Mur a Rcd by the narrator eight Are women nine Are men and one is a Small boy of the books 400 pages fewer than 40 arc devoted to these events. In the other 360, Ellis is unusually attentive to daily instances of racism anti semitism homophobia. And he repeatedly mocks the perfunctory sexism of his upper class males. It is True that some of the torture and Dis Mem bar mint especially of the women is performed with particular Zeal. Much rage is expended therein. But hatred of women being so prevalent in our world it must surely be an appropriate subject for fiction one can imagine now demanding such books instead of boycotting them and it is difficult to conceive of anybody Reading these passages without being moved to disgust grief and finally pity. V what Ellis fully understands is the politics of social irresponsibility that electoral strategy Ini Tia  by former president Nixon but which has reached full Flower in the Reagan Bush years. A american psycho tells of the greed and soulless Ness to which we have All yielded in our Way a and that leads inexorably to gratuitous Mur Der to murder As our final expression of disgust and plea for judgment. The Book is available at stars and stripes  undue influence by Shelby Yastrow contemporary books 353 up a $19.95. All the laudatory blurbs on the jacket of a undue influence Are right on the Money. Shelby Yastrow a fascinating tale is about Money and greed and Legal mane vering. It also is written so clearly that even those who done to know a tort from a tart can follow the nits As they Are picked by a myriad of lawyers. Benjamin Stillman dropped into lawyer Philip Ogden a Chicago office one Day to write a simple will leaving All his Money to the neighbourhood synagogue. The men had no other Contact. One year later Stillman died of cancer with Ogden named to execute what the lawyer assumed would be the modest estate of a brokerage House bookkeeper. Ogden was $8 million off in his estimate. A undue influence is a Delight for anyone who likes intellectual puzzles and its just Plain fun to listen in on the games lawyers play when its Only fiction and Yastrow can guarantee that Justice will be done. A Sharon a Heller a United press International lost and found by Jim Lehrer Putnam a 222 pp., $19.95 Jim Lehrer is Best known to americans As the genial  Anchor of Public broadcasting a Mcneil Lehrer news hour but As this his sixth Book proves he is just As gifted an author As a newsman. A lost and found is the fourth Lehrer Story featuring one eyed Mack the Folksy lieutenant governor of Oklahoma who got his nickname because he lost an Eye playing kick the can. The novel starts with the disappearance of Luther Wallace speaker of the Oklahoma House of representatives. As Mack and his Friend c., the head of the Oklahoma Bureau of investigation look into Wallace a disappearance they learn that at least two other men both Marine corps buddies of the speaker have also vanished. Then they Are drawn into the probe of a mysterious wreck that kills 24 people when a trailways bus crashed into the red River on the Bridge linking Oklahoma and Texas. A. A. These Are the ingredients for a crackling Good tale and Lehrer again proves that above All he is a master storyteller. He laces his tale with lots of humor a not belly laughs but the Good chuckling kind and keeps up the suspense at a level that makes you want to keep Reading to the last Page. ,. Edgar Miller a United press International both books Are or will be. Available at stars and stripes bookstores. Page 8 b sunday March 31, 1991