Sherman McCoy, Where Are You?

Bret Easton Ellis, author of Less Than Zero and a leader of Manhattan's literary brat pack, has a novel due out next February that is already causing controversy. Staff members at Simon & Schuster who have read the manuscript, titled American Psycho, say it chronicles a young Wall Street banker who is involved in sexual perversities, murders, mutilations and diverse other grotesqueries and degradations. Robert Asahina, Ellis' editor, allows, "It is a book that can be at times upsetting to read." Some are so upset that they have balked at working on the novel. But Ellis has his defenders, one of...

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