Essay: Are Men Really So Bad?

Are Men Really So Bad?

Everyone knows, more than they would like perhaps, about the nature, the publishing history and the unspeakable horrors of Bret Easton Ellis' new novel, American Psycho. However broadly it seeks to indict, in indelible, blood-red ink, the excesses and depravities of the degenerate '80s, the book has certainly raised a threshold of taste, or psychic pain, much higher than most readers would like (much as the smash movie The Silence of the Lambs exposes even toddlers to a level of psychological violence that would have been unthinkable -- or at least less powerful -- some years ago). A protagonist who eats,...

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