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American Psycho - The Last Shocking Book?

There was an article in the LA Times this weekend (available on the web only to Calandar Live subscribers) that talks about the mainstreaming of pornography and how the 'envelope' has been pushed so far, there's nowhere left to push it. Shock is dead (tell that to Marilyn Manson).

Ellis gets dragged into this because the author feels that American Psycho was the last novel to truly shock America.

Is there such a thing as a pornographic book anymore? Morgan Entrekin, president of Grove/Atlantic, is not so sure. "The last book that shocked people was 'American Psycho,' " Entrekin says, referring to the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. "That book elicited a response of the sort you hadn't seen in 20 or 30 years. I happen to think it came from a misreading of the book. It enraged people. Bret got death threats. There were book boycotts."

Originally scheduled to publish "American Psycho," Simon & Schuster backed out of the deal. Vintage published it. The book, it should be noted, was decried mostly for its misogyny and violence. And its shock is muted now that the Internet and the World Wide Web infiltrate every corner of American culture.

The whole article is quite interesting, and true in alot of respects.