Immoralismo e angosce mimetiche: il caso di Bret Easton Ellis

When it appeared, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis engendered a strong reaction of what might be termed “mimetic anxiety” in both critics and common readers: the book was considered a dangerous and immoral tool, able to drive whoever read it into perpetrating violent deeds. In order to defend Ellis’ work from these attacks, some critics committed to demonstrating its allegoric value and its ability to criticize capitalist society. Ellis has been keeping an ambiguous stance in front of his own novel, considering it both an epochal satire of the Reagan years and a personal and even intimate tale. This article discusses the separation between the aesthetic realm and moral life by first analyzing some aspects of the controversial critical and public reception of the novel and then discussing the reworking of this controversy as explored in Lunar Park, Ellis’ only autofictional work.