The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement- wrote James Truslow Adams in Epic Of America' 1931. .
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas- sees Raoul Duke and his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, on an assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert. But the drug-a-delic duo stumble through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream. They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter, as he writes from his own personal experiences.
American Psycho' deals explicitly with sex and violence, the main style of the novel is the satirisation of the American Dream, as twisted by the excesses of the 1980s. Patrick Bateman's (the somewhat twisted protagonist') habitat are the offices, restaurants and nightclubs of Upper East Side Manhattan. Yuppiedom is at its most intense, and Ellis makes this clear with his presentation of characters and situations. People are described, not by physical characteristics or personality, but by the designer-label clothes they wear:.
"Dibble is wearing a subtly striped double-breasted wool suit by .
Canali Milano, a cotton shirt by Bill Blass, a mini-glen-plaid woven .
silk tie byBill Blass Signature and he's holding a Missoni Uomo .
raincoat. He has A good looking, expensive haircut and I stare at it, .
admiringly, while He starts humming along to the musak station."" .
(p63).
Also included are continuous descriptions of restaurant menus, audio technology and television and video units, each with their expense high-lighted (As Ellis notes through Bateman, Surface surface surface was all that anyone found meaning in.