Would American Psycho be published today? How shocking books have changed with their readers | Books | The Guardian

Bret Easton Ellis received 13 death threats before American Psycho was even published. He had to sign a declaration saying he had read them all. That way, if somebody did murder him, his parents couldn't sue the publisher. This was in 1991. "I would not have the impulse to write that book again," Ellis says now, during a visit to the Guardian. "It came from that time and place ... And does anyone remember that there was no one there for me at all? I had to pretty much go through a trial by fire on my own."