'Something I think about when I'm watching things like Olympic meets,' Andy Warhol wrote, 'is When will a person not break a record? If somebody runs at 2.2, does that mean that people will next be able to do it at 2.1 and 2.0 and 1.9 and so on until they can do it in 0.0? So at what point will they not break a record? Will they have to change the time or change the record?' The line of inquiry might be applied to Bret Easton Ellis (for one), who, in pushing to the limit the current parameters of literary transgression, effectively landed us in the vicinity of zero with his last book, American Psycho:

LRB 10 November 1994 | PDF Download