In computer operating systems, paging is one of the memory-management schemes by which a computer can store and retrieve data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In the paging memory-management scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage in same-size blocks called pages. The main advantage of paging over memory segmentation is that it allows the physical address space of a process to be noncontiguous. Before the time paging was used, systems had to fit whole programs into storage contiguously, which caused various storage and fragmentation problems.^[1]

Paging is an important part of virtual memory implementation in most contemporary general-purpose operating systems, allowing them to use disk storage for data that does not fit into physical random-access memory (RAM).

Overview[link]

The main functions of paging are performed when a program tries to access pages that are not currently mapped to physical memory (RAM). This situation is known as a page fault. The operating system must then take control and handle the page fault, in a manner invisible to the program. Therefore, the operating system must:

1. Determine the location of the data in auxiliary storage.
2. Obtain an empty page frame in RAM to use as a container for the data.
3. Load the requested data into the available page frame.
4. Update the page table to show the new data.
5. Return control to the program, transparently retrying the instruction that caused the page fault.

Until there is not enough RAM to store all the data needed, the process of obtaining an empty page frame does not involve removing another page from RAM. If all page frames are non-empty, obtaining an empty page frame requires choosing a page frame containing data to empty. If the data in that page frame has been modified since it was read into RAM (i.e., if it has become "dirty"), it must be written back to its location in secondary storage before being freed; otherwise, the contents of the page's page frame in RAM are the same as the contents of the page in secondary storage, so it does not need to be written back to secondary storage. If a reference is then made to that page, a page fault will occur, and an empty page frame must be obtained and the contents of the page in secondary storage again read into that page frame.

Efficient paging systems must determine the page frame to empty by choosing one that is least likely to be needed within a short time. There are various page replacement algorithms that try to do this. Most operating systems use some approximation of the least recently used (LRU) page replacement algorithm (the LRU itself cannot be implemented on the current hardware) or a working set-based algorithm.

To further increase responsiveness, paging systems may employ various strategies to predict which pages will be needed soon. Such systems will attempt to load pages into main memory preemptively, before a program references them.

Page replacement algorithms[link]

Demand paging[link]

When pure demand paging is used, page loading only occurs at the time of the data request, and not before. In particular, when a demand pager is used, a program usually begins execution with none of its pages pre-loaded in RAM. Pages are copied from the executable file into RAM the first time the executing code references them, usually in response to page faults. As a consequence, pages of the executable file containing code not executed during a particular run will never be loaded into memory.

Anticipatory paging[link]

This technique, sometimes called "swap prefetch", preloads a process's non-resident pages that are likely to be referenced in the near future (taking advantage of locality of reference). Such strategies attempt to reduce the number of page faults a process experiences. Some of those strategies are "if a program references one virtual address which causes a page fault, perhaps the next few pages' worth of virtual address space will soon be used" and "if one big program just finished execution, leaving lots of free RAM, perhaps the user will return to using some of the programs that were recently paged out".

Free page queue[link]

The free page queue is a list of page frames that are available for assignment after a page fault. Some operating systems^{[NB 1]} support page reclamation; if a page fault occurs for a page that had been stolen and the page frame was never reassigned, then the operating system avoids the necessity of reading the page back in by assigning the unmodified page frame.

Page stealing[link]

Some operating systems periodically look for pages that have not been recently referenced and add them to the Free page queue, after paging them out if they have been modified.

Pre-cleaning[link]

Unix operating systems periodically use sync to pre-clean all dirty pages, that is, to save all modified pages to hard disk. Windows operating systems do the same thing via "modified page writer" threads.

Pre-cleaning makes starting a new program or opening a new data file much faster. The hard drive can immediately seek to that file and consecutively read the whole file into pre-cleaned page frames. Without pre-cleaning, the hard drive is forced to seek back and forth between writing a dirty page frame to disk, and then reading the next page of the file into that frame.

Thrashing[link]

Most programs reach a steady state in their demand for memory locality both in terms of instructions fetched and data being accessed. This steady state is usually much less than the total memory required by the program. This steady state is sometimes referred to as the working set: the set of memory pages that are most frequently accessed.

Virtual memory systems work most efficiently when the ratio of the working set to the total number of pages that can be stored in RAM is low enough that the time spent resolving page faults is not a dominant factor in the workload's performance. A program that works with huge data structures will sometimes require a working set that is too large to be efficiently managed by the page system resulting in constant page faults that drastically slow down the system. This condition is referred to as thrashing: pages are swapped out and then accessed causing frequent faults.

An interesting characteristic of thrashing is that as the working set grows, there is very little increase in the number of faults until the critical point (when faults go up dramatically and the majority of the system's processing power is spent on handling them).

An extreme example of this sort of situation occurred on the IBM System/360 Model 67 and IBM System/370 series mainframe computers, in which a particular instruction could consist of an execute instruction, which crosses a page boundary, that the instruction points to a move instruction, that itself also crosses a page boundary, targeting a move of data from a source that crosses a page boundary, to a target of data that also crosses a page boundary. The total number of pages thus being used by this particular instruction is eight, and all eight pages must be present in memory at the same time. If the operating system will allocate less than eight pages of actual memory in this example, when it attempts to swap out some part of the instruction or data to bring in the remainder, the instruction will again page fault, and it will thrash on every attempt to restart the failing instruction.

To decrease excessive paging, and thus possibly resolve thrashing problem, a user can do any of the following:

• Increase the amount of RAM in the computer (generally the best long-term solution).
• Decrease the number of programs being concurrently run on the computer.

The term thrashing is also used in contexts other than virtual memory systems, for example to describe cache issues in computing or silly window syndrome in networking.

Terminology[link]

Historically, paging sometimes referred to a memory allocation scheme that used fixed-length pages as opposed to variable-length segments, without implicit suggestion that virtual memory techniques were employed at all or that those pages were transferred to disk.^{[2] [3]} Such usage is rare today.

Some modern systems use the term swapping along with paging. Historically, swapping referred to moving from/to secondary storage a whole program at a time, in a scheme known as roll-in/roll-out. ^{[4] [5]} In the 1960s, after the concept of virtual memory was introduced—in two variants, either using segments or pages—the term swapping was applied to moving, respectively, either segments or pages, between disk and memory. Today with the virtual memory mostly based on pages, not segments, swapping became a fairly close synonym of paging, although with one difference.^{[dubious – discuss]}

In systems that support memory-mapped files, when a page fault occurs, a page may be then transferred to or from any ordinary disk file, not necessarily a dedicated space. Page in is transferring a page from the disk to RAM. Page out is transferring a page from RAM to the disk. Swap in and out only refer to transferring pages between RAM and dedicated swap space or swap file or scratch disk space, and not any other place on disk.

On Windows NT based systems, dedicated swap space is known as a page file and paging/swapping are often used interchangeably.

Implementations[link]

Ferranti Atlas[link]

The first computer to support paging was the Atlas,^[6][7][8] jointly developed by Ferranti, the University of Manchester and Plessey. The machine had an associative (content-addressable) memory with one entry for each 512 word page. The Supervisor^[9] handled non-equivalence interruptions^{[NB 2]} and managed the transfer of pages between core and drum in order to provide a one-level store^[10] to programs.

Windows 3.x and Windows 9x[link]

Virtual memory has been a feature of Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.0 in 1990. Microsoft introduced virtual memory in response to the failures of Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0, attempting to slash resource requirements for the operating system.

Confusion abounds about Microsoft's decision to refer to the swap file as "virtual memory". Novices unfamiliar with the concept accept this definition without question, and speak of adjusting Windows' virtual memory size. In fact every process has a fixed, unchangeable virtual memory size, usually 2 GB. The user only has the option to change disk capacity dedicated to paging.

Windows 3.x creates a hidden file named 386SPART.PAR or WIN386.SWP for use as a swap file. It is generally found in the root directory, but it may appear elsewhere (typically in the WINDOWS directory). Its size depends on how much swap space the system has (a setting selected by the user under Control Panel → Enhanced under "Virtual Memory".) If the user moves or deletes this file, a blue screen will appear the next time Windows is started, with the error message "The permanent swap file is corrupt". The user will be prompted to choose whether or not to delete the file (whether or not it exists).

Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me use a similar file, and the settings for it are located under Control Panel → System → Performance tab → Virtual Memory. Windows automatically sets the size of the page file to start at 1.5× the size of physical memory, and expand up to 3× physical memory if necessary. If a user runs memory-intensive applications on a system with low physical memory, it is preferable to manually set these sizes to a value higher than default.

Windows NT[link]

In NT-based versions of Windows (such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7), the file used for paging is named pagefile.sys. The default location of the page file is in the root directory of the partition where Windows is installed. Windows can be configured to use free space on any available drives for pagefiles. It is required, however, for the boot partition (i.e. the drive containing the Windows directory) to have a pagefile on it if the system is configured to write either kernel or full memory dumps after a crash. Windows uses the paging file as temporary storage for the memory dump. When the system is rebooted, Windows copies the memory dump from the pagefile to a separate file and frees the space that was used in the pagefile.^[11]

Fragmentation[link]

In Windows' default configuration the pagefile is allowed to expand beyond its initial allocation when necessary. If this happens gradually, it can become heavily fragmented which can potentially cause performance problems.^[12] The common advice given to avoid this is to set a single "locked" pagefile size so that Windows will not expand it. However, the pagefile only expands when it has been filled, which, in its default configuration, is 150% the total amount of physical memory.^[13] Thus the total demand for pagefile-backed virtual memory must exceed 250% of the computer's physical memory before the pagefile will expand.

The fragmentation of the pagefile that occurs when it expands is temporary. As soon as the expanded regions are no longer in use (at the next reboot, if not sooner) the additional disk space allocations are freed and the pagefile is back to its original state.

Locking a page file's size can be problematic in the case that a Windows application requests more memory than the total size of physical memory and the page file. In this case, requests to allocate memory fail, which may cause applications and system processes to fail. Supporters of this view will note that the page file is rarely read or written in sequential order, so the performance advantage of having a completely sequential page file is minimal. However, it is generally agreed that a large page file will allow use of memory-heavy applications, and there is no penalty except that more disk space is used.

The extra disk space may be trivial on systems using current specifications, i.e. a system with 3 GB of memory having a 6 gigabyte fixed-size swap file on a computer with a 750 GB disk drive, or a system with 6 GB of memory/16 GB fixed swap and 2 TB of disk space, in both cases the system is using about 8/10 of 1% of the disk space with the swap file pre-extended to maximum.

Defragmenting the page file is also occasionally recommended to improve performance when a Windows system is chronically using much more memory than its total physical memory.^{[citation needed]} This view ignores the fact that, aside from the temporary results of expansion, the pagefile does not become fragmented over time. In general, performance concerns related to pagefile access are much more effectively dealt with by adding more physical memory.

Unix and Unix-like systems[link]

Unix systems, and other Unix-like operating systems, use the term "swap" to describe both the act of moving memory pages between RAM and disk, and the region of a disk the pages are stored on. In some of those systems, it is common to dedicate an entire partition of a hard disk to swapping. These partitions are called swap partitions. Many systems have an entire hard drive dedicated to swapping, separate from the data drive(s), containing only a swap partition. A hard drive dedicated to swapping is called a "swap drive" or a "scratch drive" or a "scratch disk". Some of those systems only support swapping to a swap partition; others also support swapping to files.

Linux[link]

From a software point of view with the 2.6 Linux kernel, swap files are just as fast^[14][15] as swap partitions. The kernel keeps a map of where the swap file exists, and accesses the disk directly, bypassing caching and filesystem overhead.^[15] Red Hat recommends using a swap partition.^[16] With a swap partition one can choose where on the disk it resides and place it where the disk throughput is highest. The administrative flexibility of swap files can outweigh the other advantages of swap partitions. For example, a swap file can be placed on any drive, can be set to any desired size, and can be added or changed as needed. A swap partition, however, requires that it be set for the entire hard drive, and for most hard drives there are a maximum of 4 partitions, and once the size of a swap partition is set, it can't be changed without using tools to resize the entire drive. Also, if the particular computer is intended to run more than one operating system (a process called multi-boot) it reduces the number of systems that can be used on that machine.

Linux supports using a virtually unlimited number of swapping devices, each of which can be assigned a priority. When the operating system needs to swap pages out of physical memory, it uses the highest-priority device with free space. If multiple devices are assigned the same priority, they are used in a fashion similar to level 0 RAID arrangements. This provides improved performance as long as the devices can be accessed efficiently in parallel. Therefore, care should be taken assigning the priorities. For example, swaps located on the same physical disk should not be used in parallel, but in order ranging from the fastest to the slowest (i.e.: the fastest having the highest priority).

OS X[link]

OS X uses multiple swap files. The default (and Apple-recommended) installation places them on the root partition, though is possible to place them instead on a separate partition or device.^[17]

Solaris[link]

Solaris allows swapping to raw disk slices as well as files. The traditional method is to use slice 1 (i.e. the second slice) on the OS disk to house swap. Swap setup is managed by the system boot process if there are entries in the "vfstab" file, but can also be managed manually through the use of the "swap" command. While it is possible to remove, at runtime, all swap from a lightly loaded system, Sun does not recommend it.^{[citation needed]} Recent additions to the ZFS file system allow creation of ZFS devices that can be used as swap partitions. Swapping to normal files on ZFS file systems is not supported.^{[citation needed]}

AmigaOS 4[link]

AmigaOS 4.0 introduced a new system for allocating RAM and defragmenting physical memory. It still uses flat shared address space that cannot be defragmented. It is based on slab allocation method and paging memory that allows swapping. Paging was implemented in AmigaOS 4.1 but may lock up system if all physical memory is used up.^[18] Swap memory could be activated and deactivated any moment allowing the user to choose to use only physical RAM.

Performance[link]

The backing store for a virtual memory operating system is typically many orders of magnitude slower than RAM. Additionally, using mechanical storage devices introduces delay, several milliseconds for a harddisk. Therefore it is desirable to reduce or eliminate swapping, where practical. Some operating systems offer settings to influence the kernel's decisions.

1. Linux offers the /proc/sys/vm/swappiness parameter, which changes the balance between swapping out runtime memory, as opposed to dropping pages from the system page cache.
2. Windows 2000, XP, and Vista offer the DisablePagingExecutive registry setting, which controls whether kernel-mode code and data can be eligible for paging out.
3. Mainframe computers frequently used head-per-track disk drives or drums for page and swap storage to eliminate seek time, and several technologies^[19] to have multiple concurrent requests to the same device in order to reduce rotational latency.
4. Flash memory has a finite number of erase-write cycles, (see Limitations of flash memory), and the smallest amount of data that can be erased at once might be very large (128 KiB for an Intel X25-M SSD ^[20]), seldom coinciding with pagesize. Therefore, flash memory may wear out quickly if used as swap space under tight memory conditions. On the attractive side, flash memory is practically delayless compared to harddisks, and not volatile as RAM chips. Schemes like ReadyBoost and Intel Turbo Memory are made to exploit these characteristics.

Many Unix-like operating systems (for example AIX, Linux and Solaris) allow using multiple storage devices for swap space in parallel, to increase performance.

Tuning swap space size[link]

In some older virtual memory operating systems, space in swap backing store is reserved when programs allocate memory for runtime data. OS vendors typically issue guidelines about how much swap space should be allocated.

Reliability[link]

Swapping can decrease system reliability by some amount. If swapped data gets corrupted on the disk (or at any other location, or during transfer), the memory will also have incorrect contents after the data has later been returned.

Addressing limits on 32-bit hardware[link]

Paging is one way of allowing the size of the addresses used by a process—the process's "virtual address space" or "logical address space" -- to be different from the amount of main memory actually installed on a particular computer—the physical address space.

Main memory smaller than virtual memory[link]

In most systems, the size of a process's virtual address space is much larger than the available main memory.^[21]

In these systems, the amount of main memory used by a process is, at most, the amount of physical main memory available. The amount of physical main memory available is limited by the number of address bits on the address bus that connects the CPU to main memory—for example, the 68000 CPU, and the i386SX CPU, both internally use 32-bit virtual addresses, but both have only 24 pins connected to the address bus, limiting addressing to at most 16 MB of physical main memory.

Even on systems that have the same or more physical address bits as virtual address bits, often the actual amount of physical main memory installed is much less than the size that can potentially be addressed, for financial reasons or because the hardware address map reserves large regions for I/O or other hardware features, so main memory cannot be placed in those regions.

Main memory the same size as virtual memory[link]

It is not uncommon to find 32-bit computers with 4 GB of RAM, the maximum amount addressable without the use of, e.g., PAE. For some machines, e.g., the IBM S/370 in XA mode, the upper bit was not part of the address and only 2 GB could be addressed.

Paging and swap space can be used beyond this 4 GB limit, due to it being addressed in terms of disk locations rather than memory addresses.

While 32-bit programs on machines with linear address spaces will continue to be limited to the 4 GB they're capable of addressing, because they each exist in their own virtual address space, a group of programs can together grow beyond this limit.

The size of the cumulative total of virtual address spaces is still limited by the number of "process ID bits" supported in the page table.

On machines with segment registers, e.g., the access registers on an IBM System/370 in ESA mode,^[22] the address space size is limited only by OS constraints, e.g., the need to fit the mapping tables into the available storage.

Main memory larger than virtual address space[link]

A few computers have a main memory larger than the virtual address space of a process, such as the Magic-1, some PDP-11 machines, and some 32-bit processors with Physical Address Extension.^[21]

This nullifies the main advantage of virtual memory, since a single process can't use more main memory than the amount of its virtual address space. Such systems often use paging techniques to obtain secondary benefits:

• The "extra memory" can be used in the page cache to cache frequently used files and metadata, such as directory information, from secondary storage.
• With a processor that supports multiple virtual address spaces (typically by using "process ID bits"), the "extra memory" can be used to run more processes. Paging allows the cumulative total of virtual address spaces to exceed physical main memory.

The size of the cumulative total of virtual address spaces is still limited by the number of "process ID bits" supported in the page table, or by the amount of secondary storage available.

See also[link]

• Physical memory, a subject of paging
• Virtual memory, an abstraction that paging may create
• Demand paging, a "lazy" paging scheme
• Page cache, a disk cache that utilizes virtual memory mechanism
• Page replacement algorithm
• Segmentation (memory)
• Page size
• Page table
• Memory allocation

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Windows Server - Moving Pagefile to another partition or disk by David Nudelman
• How Virtual Memory Works from HowStuffWorks.com (in fact explains only swapping concept, and not virtual memory concept)
• Linux swap space management (outdated, as the author admits)
• Guide On Optimizing Virtual Memory Speed (outdated, and contradicts section 1.4 of this wiki page, and (at least) references 8, 9, and 11.)
• Virtual Memory Page Replacement Algorithms
• Windows XP. How to manually change the size of the virtual memory paging file
• Windows XP. Factors that may deplete the supply of paged pool memory
• SwapFs driver that can be used to save the paging file of Windows on a swap partition of Linux.

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Patrick Bateman is a fictional character, the antihero^[1][2] and narrator of the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and its film adaptation. He has also briefly appeared in other Ellis novels.

Biography and profile[link]

When he is first introduced in Ellis' novel, young investment banker Patrick Bateman's "mask of sanity" is about to slip, according to his own admission. Bateman works as a specialist in mergers and acquisitions at the fictional Wall Street investment firm of Pierce & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's firm in The Bonfire of the Vanities) and lives at 55 West 81st Street, Upper West Side in the American Gardens Building (where he is a neighbor of actor Tom Cruise). In his "secret life", however, Bateman is a serial killer who murders a variety of people, from colleagues, to the homeless, to prostitutes. His crimes, including rape, torture, murder, necrophilia and cannibalism, are described in graphic detail in the novel.

Bateman comes from a wealthy family. His parents have a house on Long Island, and he mentions a summer house in Newport. His parents divorced sometime earlier, while his mother became sick and now resides at a sanatorium. His father, who first appeared in Ellis' preceding novel The Rules of Attraction, grew up on an estate in Connecticut, and now owns an apartment in the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, although he was apparently dying in the previous novel and, unlike his ex-wife, is mentioned only in past tense during the novel. His younger brother Sean attends Camden College (and is a protagonist of The Rules of Attraction). Bateman attended Phillips Exeter Academy for prep school. He graduated from Harvard University in 1984, and Harvard Business School two years later and moved to New York City.

Personality[link]

As written by Ellis, Bateman is the ultimate stereotype of yuppie greed: rich, shallow, and addicted to sex, drugs, and conspicuous consumption. All of his friends look alike to him, to the point that he often confuses one for another, and they often confuse him for other people. Bateman takes delight in obsessively detailing virtually every single feature of his always designer clothes, workout routine, business cards, alcoholic drinks, as well as his elaborate high-end stereo and home theater sound system. He is engaged to an equally rich, shallow woman named Evelyn Williams. They can't stand each other, but they stay together for the sake of their social lives. He has a mistress on the side (the fiancee of a gay colleague whom he holds in great contempt and who makes repeated, hapless sexual advances towards Bateman) and has regular liaisons with prostitutes and women he encounters at clubs, many of whom end up being his victims. The one woman (and possibly the one person) in his life he has anything approaching feelings for is his secretary, Jean. He just cannot bring himself to seduce, rape or kill her, perhaps because she is the only person in his life who is not completely shallow. Every time he mentions Jean throughout the novel, he casually acknowledges her as "Jean, my secretary who is in love with me" and introduces her in the narration as someone whom he "will probably end up married to someday".

Bateman kills many of his victims because they make him feel inadequate, usually by having better taste than he does. His friends mock him as the "boy next door", his own lawyer refers to him as a "bloody ass-kisser... a brown-nosing goody-goody", and he is often dismissed as "yuppie trash" by people outside of his social circle.

Bateman often expresses doubts regarding his own sanity and he has periodic attacks of psychosis, during which he hallucinates. He often experiences feelings of depersonalization. In his own words, "although I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel my flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there." Although Bateman often claims that he is devoid of emotion, he also describes experiencing moments of extreme rage, panic or grief - being on the "verge of tears" - often over trivial inconveniences such as remembering to return videotapes or trying to obtain reservations. In the middle of dismembering a victim, he breaks down, sobbing that he "just wants to be loved". He takes psychotropics, like Xanax, to get these attacks under control.

Bateman compensates for these insecurities through obsessive vanity and personal grooming, with unwavering attention to detail. He dresses in and uses the most fashionable, expensive clothing and accessories possible (e.g. Salvatore Ferragamo and Valentino suits, Oliver Peoples glasses and Jean Paul Gaultier, Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta leather goods) as a means of effecting some "control" over his otherwise chaotic life. Likewise, he categorizes people by what they wear and how they look because they are more easily "understood" in terms of labels and stereotypes. Bateman's apartment also is firmly controlled in terms of look and taste, with the latest music, food, and art.

Bateman kills more or less indiscriminately, with no preferred type of victim and no consistent or preferred method of killing. Throughout the novel, he kills men, women, a child, and animals. He kills women mostly for sadistic sexual pleasure, often during or just after sex, and is also a prolific rapist. He kills men because they anger or annoy him, and the child just to see if he would enjoy it (he did not).

Periodically, he matter-of-factly confesses his crimes to his friends, co-workers, and even complete strangers ("I'm utterly insane", "I like to dissect girls") just to see if they are actually listening to him. They either are not or they think that he is joking. In the movie's climactic scene, Bateman calls his lawyer and leaves a lengthy, detailed message confessing all of his crimes. He later runs into his lawyer, who mistakes him for someone else and dismisses the confession as a joke.

[edit] Outside of American Psycho

Bateman made his first appearance in Ellis' 1987 novel The Rules of Attraction (in which Sean, his brother, is the main character); no indication is given that he is a serial killer. Bateman also makes a short appearance in Ellis' 1998 novel Glamorama, with "strange stains" on the lapel of his Armani suit and Victor mentions "He has a coat-of-arms, baby".

Bateman also appeared in the American Psycho 2000 e-mails (transcribed here), which were written as an advertisement campaign for the movie. Although they are often mistakenly credited to Ellis, they were actually written by one or more unnamed author(s) and approved by Ellis before being sent out. American Psycho 2000 served as a sort of "e-quel" to the original novel. The e-mails take place in 2000, a little over a decade since the novel. Bateman is in therapy with a Dr. M. He is also married to Jean, his former secretary. They have a son, Patrick Bateman Jr. (P.B.), who is eight years old. In the story, Bateman talks about therapy, trying to get a divorce from Jean, his renewed feelings about murder, and idolizing his son. In the end, it is revealed that the 'real' Bateman, who 'writes' the e-mails, is the owner of the company that produces the movie.

Bateman appeared in Ellis' 2005 novel Lunar Park, in which the fictionalised Bret Easton Ellis confesses that writing American Psycho felt like channeling the words of a violent spirit rather than writing anything himself. This ghost—Bateman—haunts Ellis' home. A character also comes to Ellis' Halloween party dressed as Patrick Bateman, and a copycat killer is seemingly patterning himself on Bateman. Toward the novel's end, Ellis writes the 'last' Bateman story as a way of confronting and controlling the character, as well as the issues Ellis created Bateman as a means of countering. Bateman, for all intents and purposes, dies in a fire on a boat dock.

In film[link]

Though Christian Bale had been the first choice for the part by both Ellis and Harron, the producers offered the part to Keanu Reeves, Edward Norton, and Brad Pitt. Leonardo DiCaprio was set to play the character, but Ellis (as explained in the American Psycho DVD) decided he was too young, especially immediately after Titanic. Bateman was also portrayed by Dechen Thurman (brother of Uma) in the 2000 documentary This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis. Michael Kremko played Bateman in the spin-off American Psycho 2, in which the character is killed by a would-be victim. This sequel has, however, no connections to the previous film and has been denounced by Ellis.

Scenes with the character were shot for the 2002 film adaptation of The Rules of Attraction. Ellis revealed in an interview that director Roger Avary asked Bale to reprise the role, but Bale turned down the offer, and Avary asked Ellis himself to portray Bateman. Ellis refused, stating that he "thought it was such a terrible and gimmicky idea", and Avary eventually shot the scenes with Casper Van Dien. The scenes, however, were ultimately cut from the final version of the film.

In a 2009 interview with Black Book, director Mary Harron said, "We talked about how Martian-like [the character] Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave, and then one day [Christian] called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy."^[3]

Chronology[link]

• October, 1962: Patrick Bateman is born.^[4]
• 1980: Bateman graduates from Phillips Exeter Academy.
• 1984: Bateman graduates from Harvard University.
• 1985: Bateman has a short discussion with his estranged brother Sean about his future.
• 1988: Bateman graduates from Harvard Business School.
  • From the time of his graduation, through the end of American Psycho, Bateman works at Pierce & Pierce.
• ca. 1999: Bateman shows up at Victor's club in Glamorama with "strange stains" on his suit.
• 2000: Bateman enters therapy with a Dr. M. This appears in the American Psycho 2000 e-mails. In these emails, he is divorcing Jean, to whom he has been married for at least five years, and has a son with. He has started his own brokerage firm and seems to be even richer than he was in the original novel. His tastes are even more rarefied. His homicidal tendencies (or thoughts) seem to have cooled a little with the birth of his son and has generally mellowed as he has gotten older, but have not disappeared completely.
• 2003: Ellis kills off Patrick Bateman by writing an account of the serial killer being trapped in a pier fire. See Lunar Park.

References[link]

• IMDB, Internet Movie Database, IMDB.com, 1/17/07, Pg. 4 Para 5

External links[link]

• Patrick Bateman at the Internet Movie Database

Walter Carl Becker (born February 20, 1950 in Queens, New York) is an American musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the co-founder, guitarist, bassist and co-songwriter in Steely Dan.

Becker met his future songwriting partner Donald Fagen while studying at Bard College. After a brief period of activity in New York, the two relocated to California in 1971 and formed the nucleus of Steely Dan, who enjoyed a critically and commercially successful ten-year career. Following the group's disbanding, Becker relocated to Hawaii and reduced his musical activity, working primarily as a record producer.

Becker and Fagen reformed Steely Dan in 1993 and have remained active, most notably including their 2000 Two Against Nature album, which won four Grammy Awards. Becker has also released two solo albums, 1994's 11 Tracks of Whack and 2008's Circus Money.

Career[link]

Early life and career (1950–1971)[link]

Becker was born in Queens, grew up in Westchester County and Forest Hills, Queens, and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan in the class of 1967.^[1] After starting out on saxophone, he switched to guitar and received instruction in blues technique from neighbor Randy Wolfe.

Becker met his long-time musical partner, Donald Fagen, while attending Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. While at Bard, Becker and Fagen formed and played in a number of groups, including The Leather Canary, which also included their fellow student Chevy Chase on drums. At the time, Chase called the group "a bad jazz band."^[2] Becker left the school in 1969 prior to completing his degree and moved with Fagen to Brooklyn, where the two began to build a career as a songwriting duo. This period included a stint with Jay and the Americans under pseudonyms and the composition of the soundtrack to You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat, a Richard Pryor film released in 1971.

With Steely Dan (1971–1981)[link]

Later in 1971, the duo moved to California and formed Steely Dan, which was initially conducted as a full group. Their initial lineup was completed by guitarists Denny Dias, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, and drummer Jim Hodder, all of whom the two had met prior to their relocation. With Becker acting initially as bassist, the group spent the following three years touring and recording before becoming a studio-centered project anchored around Becker and Fagen's songwriting in 1974. In addition to co-writing all of the band's material, Becker played bass and/or guitar on many of the band's tracks, as well as providing occasional backing vocals and arrangements.

Despite the group's success, particularly surrounding Aja in 1977, Becker suffered from numerous personal setbacks during this period, including addiction to narcotics.^[1] After the duo returned to New York in 1978, Becker's girlfriend Karen Stanley died of a drug overdose, resulting a large wrongful death suit volleyed against him.^[1] Not long after, Becker was hit by a Manhattan taxi while crossing the street and forced to walk with crutches.^[1] His personal exhaustion was exacerbated by commercial pressures and the complicated recording process surrounding the final release of Steely Dan's initial career, 1980's Gaucho, leading the duo to suspend their partnership in June 1981.

Work in record production (1981–1993)[link]

Following Steely Dan's breakup, Becker moved to the Hawaiian island of Maui and ceased using narcotics.^[3][4][5] Shortly thereafter, he began a career as a record producer, overseeing records by Rickie Lee Jones, Michael Franks, and Fra Lippo Lippi, including the latter's 1987 Norwegian single, "Angel".

Some of Becker's most involved activity from this period came with the group China Crisis. He is credited as one of five official members of the band on the sleeve of their 1985 album Flaunt the Imperfection, which he produced. He also produced tracks on their 1989 album Diary of a Hollow Horse, although he is not credited as a band member on that release.

Becker reunited with Fagen briefly to collaborate on the debut album of singer Rosie Vela, 1986's Zazu. This led to several low-key and non-professional collaborations, including several aborted songwriting sessions and Becker's stint in 1991 with Fagen's New York Rock and Soul Revue, that would ultimately lead to their proper reunion two years later.

Steely Dan reformation; subsequent activity (1993–present)[link]

Their partnership properly resumed in 1993 when they undertook a new tour as Steely Dan, their first in 19 years. Becker also produced Fagen's album Kamakiriad in 1993. In turn, Fagen co-produced Becker's belated solo debut album 11 Tracks of Whack in 1994.

Steely Dan continued touring, and their work on new material resulted in their first studio album in two decades, Two Against Nature, released in 2000. The album won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. In 2001 the duo was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and also received Honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Berklee College of Music, which they accepted in person.^[6] The next Steely Dan record, Everything Must Go followed in 2003, featuring Becker's bass and electric guitar work, as well as the first studio Steely Dan track with a lead vocal by Becker, "Slang of Ages". The band spent the following years touring behind their back catalog.

In 2005, Becker co-produced and played bass on the Krishna Das album All One, and played solo guitar on the title track of Rebecca Pidgeon's album Tough on Crime from this same year. Madeleine Peyroux's 2006 album Half the Perfect World featured the single "I'm All Right", co-written by Becker, Peyroux and producer Larry Klein. Peyroux's 2009 album Bare Bones also contains two songs co-written by Becker, "You Can't do Me" and the title-track "Bare Bones". Becker was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame^[7] in 2008.

His second solo album, Circus Money, was released on June 10, 2008, fourteen years after its predecessor.^[8] The album prominently featured Becker's bass playing, performances by much of the Steely Dan backing band, and work by producer Larry Klein, who received co-composition credits on all but one song. The songs were heavily inspired by reggae and other Jamaican music.^[9]

Solo discography[link]

• 11 Tracks of Whack (1994)
• Circus Money (2008)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Walterbecker.com Walter Becker's official website
• Steelydan.com Steely Dan's official website
• Members.home.nl Complete discography