American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

“As I rebuild the WLS archive with books I've read from 2011 through to 2025, I want to build a fully-fledged ecosystem of books I've read and recommend. I'd like to be able to reference and speak to any I've finished. For books I haven't reviewed (or can't entirely remember), please enjoy this brief questionnaire that can help you decide whether it's a read you'd like to pursue. Some of these are favorites I just haven't gotten around to fully reviewing yet—I'll explain in each description, but I hope this Q&A can be illuminating to you in the meantime.”

Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

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Why Did I Read This Book?

I used to run a teen classics book club at Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida. From about 2014 to 2016, we had a once-monthly Sunday meeting discussing a classic we'd all picked up from the OE shelves, and this was a group pick.

Without fail, on the day we discussed American Psycho, each member of the book club walked over to me and immediately apologized. "Grace, we are so, so sorry we made you read this."

And they were right.

In the course of my life, I have been somewhat obsessed with memory, have made a lot of progress on perfectionism, and generally feel pretty mentally healthy—but am always trying to be the best version of myself. Which, in idealism, would be a version of the self that has never read nor experienced the horror that is American Psycho. When people ask me if I regret anything, I say perhaps reading this book.

To this day, it is the only book to literally make me throw up after reading. (I throw up when hungover; I lose weight when stressed. The throwing up itself is not the alarming bit. But this was through words only which feels significant. Gross! Fuck this book!)

What's This Book About?

My brother's Halloween costume for years was Patrick Bateman. Wear a suit, slick your hair, and wear a plastic poncho. Easy.

American Psycho is about an image-obsessed Wall Street twenty-something man. He's cream of the crop. He makes money, takes care of himself. He is the epitome of a Manhattan yuppie whose world is his for the taking. But partway through the narrative, you realize: he has this insatiable rage towards women. He wants to rape and murder and eat them (and eventually does). And it's because he can and will get away with it. Everyone is so blinded by his capacity that they wave away every attempt of his at conveying his actual reality. Even by the end, they're all making excuses.

A lot of my friends are on Wall Street. I nowadays have a more intimate understanding of the sheen and chaos of "men in finance" in Manhattan—the pros and the cons. When I first read this book, that entire landscape was foreign to me. So there's a lot that would likely be different in my understanding of the book now. That being said, I have no desire to re-experience the horrors of this particular narrative.

What Do I Remember Most About It?

I actually had a long-running argument with my college ex about this book, to the extent that we'd sometimes ask people at parties about it. It's kind of funny too, being an author and examining cause vs. effect.

Do you believe someone can write about something this fucked up and be mentally okay?

Personally, I'm not sure I could ever have a conversation with Bret Easton Ellis and look him in the eyes without the awareness that he'd written a paragraph about cutting out a woman's vagina to keep it in his locker after the gym. That he'd squished eyeballs, raped dead bodies, etc,. and the like. It's Patrick. but it's also him.

The way I describe writing a first-person narrative (my preferred, and the orientation of my own novel) is similar to that of having a twin. I'm an identical twin myself.

On one hand, it's not my default mode of thinking. Tatum—my narrator—is different from me, although we have overlap. But we read and relate to each other so well that I can tell/know what she's thinking at a given time. It's a lens, one I think will be forever built within myself as I evaluate the contours of reality. My identical twin and I know each other better than anyone else because I can read her in a heartbeat; she is my favorite person and a lens to my reality. As I write first-person main characters, I add to those variations in perspectives.

Which, to me, means that Bret Easton Ellis 100% has Patrick Bateman locked and loaded within his brain. He'd be looking at me and examining what he could best eat and sexually assault. Which, like, literary fiction, but also—ew.

It would be different, for me, I think, if the book were not written in first person.

But it is. I've written a book. (I've written several.) And I cannot escape the idea that Bret Easton Ellis has looked at women in this way and created these very disgusting scenarios in which they're violated, destroyed, murdered, buried, etc,. in the most awful, inhumane ways.

I'm not trying to say Bret Easton Ellis is secretly a terror, but I'm not not trying to say it either. I wish I could erase segments of this book from my brain. I am a different person for having read these very graphic details! You've been warned!

As a woman, I'm inherently a little wary about meeting men from the Internet, and do mourn the precautions we have to take like sharing locations before blind dates or not going on night runs like we see guys doing. I've been roofied before and made it home safely, but like—dislike. That definitely impacts the safety level and psychological baggage of feeling carefree while out. And then you read a book like this and you're like damn. Some people are creepy.

I'd tend towards the reserved anyway because I'm slow burn in regards to good ol' romantic connection, but also then sometimes you read American Psycho or watch Criminal Minds and are like "thank God I never go home with strangers"? Some guys frankly don't understand the calculations required beyond emotional vulnerability that it takes to decide to maneuver yourself into an isolated situation with someone you don't know, and that's not even getting when a guy is totally different in public vs. private, like in this book.

Just two or so weeks ago, some friends had to get someone kicked out at the bar who would not leave me alone. I never felt unsafe, and the guys around me took action without me even having to ask them to, but it's odd to occasionally realize that some men* (people) can just be so weird and unnatural and dehumanizing towards women. You never really know what the intention is.

This instance was clearly unrelated to me, and 99% of the time, I'm oblivious to anyone hitting on me anyway. It's just strange to realize when men* (people) see you not as a person but as a vehicle for assuaging their own ego or just being a little creepy. It's not nefarious or sexual necessarily—just that they don't see you as an actual entity deserving of respect. Because otherwise they would not persist in making you uncomfortable after they realize they're doing it.

Most situations I've felt this way in have really not been big deals, but the moral: men can be icky in a way that their peers don't always recognize or understand because they haven't encountered it—in a way that's common and easy to write off as "oh haha just joking." Sometimes, the creepiest encounters are with friends-of-friends and not strangers, which always forces a weird cognitive dissonance when you try to explain it to their peer. You vouch for this person. How do you not see the way they make women feel? Etc,. I don't think I'm being oversensitive here, just observational.

So in that sense, American Psycho is definitely a horror book in an awful, eye-opening way. Satire, with excellent cultural points?

So Let's Just Say There Are Many Reasons Why This Was an Amazing (But Unfortunate) Book Club Pick—

I would consider myself a pretty open-minded, aware person. But I'm still a rosy optimistic who believes most people are generally good and we're all doing the best we can within our respective belief systems. But still—when something particularly terrible or gratuitous comes up, some friends will warn me because they know the discussion will make me queasy. "Earmuffs, Grace."

I can handle justified graphicness. I am not a delicate woman in the sense that I swoon at hardship or awful human behavior; my historical fiction equivalent would be a medic mopping up gangrene on the front lines or whatever. I am capable of putting aside disgust if there's a reason to. And American Psycho really forces the question: where is the line? How much exaggeration is necessary?

When a book or piece of media features endless "pointless" violence, I sometimes just think it's inelegant in aiming for shock factor. It means, at times, that the author or creator lacks the nuance to be able to convey something without the buffer of induced nausea. Nausea is visceral. Of course, it will make the reader feel, but maybe we're confusing that for skill?

Sometimes I think it's easier than taking the more complicated route. And you can argue all you want about how violence in American Psycho is "deserved" or not, whether it fits the absurdity of the plot or is "too much." It's a fascinating conversation, and part of the reason that the book was a great book club selection. But I land on one side of the argument and some friends land on another.

I also think about this book sometimes when people are being shitty and calling hateful language satirical or "for the bit." I do think to a certain extent that it's easy to brush behavior under the rug because "they're kidding." Sure, we shouldn't police everything and we're perhaps hypervigilant in a way incongruent with their intention à la panopticon (I'd hate to grow up on this modern Internet versus the connectivity of my youth), but also—sometimes, people are telling you exactly who they are and you're choosing not to believe it because that's more convenient for your worldview. (And I mean characters, not the author.)

But then paradoxically, sometimes, I think we might also be too generous in calling something satire? We are definitely allowed to have intrusive, strange, weird, uncharacteristic thoughts—but when they comprise a pattern of a (quite long) book? A book can take years to write, edit, and market—especially a book like this that has become Bret Easton Ellis's signature across culture. Is it not your entire worldview by now? What weird brain food. Policing or psychoanalyzing someone's creation of fictional content is a slippery slope so I'm generally inclined to not read too deeply into their imaginations. But American Psycho is where I'm a hypocrite, because I find it incredibly disturbing. There's a line somewhere, and American Psycho might have tiptoed over it and thrown me out of my comfort zone (its purpose as a whole.)

I'm obviously not saying Bret Easton Ellis has secretly murdered and raped dozens of women (but his interviews do make it clear that he's...a character.) But also—how do you come up with this? I've read plenty of horror, but damn. Imagine going to sleep at night next to this man. What the fuck?

Who's It Best for?

I'm not sure I'd recommend American Psycho to anyone who reads like I do (i.e. absorbs it, empathizes with it, views people as fundamentally good, etc,.) but it's of course shaped modern American fiction. We can argue all we want about its role as an effective satire about capitalism and the ability of men in power to get away with everything they want to say (um, "Grab her by the pussy"?) with no significant repercussions. Power feeds power, and you are fundamentally invincible, etc,. etc,. But also, if you put me and Bret Easton Ellis in the same room together, I'd probably go talk to someone else. I've never seen the movie, and am not sure whether I will. I'd love to compare what each format/medium gets right, but am truly not sure whether I have the stomach for it.

Maybe have a trashcan nearby, or an episode of something cleansing at the ready. Go volunteer with local children, or play with a puppy. Perhaps seek religion if that's up your alley. Something cleansing for the soul.