American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis is a 1991 psychological thriller novel about a young man named Patrick Bateman. He is 26 years old, was born into great wealth, and currently works on Wall Street. He is smart, sophisticated, handsome, and in great shape, focusing much of his attention into cultivating his looks into a model of perfection. He is also a psychopath, having depraved fantasies that he increasingly cannot resist acting upon, sating his bloodlust on innocent people he considers beneath him.

This novel has been something of a white whale of mine for a long time, as I’ve owned a copy for well over a decade now but have procrastinated actually reading it. Numerous times I’ve added it to yearly to-read lists, only to be passed over. I had heard a few details that made it sound like the book might be a slog in some ways, but I wasn’t really deterred by them, I just wasn’t very compelled. Now that I have read it, I can say with confidence that it was a reading experience unlike any other that I’ve had.

It’s hard not to bring up this early how at odds I found myself to be with this book. On the one hand, giving credit where it is very much due, Ellis’s skill as a writer is undeniable in this book. For instance, Bateman pathologically fixates on superficial details, which he does throughout the book. I had thought going in that this would be a chore to read, but it is written in such a way that I always felt fairly immersed in his twisted stream of consciousness. Although there is very little in the way of a plot to speak of as well, I never felt like my time was being wasted either. Ellis is putting a very specific facet of Western society under a microscope in this book and, with some exceptions, everything felt necessary to putting together what he wanted to represent.

On the other hand, I found many sections of this book deeply unpleasant, to the point where I took a lot longer finishing it than I otherwise would have. Like I’ve already said, Bateman fixates a lot on fine details, and this is perhaps most impactful during both sex scenes and gruesome murder scenes, which often coincide. Described explicitly yet in a very matter-of-fact way, the former are pornographic without being erotic, and the latter are downright sickening, escalating with each encounter. Though it is clear that Ellis is doing more than just trying to be shocking or scandalous, I really cannot stress how unpleasant a lot of this book was to read.

Unpleasantness aside for a moment, the bulk of the book really follows Patrick through his life as a professional on Wall Street, where he has a high-paying job yet seems to do little to no actual work. He spends his time obsessing over the finer things in life simply because they are expensive, such as fretting over dinner reservations and fancy dress etiquette, and he obsesses over his looks. He is pathetically superficial and without depth, the novel doing a good job of capturing how the ultra rich and successful often seem to live a life detached from reality and real struggle.

A factor related to this superficiality that resonated most with me is his constant obsession with listing the products he buys and uses, the art he hangs on his walls, the designer clothing he and everybody else is wearing. I don’t believe Ellis is inventing products or brands, but in the moment I had no real way of knowing without looking them up, but I quickly realized it didn’t really matter. Bateman wants them because he has been told they’re luxurious and they’re expensive. There is no depth to it, he cares little for them beyond that, the same as everybody else in the book. Their obsessions are all very hedonistic and meaningless.

This actually ties into something that struck a chord with me regarding the violence in this book too. Though this feels a little peripheral to the ideas that the book is pursuing as a whole, at one point during one of his murders I was struck by how vapid it and all the others were. There is no suspense, no tension, and no stakes. It is just Patrick Bateman getting his kicks brutalizing a new victim, having his nasty little thoughts while he does it. His mundane superficial life is pathetically surface-level and so too are these psychotic fantasies he’s fulfilling.

It made me think of some people’s more gauche or distasteful fixations on true crime and serial killers. Sometimes, both fans of and the media representing serial killers seem to try to represent them as more than what they are, like they’re villains from a horror story. Patrick himself tries to bring up details about serial killers with his friends, but he is always rebuffed. So, what I started to find meaningful about how Patrick’s murders were written, despite how discomforting they were, was the fact that they were utterly vacuous. There’s nothing complex or deep about his behaviour, he doesn’t have some sort of twisted insight into society, and they weren’t even compelling as narrative. He just views some people as meat because he is a sick man. The abject unpleasantness, though off-putting, is the point.

Final Thoughts

American Psycho opens with the words “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” from The Divine Comedy, which is rather apt. Within, you are treated to a modern world of excess devoid of personal connections beyond anything surface-level; half of these people cannot even identify each other properly and they do not seem to care. Almost all the central characters (I do not count victims, who I see more as bystanders to Patrick and his world) engage in faithless behaviour; there is no loyalty to their friendships or romantic connections, except for maybe one poor soul. Patrick’s crimes are sometimes mentioned, but they are largely and inexplicably ignored, if they really happened at all. Patrick himself is a woefully unreliable point-of-view character, leaving you wondering how much really happens, yet you can’t escape the feeling that at least some of it must have.

If you have the stomach for it, I recommend checking the book out. It’s definitely a piece of literature that accomplishes more than just being shocking. However, by my own metrics, I cannot rate it especially high, as I can’t get past the fact that its most unpleasant sections made for a miserable reading experience for me.

My Rating: 3 out of 5