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American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis

3.82 · Rating details · 251,093 ratings · 10,693 reviews

Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and he works on Wall Street, he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to head-on collision with America's greatest dream—and its worst nightmare—American Psycho is bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognise but do not wish to confront.

Cover Illustration by Marshall Arisman ...more

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Paperback, 399 pages

Published April 26th 1991 by Picador (first published March 6th 1991)

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Jul 30, 2010 brian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

jason, an old high school buddy, knew i was in manhattan for a few nights and asked to meet up for dinner. fuck it, i'm a sentimental guy, and it's nice to catch up -- even with a wall street douchebag. jason told me that lisa, another old friend, would be joining. here's the conversational breakdown at dinner:

20 minutes: comparing features on their new blackberries.
40 minutes: the new zagat guide and the city's best restaurants.
20 minutes: glib commentary on people we grew up with.

lisa leave ...more

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Dec 02, 2010 Stephen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: ebooks, horror, 1990-1999, the-creeps, psychos

Unholy...Shite!!

This may be the only book I've rated 5 stars that I have NO intention of EVER reading again. Ever. After finishing this, I was forced to wait until my brain had cooled down and re-congealed before I could cogitate sufficiently to put my experience with this novel into words.

And yet, even after almost 36 hours have ticked by, the only word that keeps bubbling up to the surface of my consciousness is...WOW

...in both the good and not so good vareity.

At first, I'd thought about try ...more

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Jan 27, 2008 Lauryl rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: strong stomached feminist scholars

Shelves: books-i-hated, simultaneously-fascinating-and-horr

I actually read this book a few years ago, but I stumbled across the Goodreads reviews of it, and felt I needed to add my voice, because it is such a difficult piece of lit in a lot of ways,and honestly, it probably is more deserving of a thesis paper than of a measly little review on Goodreads.
American Psycho is a brilliant book. Genius. It will no doubt deservingly be remembered as Bret Easton Ellis's masterpiece, his tour-de-force of sadist misanthropy.

I effing HATED it.

American Psycho is a I actually read this book a few years ago, but I stumbled across the Goodreads reviews of it, and felt I needed to add my voice, because it is such a difficult piece of lit in a lot of ways,and honestly, it probably is more deserving of a thesis paper than of a measly little review on Goodreads.
American Psycho is a brilliant book. Genius. It will no doubt deservingly be remembered as Bret Easton Ellis's masterpiece, his tour-de-force of sadist misanthropy.

I effing HATED it.

American Psycho is a brutal satire of the American upper middle class, set amongst the yuppies of New York during the boom era of the 1980's. Patrick Bateman is the main character and narrator, a bland upwardly mobile business man whose personality is a terrifyingly blank slate. He defines himself solely by the products he uses, the clothes he wears, the places he is seen eating or partying. He is also a murderer. In the course of the book, he murders a homeless man, a colleague, and numerous prostitutes, all with less emotion than he bestows upon his hair gel.
Ellis slyly balances the relative passion with which Bateman might discuss Huey Lewis in one chapter with a dispassionate yet detailed and horrific play-by-play of rape and dismemberment in the next.
The banality and sly humor (Bateman's analysis of Whitney Huston is both disturbingly off-kilter and hilarious) of the early non-violent passages of the book make the murders all the more jarring to the senses when they start coming thick and fast at the end, and black humor gives way to an out-and-out brutality the likes of which have not been touched in any other book I've ever read.
At first glance, it seems as though it is the juxtaposition of the banal and the brutal that make American Psycho shocking. In fact, however, what wrenches the gut is the sameness of detail and emotion with which both torture and nouvelle cuisine are treated. Ellis's muse is at once a monster and a metaphor, not just for the Reagan era, but for the potential darkness of post-modernity in toto. He is a camera. His world is reduced to an inventory of details, equally weighted; a chair, a suit, an arm, a head.

Reading American Psycho is a much less enjoyable experience than you might think, based on its titillating reviews or even Guinevere Turner's smart film adaptation (which was my original impetus for reading the book). The book is many times darker, nastier, uglier, grosser, crueler than I was prepared for, and I am a pretty die hard fan of horror and true crime lit.
Like many other women who read this book, I found myself getting faint and queasy, and ended up hurling it across the room in disgust. I couldn't make it to the end. As a female and a feminist, I found the book problematic.
Of course, the character of Bateman is supposed to be vile, but his misogyny is so pronounced that I find it hard to simply glom it on with the rest of his misanthropic tics. Sure, he kills his a*hole co-worker, and a few other dudes here and there, but mostly, he kills women. And unlike the asexual murder of his colleague, these womens' deaths are hyper-sexualized. They are all committed post-coitally, they are almost all prostitutes. While I don't think that Bret Easton Ellis is unaware of the misogynist content of A.P., I nevertheless find it more disturbing because of the narrator's lack of analysis, and because of a dearth of the clever commentary Ellis sneaks in during so many other moments in the novel. It is heady territory, just waiting to be mined by some iron-willed feminist scholar with the eggs for it, but I am not that woman, and if you don't think you're that woman either, then I would STRONGLY advise avoiding American Psycho.
Putting it bluntly: the scenes of women being raped, beaten, tortured and killed in this book are numerous, long, detailed, and presented with an absolute lack of empathy. For myself, this book made me feel as though I had been sexually assaulted. And while I appreciate the genius of such a book, that doesn't mean I have to like it. ...more

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Oct 13, 2007 Paul Bryant rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: men who really hate women

Shelves: the-misogyny-series, novels

(another update incorporating comments about BEE's latest novel - apparently he's still at it!)

Before we start - a quote by Norman Mailer about Bret Easton Ellis : "How one wishes this writer was without talent!"

*********

People think the pages and pages of descriptions of hacking and chopping up women are ironic.
Well, in one sense they are, but in another sense they aren't.
People who like this book should ask themselves why they want to read pages and pages of descriptions of hacking and chopp (another update incorporating comments about BEE's latest novel - apparently he's still at it!)

Before we start - a quote by Norman Mailer about Bret Easton Ellis : "How one wishes this writer was without talent!"

*********

People think the pages and pages of descriptions of hacking and chopping up women are ironic.
Well, in one sense they are, but in another sense they aren't.
People who like this book should ask themselves why they want to read pages and pages of descriptions of hacking and chopping up women (with the occasional man thrown in, but all the lavish descriptions with rats and nail guns and so on are just for the ladies).
I don't think people can tell what's misogynistic and what isn't any more.
Here's a real life anecdote. A couple of years ago I went into Waterstones in downtown Nottingham, and mooched around. In this shop (probably others too) the staff had put various books on display with their own handwritten enthusiastic recommendations underneath. Well, that was nice, I liked reading them, until I came to the handwritten card under American Psycho. It said something along the lines of : “after a night of getting knocked back by various women in Nottingham hostelries, what better than to pick up Bret Easton Ellis’s 80s classic and get some of my own back”. Wow! That was a little like a guy working for Waterstone's recommending “Commandant of Auschwitz” by Rudolph Hoess, with the comment “After a day of having to deal with members of the Jewish community, what better than to sink into an armchair with this book, and get some of my own back”. Believe it or not, my GR friends, I actually wrote a protest email to the manager, who wrote back with an apology and said he'd removed the tasteless comments.
You know, this book reveals how much of a different planet some people are on than the one I'm on. It's not a good feeling.

UPDATE : FROM THE PAGES OF YESTERDAY'S SUNDAY TIMES

there's this review of "Imperial Bedrooms" which is BEE's latest novel. The reviewer is Theo Tait, I never head of him and it isn't an anagram of Paul Bryant, and I am not Theo Tait, let's get that clear. So imagine how the following remarks warmed the cockles of my heart:

At 400 pages, American Psycho is probably unfinishable except by adolescents and sociopaths...[Imperial Bedrooms:] descends into a phantasmagoria involving torture, online snuff videos and the appalling abuse of prostitutes and rent boys. Ellis claims to be a moralist, by which I guess he means that it is the emptiness of the modern world that causes his characters to behave in a spectacularly louche and/or homicidal fashion. But as with many satirists, it is unclear whether he is criticising the horrors he depicts, or simply wallowing in them. Either way, Ellis's determination to rub the reader's face in the gore carriessome heavy costs. Many people have no strong desire to read sustained passages of pornographic and misogynistic violence, in which, for instance, masked men urinate on a bound actress...[other examples omitted:]... these sequences also chip away at the novel's realistic texture and leave you wondering if Imperial Bedrooms has any meaning beyond that of the average slasher film. ...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Emily May rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014, horror

This book shocked me. Though not for any of the reasons I might have expected.

Not shocking fact #1: This book is about a psychopath.
Yes, how very astute of me. I hadn't seen the movie before I picked American Psycho up, but most people who know a bit about books know a bit about Patrick Bateman. Despite this book not being very old, Bateman has a certain infamy amongst fictional serial killers and psychopaths. He is so wholly devoid of morality, completely disconnected from reality and human emo ...more

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Jun 29, 2010 karen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS - FULL TO THE BRIM. THESE ARE SOME MUSINGS THAT IN NO WAY RESEMBLE A BOOK REVIEW. YOU CAN READ IT, BUT I AM TELLING YOU STRAIGHT UP - THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. - actually, it's not that bad.

paul bryant recently reviewed/revised his review of this book (hi, paul bryant!) and i read it and the dozens of intelligent remarks his negative review sparked,both pro and anti-this book, and there isn't anything i can add to the discussion that hasn't already been said by people far ...more

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Aug 28, 2018 Sean Barrs rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-crime-and-thrillers, 5-star-reads

American Psycho is an energetic display of brutal writing.

It’s without a doubt the most gruesome thing I’ve read. It’s horrifying and truly shocking at times. I had to put the book down on several occasions whilst I recovered from the graphic nature of some of it. So, a word of warning, if you don’t like blood don’t even bother picking this one up. It’s full of mutilations and brutal murder.

But the violence was so completely necessary in all its terribleness because it captures something very American Psycho is an energetic display of brutal writing.

It’s without a doubt the most gruesome thing I’ve read. It’s horrifying and truly shocking at times. I had to put the book down on several occasions whilst I recovered from the graphic nature of some of it. So, a word of warning, if you don’t like blood don’t even bother picking this one up. It’s full of mutilations and brutal murder.

But the violence was so completely necessary in all its terribleness because it captures something very disturbing about the world. A question, if you will: how many people truly know you? I’m not talking about the you that everybody sees, but the real you. Not many, I’m sure. We only ever truly know ourselves because we are the only one who has access to our thoughts and hidden desires. Bateman knows this and he uses it to his advantage.

“...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”

Nobody knows him. He appears to be a conformist, blending comfortably into society and all its stupid materialistic aspirations. He is very well aware of the problems society faces. His speech at the start of the book is a convincing argument, though none of his "friends" sat around the dinner table are willing to listen to him and address a real problem. They are too materialistic and self-absorbed to consider anything beyond their own lives. They simply carry on with their conversation as if he never spoke; thus, he continues on with his own destructive behaviour and slowly becomes more and more trapped, repressed and angry. I think he was, however, only ever probing them for a response to know how much he can get away with.

The book is a heavy critique on consumerism and the ridiculous nature of it. Everybody is obsessed with the latest brands and most expensive products. The homeless are always remarked on as Bateman walks past them wearing his ridiculously expensive clothing. There are endless descriptions of goods and products. The use of such a device in the narrative was a perfect way to expose how out of touch society is. It doesn’t see what’s in front of it, which allows the real Bateman to explore his darkest and most evil of fantasies unnoticed as he enacts the charade that is his life. It’s an immensely clever book and though the narrative does become dry and repetitive, it was totally necessary to show the mind of a psychopath and his fixations.

“All it comes down to is this: I feel like shit but look great.”

That being said though, I found myself struggling to read it. It wasn’t the violence or the nastiness of the protagonist that put me off, although that was truly disturbing, it was the pessimism that ran through the book. There is no hope in sight. Ellis shows us a dark part of reality, and it left me feeling rather depressed. (This isn’t a criticism of the writing, for it is a fantastic creation, it’s just a summary of my feelings, such as they are.) Afterwards, I found myself craving something light and fluffy, something that would lift my spirits and restore some of my faith in humanity.

It’s an intense book and it could leave you feeling rather shit. It affected me quite strongly, which bespeaks the power of this narrative.

Read it if you dare. ...more

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May 05, 2012 Petra-X Off having adventures rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 10-star-books, fiction, reviewed

This book is TRUE. I live on an island of bankers, investment brokers and trust company lawyers and all of them are drunken, mad psychopaths with Jack Nicholson laughs and a propensity for getting into a lot of trouble at weekends.

They drink and they snort and they screw and they sail and they make loads of money and every now and again some of them disappear never to be heard of again. The women, the secretaries and admin staff come out from the UK husband-hunting but quickly find they are the ...more

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Feb 28, 2019 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1980s, greed, unnatural-appetites, horror

”...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes de ...more

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Aug 30, 2018 Johann (jobis89) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"I've forgotten who I had lunch with earlier, and even more important, where."

Patrick Bateman is handsome, well educated, intelligent. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. His nights he spends in ways we cannot begin to fathom.

Where to begin... first of all, let me preface this review by giving a trigger warning for almost every possible trigger you can think of: rape, animal abuse, torture... this book is not for the faint of heart! This book "I've forgotten who I had lunch with earlier, and even more important, where."

Patrick Bateman is handsome, well educated, intelligent. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. His nights he spends in ways we cannot begin to fathom.

Where to begin... first of all, let me preface this review by giving a trigger warning for almost every possible trigger you can think of: rape, animal abuse, torture... this book is not for the faint of heart! This book stands head and shoulders above the rest as the most disturbing book I've ever read. But, I absolutely loved it. Not because of how disturbing it was (although I did find that mostly entertaining), but because I've never laughed out loud so much whilst reading a book!

I LOVED getting inside Bateman's head, a true glimpse into the mind of a psychopath. He is severely deluded, shallow, neurotic... and yet I could happily read about his beauty routine and gym workouts forever (whilst making some notes of course - if only I had multiple hours to spend in the gym each day!!). In particular, I was sincerely impressed by Bateman's ability to identify exactly what designer you're wearing by sight alone - I mean, surely he is wasted in his job as an investment banker?! There must be some way he can make use of this incredible talent!

People had previously commented about how annoying it was when the book goes off on random tangents where Bateman breaks down different musical artists' careers. I found this weirdly enjoyable - particularly the chapters where he discusses Genesis and Whitney Houston in great detail. Although I was not too impressed when Bateman described Bruce Springsteen as overrated (but he made up for it by later telling a stranger on the street that Brilliant Disguise by the Boss was the happiest song he could think of - how depressing and sad is that song... LOL). Bateman's obsession for serial killers also reminded me of myself, he would slide that chat in anywhere he could. Although he did get one of his quotes wrong, attributing a quote by Ed Kemper to Ed Gein - easily done I guess *shrugs*

I can understand why the repetitive nature of this book would be annoying for some - Bateman's life is basically a cycle of brutal murders/torture followed by him and his fellow investment bankers trying to decide where to make reservations for that night - but ultimately I found it strangely captivating. It's just so funny and full of satire that I couldn't NOT love it, it really appealed to my dark sense of humour.

American Psycho also provides a really disturbing social commentary on the upper-class in Manhattan in the 1980s, a society full of racism and sexism, where a lot of emphasis is placed on image and wealth. Bateman has a crazy obsession with Donald Trump - a real representation of the times - and it honestly baffles me that this man is now President of the United States. Ellis really succeeds in painting a rather despicable picture of consumerism in America.

The murders and torture are brutal - consider this a warning! It's graphic and detailed, and the creativity and originality that Ellis manages to bring to some of them is staggering. The sex scenes are pornographic in terms of the level of the detail included, and I actually found these much more uncomfortable to read than the murders.

This book won't be for everyone, and it's one of those books that although I enjoyed almost every page, I would feel cautious recommending it to others. Just prepare yourself if you decide to pick it up! And please don't think of me as one sick puppy for enjoying this satirical masterpiece.

4.5 stars. ...more

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Oct 23, 2012 F rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015, seen-movie, usa

Loved this book. One to give me a book hangover. Didn't want it to end.
Always loved the film and the book is really not far off.
Descriptions were OTT.
Dark Masterpiece

Love the scene with the business cards. Both film & book. ...more

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Jan 22, 2012 Ben Winch rated it did not like it

Shelves: problematic, anglo, american

I don't usually bother giving negative reviews here, but I feel it's time to nail my colours to the mast and identify a few problematic titles. Problem #1: American Psycho.

It's funny how many people qualify their glowing reviews of this book with the words 'I didn't enjoy it but...,' as if it contained some bitter but necessary medicine. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I would have thought even a disturbing book, movie, song or painting should at least be enjoyable on some level if it's to gain its I don't usually bother giving negative reviews here, but I feel it's time to nail my colours to the mast and identify a few problematic titles. Problem #1: American Psycho.

It's funny how many people qualify their glowing reviews of this book with the words 'I didn't enjoy it but...,' as if it contained some bitter but necessary medicine. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I would have thought even a disturbing book, movie, song or painting should at least be enjoyable on some level if it's to gain its audience's love, and if it can't gain that love then it's certainly not worthy of glowing reviews. To me, American Psycho is damn near loveless, its murder scenes especially, and I don't buy the line that there's anything medicinal in those scenes either.

What we have here is 2 books, or better, a book and a bunch of uninspired self-consciously provocative crap tacked onto it for the sake of controversy. Ellis said it himself: for the most part, American Psycho was just him writing out his frustration at his life, which corresponded closely, for the most part, to Patrick Bateman's; the murder scenes were added later. This is a telling admission. While there's something mildly enjoyable about Ellis ripping apart (in prose) the yuppies he obviously knows so well, the tone changes entirely every time a character is ripped apart for real. Satire? Yeah, parts of American Psycho are satirical, but not the violent parts - they are flat, vacant, bland. And it's a sad thing, that this young, lost, numbed writer felt the need to dress up his comedy of manners in wolf's clothing. You can imagine why he did it. Not for money necessarily, but from the same misguided notion that leads his fans to believe there is something medicinal in torturing themselves by reading this shit: the poor sap thought he was writing something 'important'! Well I'm sorry, but the only important thing about American Psycho is that it illustrates - by its existence, by its success - something deeply wrong with the society that gave birth to it. Any dickhead with a halfway decent grasp of prose could have written this splatter-porn; on the level of artistry it's dull as dull can be. But it illustrates something: the banality of evil. Brett Easton Ellis is no more a psycho than you or me, nor does he demonstrate any deep knowledge of what a psycho might be. But by parading his numbness, his naivety, his insensitivity, he demonstrates how a human might unwittingly do evil. And to my mind, there is something evil in what he's done, by seeking to legitimise this shit. In the end, there's only one question that's important here: does the world need more violence-for-violence's sake? I say absolutely not. And this is coming not from a wowser or an anti-violence lobbyist, but from a diehard fan of Clockwork Orange and Reservoir Dogs. One reviewer points out that the uproar over American Psycho is ridiculous given the number of malevolent, misogynistic slasher films on constant display in our culture, and to an extent I agree. But what I find reprehensible in American Psycho is the pose - that this is somehow above those slasher films - when Ellis himself has admitted that all the conceptual justifications only occurred to him after he was demonised, as a way to talk himself out of trouble.

Is Brett Easton Ellis a mysoginist? To me he's more like a parrot, repeating the refrain of a sick culture. Well if you need a parrot to remind you what's wrong with clinical descriptions of excessive violence towards women then this is the book for you. For my part, I'll take Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me any day if I feel like a glimpse inside psychosis. And - wrong as this may sound to some of you - I'll enjoy it. Because art is meant to be enjoyed. Yes, it can change you, hurt you, get under your skin, but only if you love it. Personally, I wonder how anyone could love American Psycho. An absolute piece of shit and probably the worst book I have ever bothered finishing.
...more

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Oct 01, 2007 Daniel Martin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: people with open minds

Shelves: fiction, favorites

Truly fascinating. First of all, you have to be prepared to be let into the mind of a psychopath. That entails more than murder, which a lot of people reviewing this book completely miss -- what is psycopathy? The lack of empathy, which is judging people as objects rather than understanding they experience the concept of "I" exactly like you do, lack of remorse, and bold egotistical traits.

As you read this book, ponder "how much of American culture TELLS YOU to understand things the way Patric Truly fascinating. First of all, you have to be prepared to be let into the mind of a psychopath. That entails more than murder, which a lot of people reviewing this book completely miss -- what is psycopathy? The lack of empathy, which is judging people as objects rather than understanding they experience the concept of "I" exactly like you do, lack of remorse, and bold egotistical traits.

As you read this book, ponder "how much of American culture TELLS YOU to understand things the way Patrick Bateman does?" The answer is, all of it which exists to make money. People exist to consume product, (and to judge them by what they consume, by the way, for they're just another product that YOU consume. Don't pull the string any farther than that by the way, in case you find out your own idea of yourself is just as fake), and you are an outside entity, afloat and subject to this competitive world in which you need to WIN. (This book was written in 1991 and it's no mistake that Patrick Bateman idolizes Donald Trump.)
And look, it's not just a book writing about the shittiness of the world; if that were the case, anyone could write good books by just filling them with the worst parts of our culture. The point is, you can understand it and it's often, well ... funny. Or compelling. Or understandable. Or sad. It is after all based on a very real human condition, not just a satirical critique of the worst of human traits.

WATCH OUT for these two types of shallow reviews. "Its worth the boring stuff for the violence". or "It's misogynistic! And about murdering people. You like that?". I know it's not standard, but a protagonist CAN be a villain. If you think experiencing or creating something makes you an advocate of it, you're missing out on a lot of good art.

Anyways, the entire book is written from Patrick Bateman's point of view, and Patrick Bateman is a materialistic vain insecure obsessive compulsive hallucinating (yeah, mysogynistic) delusional psychopath. And you will be completely enveloped in his world. This is what traps you and makes the book so addicting. I would read this book at the park, or on the bus, and when I'd put it down to join the rest of the human world it was almost impossible. For a good 10 minutes I'd just be staring at people feeling a million miles away. Learn from this, but don't identify with it; this itself is a type of compassion to feel what a lot of people in this country are stuck in.

You don't skip over the bits about his facial creams, you absorb it and afterwards let your jaw drop that he is more passionate about it than any human life, or feeling. People ARE materials to him, just more useless and often tasteless ones.
Maybe you won't even notice when a talking cheerio is sitting in a chair being interviewed, since you can't be sure of what he's hallucinating either. (and that's key).
...more

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Aug 29, 2017 GTF rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Where to begin? Well firstly, I will just comment on the violence in this novel and say that it contains some of the most graphic torture and killings that I have ever read about both in the real and fictional world. There are wild and creative forms of brutality performed on people that I didn't know were possible. I am not easily put off by goriness, but a lot of pages of this book were difficult to read. It goes without saying that 'American Psycho' is not for the faint-hearted.

The story is t Where to begin? Well firstly, I will just comment on the violence in this novel and say that it contains some of the most graphic torture and killings that I have ever read about both in the real and fictional world. There are wild and creative forms of brutality performed on people that I didn't know were possible. I am not easily put off by goriness, but a lot of pages of this book were difficult to read. It goes without saying that 'American Psycho' is not for the faint-hearted.

The story is told from the perspective of a wealthy investment banker named Patrick Bateman who lives on one of the most prestigious streets in New York City. The beginning of the novel suggests nothing too horrific about Bateman, but he does often mutter very questionable remarks about himself under his breath, begins seething over trivial matters, and is remarkably meticulous with assessing expensive clothes and jewelry. To the reader, he is initially just another self-absorbed upper-class asshole who lives a very extravagant, promiscuous and drug-fueled lifestyle. However, the dark and cruel side of Bateman's character eventually manifests and his acts of murder and sadism become a frequent hobby. It also becomes increasingly clearer that his sanity is very dubious, as he develops trouble with distinguishing the real from the imagined. His decaying sanity along with his astounding callousness creates a highly unreliable narrator.

In a way this book reminded me of 'The Catcher in The Rye' (with the addition of appalling violence and insanity) as it is not centred around a plot but instead just features endless and intriguing pondering of the male narrator. 'American Psycho' closes with a very ambiguous ending which you see coming, given the style of narrative and sequence of events that lead up to the ending.

Easton Ellis is very skilled at creating characters. He can divide people into various categories of habits, intellect, temperament, level of empathy etc. and then insert them into novels in a way that makes them feel real.

I think why 'American Psycho' has stood the test of time is because of its portrayal of the upper-class in Manhattan, and the juxtapositions of common realities such as wealth & poverty, good & evil, attraction & repulsion. ...more

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Jan 12, 2020 Michael Finocchiaro added it · review of another edition

Shelves: dnf

This is a DNF and even a DNS for me. I read about it years ago and avoided it because of all the stories or gore and misogyny associated with it. Then, I heard friends discussing it less critically. So, when the library opened after the holiday break, I took it home...and didn’t read it. I mean, I opened it to a random page and the first word I saw was “cunt”. That threw me off as an evil portent. Not that I am queezy about harsh language, just that that word for me conjures the same negativity ...more

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Mar 20, 2011 Blair rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-on-kindle, favourites, contemporary, 1990s-release

As far as I can tell, there are two ways to interpret this book. The first is as a hysterically funny, incredibly dark satire on the excess, greed and materialism of rich young Americans in the late 1980s. The second is as a hideously misogynist extended fantasy about the abuse, torture and murder of women. It's the second interpretation that raises issues for me. I am a feminist, and proud to say so; yet I absolutely loved this book. So is it possible to be a feminist and still enjoy American P As far as I can tell, there are two ways to interpret this book. The first is as a hysterically funny, incredibly dark satire on the excess, greed and materialism of rich young Americans in the late 1980s. The second is as a hideously misogynist extended fantasy about the abuse, torture and murder of women. It's the second interpretation that raises issues for me. I am a feminist, and proud to say so; yet I absolutely loved this book. So is it possible to be a feminist and still enjoy American Psycho?

My (personal, subjective) answer to this question is yes. I can understand the objections others have raised and, unsurprisingly, I found the violent scenes intensely disturbing and difficult to read, and skimmed over the worst parts in the same way I'd squint at the screen during a particularly bloody film scene. The titular psycho, protagonist and narrator, Patrick Bateman, is undoubtedly a horrifically misogynist character - both in terms of the hideous things he does to women and in the minute details of the ways in which he perceives and judges them. The female characters (pretty much all of them, one by one) are objectified in the ultimate way - desired, fucked, tortured, dissected, even eaten. The violence is often juxtaposed closely with graphically detailed sex scenes or fantasies, with the two flowing into one another until they begin to seem almost inseperable. To me, this feels like a damning comment on the links between pornography, the consumer of pornography's view of women, and violent behaviour. And after all I've read about the author's motivations in writing the novel and other readers' and critics' reactions to it, I'm fairly sure this is how it's meant to be read.

The story is so obviously an allegory that, to be honest, I find it hard to understand how anyone could take it seriously as a fantasy of violence. Bateman announces his crimes to colleagues and girlfriends at numerous points, with these confessions become more blatant and more desperate as the book goes on - yet it seems nobody ever hears him, or their own self-absorption and greed is advanced to such a level that they don't notice or care. The character becomes more and more of a blank canvas as the book goes on, a development underlined by the fact that he is constantly being mistaken for someone else, or spotting an acquaintance and not being sure exactly who it is. The men melt into a homogenous blur of Brooks Brothers suits, Valentino ties, slicked-back hair and nonprescription glasses; the women into an interchangeable mass of blonde hair, big tits, whiny voices and Carolina Herrera silk blouses. In the end it doesn't seem that Bateman is actually a character as much as an amalgam of these people: their obscene greed, materialism, lack of empathy and empty selfishness - mixed in with astounding naivety and ignorance - concentrated and personified.

There's no realistic way Bateman could continue to get away with the crimes he commits - so frequent, so violent, so obvious - and as a result it becomes clear that either they are symbolic, or they are the fantasies of the character himself, an expression of his inward/outward anger and hatred. As the narrative becomes ever more surreal and descends into madness towards the book's conclusion, the latter theory begins to seem more and more likely. Bateman's supposed victims seem to reappear; he is involved in an impossibly lengthy police shoot-out which yields no retribution; he begins to step outside himself, narrating from a third-person perspective. The only incident in which he is identified as a killer by someone else appears, at second glance, to be a straightforward robbery. At the very end of the story, the reader is left to make up their own mind about the truth of events, making this a classic example of the unreliable narrator genre (I really should create an unreliable-narrators shelf here, I love them so much).

This book is, as its reputation suggests, a harrowing read at times, but it's also truly hilarious in parts - the endless repetition, the lengthy passages solemnly appraising the back catalogues of dreadful 80s bands, the meticulous descriptions of ludicrous meals and label-laden outfits. I loathe gratuitous violence and 'torture porn' films but while the violent scenes in this book are arguably unnecessary in their detail, they are contained within the context of a viciously intelligent satire. I wavered between admiration, amusement and repulsion throughout many of the earlier chapters, but I really loved the ending; the build-up and the subtle changes and the conclusion itself, all so brilliantly done. Altogether I thought this was an absolutely fantastic, if not always 'enjoyable', book and I don't feel bad about saying so. ...more

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Aug 13, 2013 JaHy☝Hold the Fairy Dust rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: this-aint-disney-world-bitch

**4.5"THE MOST FUCKED UP STORY EVVVVEEERRRRR" STARS**

photo bad_thinking-300x222_zpsdd90652e.jpg

Are you easily offended? Do not read this book.
Are you easily frightened? Do not read this review.
Are you easily annoyed? Do not read about this asshole .
Are you easily sickened? Do not read horrific tale.
Are you easily dizzied? Do not read anything.

Honestly, I have not idea why I enjoyed this materialistic, self centered, psychotic story, but GOD HELP ME, I DID. The only reason I decided to read the damn book is because I noticed it ...more

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Aug 08, 2010 Krok Zero rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: summer-2010

I would write a review, but I have to go return some videotapes.

*******************

OK, I was gonna let the inside-joke above stand, but I guess I do feel like getting some thoughts down about America's Next Top Psycho.

At this point I'm sure it bores everyone to dredge up the whole misogyny question again, but it still puzzles me that smart people who must certainly know not to confuse the character's perspective with the author's continue to pull the concern-troll card here. Like, it's perfectly ...more

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Feb 16, 2015 Jonathan Janz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I've been putting off writing a review of this novel because I have so many conflicting emotions about it. So I'll just streamline it by throwing my reactions at you haphazardly. You know, kind of like Patrick Bateman's disordered thoughts.

1. This book is vicious, vile, and often made me suppress a whimper. It's the only book that's ever sickened me to that degree.

2. Bret Easton Ellis, like him or not, is a masterful writer, and this is a masterful book.

3. I've never in my life felt so guilty ...more

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Aug 20, 2017 Tara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-list

“I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning.”

American Psycho is a masterfully accomplished, incredibly black satire, one which primarily focuses on consumerism, obsession with status and

“I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning.”

American Psycho is a masterfully accomplished, incredibly black satire, one which primarily focuses on consumerism, obsession with status and reputation, and the annihilation of the self in favor of that noxious bliss, the potent narcotic effect associated with conformity and “fitting in.”

This book is admittedly disturbingly violent and extremely graphic. It goes over-the-top in almost every way possible. It does so in an attempt to function as a mind-numbingly excessive illustration of how excess numbs the mind. Yeah, I know, that sounds like a cutesy, gimmicky, too-clever setup for a novel, right? But, to my mind, Ellis makes it work. More often than not, the book is as irrepressibly, exuberantly hilarious as Christian Bale’s outstanding performance in the film adaptation:

Aside from the humor, I believe another reason that it works so well is that readers catch these infrequent but genuinely jarring glimpses of themselves in the main character, Patrick Bateman. As with the vile protagonist from Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, you realize you aren’t quite as far removed from that hideously unbalanced mindset as you would like to think you are. As you’re laughing about—or feeling nauseous over—the absurdities and generally batshit behavior of Bateman, whose name-brand name-dropping and thoroughly vacuous, meaningless existence are just as insane as his vicious brutality and cannibalistic culinary endeavors, what emerges is a distorted, exaggerated, grotesque funhouse mirror reflection of…yourself.

In a culture where superficiality, image, decadence and waste are worshipped for their own sake, things can’t help but become ridiculous, absurd, and monstrous. And as a satire on what living in such a state of affairs looks like, I think this book succeeded admirably:

“Luis is wearing a wool-crepe suit, a cotton broadcloth shirt and a silk tie, all by Ralph Lauren. Like me, like Charles, he wears his hair slicked back and he’s wearing Oliver Peoples redwood-framed glasses. Mine, at least, are nonprescription.”

Nailed it. ...more

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Mar 25, 2008 Brad rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: faves, notorious, to-read-again

When a book sticks with you, you know it is powerful. It may not be entertaining, and it may be downright disturbing, but if you can't get it out of your head it is most certainly great, and that is my experience with American Psycho.

For me, it's about the music.

Bret Easton Ellis did something miraculous within Patrick Bateman's killings: he destroyed the music of Huey Lewis and the News, Genesis and Whitney Houston. Before every nasty killing, Bateman goes on a diatribe about the music of one o ...more

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Aug 13, 2009 TK421 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary

The scariest thing about this book for me is that since I finished reading it--almost eight years ago--I still look around when I am in a crowded place at the faces of the people and wonder: Which one of you thinks like Patrick Bateman? Which one of you is ready to snap? Perhaps these other faces think the same when they look at me...

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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Jan 23, 2021 megs_bookrack rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021-mt-tbr-challenge

Wow, okay. American Psycho wasn't what I expected. I honestly thought I would end up loving this, however, I would have settled for at least mildly enjoying it.

I know quite a few people who would include this one on their favorites list, but after my experience with it, I don't see why?

I did not enjoy this at all. I was so gut-wrenchingly bored for almost the entire book, I couldn't wait for it to be over!

Let me be clear, it wasn't the content. I read a lot of brutal, gory stuff; frankly, I tho ...more

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Oct 15, 2013 Stacia (the 2010 club) rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Someone who can handle tons of gore

Recommended to Stacia (the 2010 club) by: Ash Wednesday

Shelves: adult, dark-or-taboo, male-pov, realistic-general-or-lit-fiction, horror, i-blame-ash

See Pat date.
See Pat screw.
See Pat mace.
See Pat use a nail gun.
See Pat eat flesh.
See Pat do obscene things with a severed head.
See Pat store body parts in random places.
Go, Pat, go!

1.5 stars Don't worry. That's the tame version. I didn't spoil the extreme parts of the story. Trust me.

It might be a long, long time before I read something which knocks American Psycho out of the top spot for "sickest thing I've ever witnessed," and I've read books which have had rape, murder, and gore ...more

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May 07, 2018 Annemarie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-english

Actual rating: 2 🌟's

I think Bret Easton Ellis described his own book the best in 1991, when he said:

"...I wrote a book that is all surface action: no narrative, no characters to latch onto, flat, endlessly repetitive."

He certainly did do that. I get the message he wanted to sent out, and I'm definitely able to respect and appreciate that. However, I personally appreciate well-developed characters and a good plot even more, so this book just wasn't for me.
At the end, I felt like nothing had happe ...more

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Jul 08, 2020 Jen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Have you ever watched the peels of your monstrous laughter marauding through a respectful silence like a gang of wild, cherry assed, baboons, barbarized by operant conditioning routines involving keg beer and reruns of Dawson’s Creek, and then thought; I’ve made a mistake? Yep. That was me in high school while observing the shrieking immurement of (un)Fortunato by one Mortar-Masseur Montresso, who, observing the victim’s considerable agitation, parrots back a demented simulacrum of his blood cur Have you ever watched the peels of your monstrous laughter marauding through a respectful silence like a gang of wild, cherry assed, baboons, barbarized by operant conditioning routines involving keg beer and reruns of Dawson’s Creek, and then thought; I’ve made a mistake? Yep. That was me in high school while observing the shrieking immurement of (un)Fortunato by one Mortar-Masseur Montresso, who, observing the victim’s considerable agitation, parrots back a demented simulacrum of his blood curdling screams, and so, to the tune of terrible troweling, rises a tit for tat chorus of caterwauling.

I remember clearly having wrestled with the prelude to this paroxysm. Trying to syphon off the black humor welling up by thinking about Dr. Henry Cotton’s antiquated solution to mental illness (which involved pulling patient’s teeth), but no matter what I did, my internals kept taking on crude until the tiny skiff of self mastery capsized into the fathomless depths of animal amusement. It first touched the stillness of the room with a wheeze, doing little to upset the barometric-billiards in the surrounding space.

Then there was a hoarse bark, a snap of the cue, its ballistics sufficient to disrupt the racked horror of my fellow students and send their attention scattering off surfaces and spiraling into the nimbus of my peculiar sensibilities. Soon I was expelling sonic hordes. Inebriated decimals, frequencies, waves, piling up trough/trough/peak/peak, advancing an auditory crusade against good taste. Crashing over objects, ricocheting off walls, tear-assing through circuitous canals to savage eardrums, trample ossicles, and kick cochlea for good measure. The teacher, a mask of incredulic-horrificationing, soon intervened on behalf of those poor souls caught in the vortex, demanding that I stop. But of course I couldn’t. And so I was sent to the office to atone for acts of heinous hilarity. Subsequently I was made to explain to my parents what was so damn funny about this ghastly revenge, to which I could only say: “You had to be there.”

I hope this preface might better contextualize why I found this book to be just okay as a grotesque satirical commentary on modernity’s callous, consumerist deformities - packaged in Pat’s obsessively exfoliated, highly symmetrical dermal bagging - but above average as a tool for coercing raucous outbursts that give the festooned saint presiding over your moral compunctions a bit of the dicky tummy by blasting the pious bastard in the beanbag with a pneumatic spudzooka loaded with Yukon Gold.

Now, I could make a pretty good case that those of you who don’t (didn’t) find it funny have missed something essential in the branding obsessed, body perfecting, sexually sadistic, jelly fish micro-waving, serial murdering, cannibal necrophiliac decapitationist, Patrick Bateman, and his continued fastidiousness in spite of medical issues brought on by acute business card envy.

But then you could well accuse me of being nuttier than squirrel turds and unworthy of serious consideration. And..

Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man...

I can’t, in good conscience, recommended this to anyone. Though I’ve provided something of a litmus test below to see if you are indeed the type who might derive a hearty chuckle from the content herein. Note that this sample is utterly anemic compared to the highly detailed gore which explodes across many pages like a bloated whale corpse packed with dynamite, compact discs, and yuppie intestines. I think it goes without saying that if you have a weak constitution you sh-

I have to return some video tapes.

“Some nights I would find myself roaming the beaches, digging up baby crabs and eating handfuls of sand – this was in the middle of the night when the sky was so clear I could see the entire solar system and the sand, lit by it, seemed almost lunar in scale. I even dragged a beached jellyfish back to the house and microwaved it early one morning, predawn, while Evelyn slept, and what I didn’t eat of it I fed to the chow.” ...more

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Nov 04, 2013 Warwick rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: united-states, fiction, dont-own

I am not convinced that endless descriptions of murder and torture are a good metaphor for unrestrained eighties capitalism. Consequently, while I have read many books that made me uncomfortable or nauseous, I have not read any that did so for such weak returns.

The prose style is never better than competent. Generally it alternates between repellant and just very dull. I don't think it's hard to make readers feel sick and disgusted. If I tell you I have a puppy in one hand, and a blunt pencil in ...more

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Dec 10, 2018 ✨Bean's Books✨ rated it liked it · review of another edition

Damn this book is graphic!
It's the 1980s and the rich keep on getting richer and the poor keep on getting poorer. Patrick Bateman is bored of his humdrum life on Wall Street. Nothing seems to excite him more than stopping people and ripping them apart. We follow his quick descent into madness as Ellis gives us in a blow-by-blow fashion.
With the exception of a few scenes, the movie is pretty much true to the book. They cut out a lot of the sex as well as the killing of a child and a dog. They als Damn this book is graphic!
It's the 1980s and the rich keep on getting richer and the poor keep on getting poorer. Patrick Bateman is bored of his humdrum life on Wall Street. Nothing seems to excite him more than stopping people and ripping them apart. We follow his quick descent into madness as Ellis gives us in a blow-by-blow fashion.
With the exception of a few scenes, the movie is pretty much true to the book. They cut out a lot of the sex as well as the killing of a child and a dog. They also toned down the gore substantially.
I can see why people hate this book. Patrick Bateman and his "friends" are a pack of egotistical and extremely self-centered pricks. I mean it's supposed to be American Psycho, not American Douchebag right?
However sexist Bateman is not. And I will tell you why... he looks down upon everyone. Women are either trash or hard bodies or they are deemed as unfuckable and are completely in love with him. Men also fit into three categories for Bateman: friends/business associates, not from America, and faggots. He even looks down on animals LOL. Bateman is a case where he in discriminately looks down upon everyone that is not him.
I will warn you eager readers, this book is EXTREMELY graphic not just in gore but also with the sex scenes. As the somewhat rational person that I like to think I am, I have a hard time thinking that another human being could actually put pen to paper the way that this author did with some of these scenes. It kind of makes you sick. like I got a lump in my throat reading it knowing that I'm reading a book and that someone has written this book from their own imagination. That's how sickening it is.
With all of that aside the book is rather a boring read. The Douchebag Circle is constantly talking about the hard bodies they want to fuck or the new things that they bought or who is sleeping with who or the drugs they can score and where. All of it is extremely monotonous and takes up more than half of the book in all. It gets rather annoying.
With everything considered I would have to say this was an okay read. However I wouldn't really recommend this book because of the extremely graphic scenes and apparently obvious tendency to piss people off for one reason or another.

You can also watch my review of this book on YouTube here:
https://youtu.be/a1WwzH-O9GM ...more

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Feb 18, 2011 mark monday rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: all-fucked-up, murdertime

ever see that video Criminal, the one where a winsome and pathetic fiona apple is surrounded by empty beer bottles & video equiment as she writhes sadly in a closet, in the backseat of a car, and in a tub as some dude rubs his feet all over her face? ugh. this book is like that shitty, creepy video, except times 100. just thinking about parts of it makes me want to take a shower and rinse the muck off. Criminal had arty direction by an interesting director that i like, Mark Romanek. American Psy ...more

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Sep 26, 2019 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 20th-century, novels, literature, mystery, crime-mystery, united-states, horror, fiction

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
American Psycho is a novel, by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a serial killer and Manhattan businessman. Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho follows the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his mid-20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite of New York American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
American Psycho is a novel, by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a serial killer and Manhattan businessman. Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho follows the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his mid-20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite of New York to his forays into murder by night. Through present tense stream-of-consciousness narrative, Bateman describes his daily life, ranging from a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues—where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette—to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother and senile mother. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s pop music artists. The novel maintains a high level of ambiguity through mistaken identity and contradictions that introduce the possibility that Bateman is an unreliable narrator. Characters are consistently introduced as people other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. Deeply concerned with his personal appearance, Bateman gives extensive descriptions of his daily aesthetics regimen.
After killing Paul Owen, one of his colleagues, Bateman appropriates his apartment as a place to host and kill more victims. Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. His murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from simple stabbings to drawn-out sequences of rape, torture, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and his grasp on sanity begins to slip. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations and on several occasions openly confesses his murderous activities to his coworkers, who never take him seriously, do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely—for example, hearing the words "murders and executions" as "mergers and acquisitions." These incidents culminate in a shooting spree during which he kills several random people in the street, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched in a helicopter. This narrative episode sees the first-person perspective shift to third-person and the subsequent events are, although not for the first time in the novel, described in terms pertaining to cinematic portrayal. Bateman flees on foot and hides in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses all his crimes to an answering machine. Later, Bateman revisits Paul Owen's apartment, where he had earlier killed and mutilated two prostitutes, carrying a surgical mask in anticipation of the decomposing bodies he expects to encounter. He enters the perfectly clean, refurbished apartment, however, filled with strong-smelling flowers meant, perhaps, to conceal a bad odor. The real estate agent, who sees his surgical mask, fools him into stating he was attending the apartment viewing because he "saw an ad in the Times" (when in fact there was no such advertisement). She tells him to leave and never return.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش نسخ اصلی: روز بیست و هفتم ماه سپتامبر سال 2015 میلادی
عنوان: روانی امریکایی؛ نویسنده: برت‌ ایستون الیس ؛ مترجم: محمدرضا شفاهی؛ تهران: انتشارات میلکان، ‏‫1398؛ در 420 ص؛ شابک: 9786226573559؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده امریکا - سده 20 م‬

روانی آمریکایی رمانی هنجارشکن از «برت ایستون الیس» است، که نخستین بار در سال 1991 میلادی به چاپ رسید. زاویه ی دید داستان، اول شخص است، و توسط «پاتریک بیتمن» که پیشه‌ور و قاتلی زنجیره‌ ای در «منهتن» است روایت می‌شود. اقتباس سینمایی این فیلم با بازی «کریستین بیل» در سال 2000 میلادی توزیع شد. کتاب در بسیاری از کشورها برای جوانان زیر هجده سال قدغن شده است. ا. شربیانی ...more

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About Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis

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Bret Easton Ellis is an American author. He is considered to be one of the major Generation X authors and was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney. He has called himself a moralist, although he has often been pegged as a nihilist. His characters are generally young vacuous people, who are aware of their depravity but choose to enj ...more

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“...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.” — 634 likes

“I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning” — 510 likes

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