Classics Corner: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; A Rambling Book With a Truly Horrible Lead

Classics Corner: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; A Rambling Book With a Truly Horrible Lead


By Julie Sara Porter


Bookworm Reviews





Spoilers: Well with a title like American Psycho, you don't expect the protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis's classic psychological thriller to be a likeable kind-hearted hero. But the truth is, Patrick Bateman is a truly horrible hateful person whose journey presents two possibilities, neither of which are good: Either he is completely delusional and a complete vain and shallow character who believes killing people will satisfy his urges or he really is a deranged psychopath who gets his kicks slicing up prostitutes, homeless people, business rivals and anyone else who is unfortunate enough to be alone with him.





The book isn't really long in plot. Mostly it's a few months in Bateman's life in which he rambles on about brand names, his work as an investment banker, favorite musical groups, his obsession with reading about serial killers, parties with friends and cocaine, oh yeah and the times when he takes an unsuspecting victim to his apartment and stabs and mutilates his victim with an ice pick.





Naturally Bateman is not a likeable character, but he is also not a relatable, understandable, or even after a while an interesting character. He is written so broadly and farcical that it is really hard to be invested in such a character. Even some of the worst characters such as Crime and Punishment’s Raskolnikov, Native Son’s Bigger Thomas, and soon I will review The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which features Lisbeth Salander, a young woman who does not mind giving rapists and killers of women bloody ends. With these characters, you don't support what they do but you may understand why they do it. But with Bateman, that moment never comes. He is shallow and pretentious at best and a demented violent abusive bigoted misogynist at worst.





Bateman begins most days with a beauty treatment that even supermodels or pageant contestants might find a bit much. Paragraph after paragraph goes into his skin care treatment, specific hair care regimen, and names specific clothing by their brand names. (In fact, a running gag throughout the book are the paragraphs of non-stop product placements where Bateman just describes brand after brand comparing and contrasting them.) With his regimen and brand loyalty, Bateman comes across as a man who is completely vain and cares about little else but his personal appearance.





Even before he makes his first kill, Bateman is about as darkly comic character as can be. While we are told he is an investment banker, we see him barely at work except in a few conversations with his secretary whom he believes has a crush on him.Instead he spends more time at endless clubs and dinner parties where he takes cocaine, flirts with the female guests, and constantly confuses arriving guests with other people in his life. The confusion suggests either Bateman is so self-involved that he doesn't care who the people are around him or his brain is addled that he can't recognize people anymore.


He also displays psychotic tendencies. If something doesn't go his way, Bateman will shout obscenities and describes how he wants to kill the person who offended him.


In one passage, Bateman and his colleagues show off their business cards and Bateman jealously considers killing those who had better cards than his.





The thoughts are only thoughts until Bateman makes his first kill. It is actually suspenseful as he follows his prey and overpowers her. This leads to other murders that become broader and uncomfortably more farcical as the book goes along. It is disconcerting when Bateman describes an extremely bloody kill in one chapter and then reviews the best and worst songs by Whitney Houston in the next. Bateman is so detached from his bloody work that he retreats to his status symbols instead of the moral, legal, and ethical implications. Even when Bateman is driven to confess, it’s less out of guilt than fear he will be caught because he killed people out of his usual M.O. a business rival and a child rather than prostitutes, homeless men, and bedmates who he shows little remorse for.


While American Psycho makes for interesting reading to get into the mind of a serial killer, after a while the murders get repetitive and the book runs far too long. After the tenth kill, the Reader thinks “Okay, okay we get it! Patrick Bateman is a murderous SOB. Are we done yet?”





While Bateman describes his kills in a graphic manner, there are implications that he is not as violent as he appears to be. When he goes on his murderous rants about killing other people, his friends don't react very much. This suggests that they are as soulless as he is or that he really didn't say or do those things and he is imagining his life as a serial killer. The latter possibility is also suggested when after Bateman meets a friend that he confesses the murders to, the friend laughs in his face and says that he had lunch days ago with the man Bateman believes he killed.





So either Patrick Bateman is a violent murdering psychopath or longs to be one. Neither possibility is good and neither make him interesting.