American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis: A Void Lies at the End of the Rainbow for Yuppie Psychopath

Bateman, a Wall Street yuppie, intelligent, handsome and emotionally derelict, is on a disturbing journey into psychosis.

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The story begins when Bateman blithely declares that his secretary and other women in his life are in love with him. In reality, he sees them as mere ‘hardbodies’ falling to the feet of his cloying charms. But his admirers remain oblivious to this hollow man, preoccupied with their own aspirations.

Yuppie Eighties Values Gone Wrong

Bateman is obsessed with vanity and worldly possessions. His pad is clinical, shiny and modern, where the simple sentiment of a sunset or a flower has no place. His religion is his platinum credit card and he fantasizes about smashing the faces of anyone who dares to outdo him in acquisitions.

We learn of his music tastes; Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis & the News and Genesis, intimately assessed. Yet there is no feeling in his appraisals. He seems unaware of how music can connect with mood, only of hard facts. The hairs on the back of his neck are untweakable.

His friends are equally soulless, dining only where to be seen and drinking the fashionable mineral water. Everyone is good looking, fashionable and aspiring. But all of it is empty.

Mind of a Psychopath

And this, it seems, is the point. Contrasting with this sickly perfection is Bateman’s inner thoughts, ugly and blackly comical. He slaughters a Japanese cook, bloodying a fortune cookie in the process. He bequeaths Evelyn, his long-time girlfriend, the cookie, claiming the sticky red substance is sweet and sour sauce. Equally blind to Bateman’s inner ugliness is Carruthers, a work colleague, infatuated to the point of clinging onto Bateman’s ankles like an overgrown toddler in Barney’s a public bar.

Meanwhile, Bateman is slaying tramps, prostitutes and work colleagues that no one notices have gone missing. Bateman grows paranoid that someone else is parading around pretending to be him. Could it be that Bateman’s identity is disintegrating as his slayings grow ever more frantic? I found myself wishing something would break the spell, as the endless gristle, eyeballs, privates and throats take a severing. The reading was at times gruesome.

Bateman’s girlfriend, Evelyn should have been the ideal bait, being gullible, naive and ditzy, yet these qualities seemed to be the saving of her.

The final part of the book became like a club to the head, Bateman’s fantasies repeating like acid reflux and I was no longer sure of what was real. Did the murders actually happen, or did they remain the fantasies of Bateman’s deranged mind?

Bateman could have been the black hole at the centre of the eighties Yuppie ideology. A disturbing glimpse into what is feels to confuse contentment with cold-hearted greed.