American Psycho

"...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." ^(376-377)

I have finally finished reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I started this book probably 2 years ago when Betsy let me borrow it. Come to think about it, I think she said she didn't want it back and handed it to me with a grimace on her face.

I think it took me so long to finish it because of how slow it started. I'd read 20 or 30 pages and then put it down for a few weeks (or months) and kept doing this until it finally picked up. I'm guessing Ellis did this to show Bateman slowly going crazy. Once he got going though, it was a much faster read.

I first saw the movie adaptation of this back at RIT. Dave (one of my roommates at the time) and I watched it on HBO at like 2am one morning; it was hilarious! How funny is it watching a deranged socialite serial killer run after a woman in an apartment building wearing only sneakers and a chainsaw? Too funny. The book had some humorous moments, like Bateman trying to catch a rat in his apartment with a wedge of Brie topped with a sun-dried tomato and a sprinkling of dill, but on the whole, it was much darker and much more serious (like what he does with the rat after he catches it).

Fun fact: Pat Bateman has a younger brother named Sean Bateman who is the main character in a book (and movie) called The Rules of Attraction.