American Psycho was a weird book overall for a read. I will admit I have read this before and this is my second read because I wanted to go back and see what I may have missed the first time reading it. If American Psycho has a thesis, it’s that certain types of people are so obsessively set on outward perfection that they miss the real substance of being human. Money and beauty insulate these people from regular needs but create a hypertrophied rivalry over status: the novel’s characters boast of paying more than they really did; they seek relationships for show rather than companionship. When Bateman continues his exhaustive detailing of designer clothes while tearing apart the body of a sentient human being, he’s showing us where a culture of vanity takes us: to a place where the label matters more than the person. This would thematically justify the violence as a ruthless way of showing how little other human beings matter to the type that Bateman represent if the novel didn’t provide this perspective already. But it does: on every single page this culture is mocked in thoughts and dialogue that have little need of physical manifestation. In one scene, Bateman listens to his friends guffaw about how “the only girls with good personalities who are smart or maybe funny or halfway intelligent… are ugly chicks.” He then spoils their fun by referencing someone else who also had a highly reductive view of women: he quotes a serial killer who says he wants to do two things when he sees a pretty girl.
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