American Psycho

Extremely valuable for a look beneath the surface. Price watching Reagan on the television and asking how someone can be involved in the horrible things that he did and act so nonchalant, not realizing that he could be describing anyone at the table but especially Patrick. To me, that was an explicit connection of the book's exploration... I cannot put a precise name to the group. Conservative is not the right word, nor liberal, democrat, republican, libertarian, cis, straight, white, male, though there is a lot that the book has to say about masculinity and what it condones in our society. I guess the best way to put it is that this book is for the sort of people who might say “I'm not racist, but...”
It shows us where that line of thinking will inevitably lead. It shows us where our fears and prejudices can lead, and will lead if they are not properly accounted for.
There is a scene where Patrick is talking to Jean and he begins to feel the thunderous cloud of his hatred and misanthropy and violent nihilism begin to lift, almost, wondering if he can “accept, though not return, her love” (379). I didn't mean for this to become an essay, but that entire chapter, especially the monologue that begins at the bottom of page 378 and ends at the top of 379, feels like Ellis showing us an out from the horribly bleak world he has shown us for the rest of the novel. And yes, Patrick dips right back into his old view, with the only sign of hope being that he still takes Jean out on dates and allows her to at least be near, if not in, his life. It's during that monologue that he realizes he does not know how to control her, how to own her as he does so many other women, and recognizes that she not only wants to, but potentially could, change him, control him. He could not only give up controlling her, he could relinquish that control to her. There is a reason this monologue is so near the end of the book, and I think that reason is so that Ellis could beat us over the head with Patrick's dull, annoying nature, his racism, xenophobia, misogyny, his incredibly graphic (to the point of being cartoonish; according to him, this man ripped open a woman's stomach with his bare hands) acts of violence... all of it. I've read this book before, and both times I have been utterly exhausted by the time I get to that one tiny spot of hope. The first time I read it, I didn't want Patrick to be saved, and was glad he was cursed to his pathetic existence. The second time, I realize that it is not Patrick that the novel is trying to rescue. Maybe I'm only thinking this way because the world has been so incredibly depressing for years now, but it felt like that monologue was my own. That somewhere in the bleakness, there is still room to find love.
Having written all of this, I know that I am just giving my own personal interpretation. You could read this book, for the first time or the tenth time, and get nothing from it but a vile collection of disgusting scenes. That's fine. It is a vile collection of disgusting scenes. But this time I got more out of it, and I guess I just wanted to tell you that.