Discussion questions for 'American Psycho' by Bret Easton Ellis

1. Is the violence in the novel misogynistic? Although Bateman is a ‘democratic’ killer and murders as many women as he does women (as well as a few women) the sheer excess of his descriptions of the sexual torture, rape, dismemberment, desecration, and abjection of women tilts the balance of the reading experience towards a disproportionate engagement with misogynistic violence. The question is: is this misogyny Ellis’s or is it Bateman’s? How is it possible to insert a barrier, a judgement and condemnation, between author and protagonist here? Is it enough for Ellis to say that this is obvious that he doesn’t himself feel this way towards women? Would the book have been improved by the excision of many of these scenes? Is it more important that we confront such abominations (since most of the details are taken from real cases) than that we turn away from them and pretend they do not happen? What is the function of literature:  truth or the sanitation of reality?

2. Why is so much of the novel devoted to the list of commodities? Many complaints about the novel  concentrate on the sheer boredom of seemingly endless lists of products on the market place: stereo equipment, grooming products,  accessories, chic food, designer clothes, etc.  These passages are definitely not designed to please. So why are they there? Does Ellis produce a shock by confronting us, in a literary text, with what we confront daily anyway? Isn’t an enormous amount of our time consumed by milling through thousands of products, and making spurious, empty choices based on taste or whim? Doesn’t the monotony of the lists feed out the rest of the book stylistically , so that at some limit everything in the book is just another list, even the torture scenes, and especially the appearance of characters?

3. Isn’t there any free will in ‘American Psycho’? Of course, every character is programmed by his or her author , but few characters seems to have their actions so utterly prescribed as Patrick Bateman. Who is really dictating his actions? Is it the author, or is it not the market itself , prompting Patrick at every turn to buy this, rent that, order this, consume that? Isn’t the desire to purchase , whether a diamond ring or pizza, something emanating less from ourselves than from the ring or the pizza? If Bateman feels this way, isn’t his response symptomatic of an entire culture of consumerism? Aren’t we all compulsive shoppers? And why?

4. Is Patrick Bateman gay? Although a Gay Pride parade down Fifth nauseates Patrick, and he is often to be found homophobic  epithets, there is a consistent hinting that he may be gay himself. His relationship with Luis Carruthers in particular, one of the novel’s funnier storylines, is loaded with ambiguities. Luis reads Patrick’s attempted strangulation in the Yale Club toilets as  a pass, and given how effective Bateman ‘normally’ is as a killer, he may have a point. A homoerotic graffito over the urinal seems to contain ‘an answer , a truth’. Bateman is utterly paralyzed by Carruther’s turn , and cannot even say anything insulting. Later in ‘Confronted by Faggot’ Bateman is fully confronted with his possibility latent homosexuality; he has to say he does not find Carruthers ‘sexually attractive’ , but NOT that he is not gay. And it is among rows and rows of ties that Patrick has this confrontation with Louis – phallic symbols in serried ranks , which cannot ward off the incipient dissolution of Bateman’s assumed sexual persona. How gay is Patrick?

5. What is at stake in Bateman’s extreme racism? The ‘haiku’  that Bateman composes for Bethany – ‘Look at the poor nigger on the wall. Look at him. Look at the poor nigger. Look at the poor nigger …on…the…wall. Fuck him…Fuck the nigger on the wall. Black man …is…de…debil’ – is only the most lyrical of Bateman’s expressions of racism. African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Iranians, Hispanics, Bateman hates them all.  Why is he so often overcome with racial hatred, when his powerful position in society is unassailable? Does the novel participate in that racism , or put it at an effective satirical and critical distance? What is the relation between this racism and the text’s humour?

6. How funny is ‘American Psycho’? Think of the best comic scenes and gags in the novel: the confrontation in the Chinese dry cleaners, the business card showdown, Bateman’s reversal of opinion on a pizza because Donald Trump lied it, the condom farce with Courtenay, the urinal cake gag, the pun on ‘murders and executions’ . Does ‘American Psycho’ qualify as a properly comic novel (like e.g. Catch 22)? Is its humour sufficiently broad to be considered acceptably funny? Or does its humour stray on the territory of the unacceptable, the taboo, the illicit? What is the relationship between the laughter and the taboo?

7. Why can nobody tell anybody apart from anybody else? More than a dozen of names are applied to Bateman ‘erroneously’  during the novel. As he says: ‘I think a lot of snowflakes are alike…and I think a lot of people are alike too.; …everyone is interchangeable anyway’. This is a consistent theme in Ellis’ fiction. What sorts of effects and meanings are derived in this novel from the persistent confusion all the characters experience among themselves? Who is Paul Owen, Tim Price, Marcus Halberstram? Who is Patrick Bateman?

8. Why doesn’t ‘American Psycho’ tell a story? Ellis demonstrates ‘narrative’ to a very lowly status in his pursuit of satiric ends. Does this make the book better or worse? Would a more convincing or enthralling story have boosted or defanged the satire?

9. There has been much debate regarding Ellis’ unreliable narration in ‘American Psycho’. Unreliable narration is defined as a narrative technique which occurs when a reader suspects, or has revealed to them – either overtly or through the detection of textual signs – that the first person character-narrator has misreported, misread, misevaluated, underreported, underread or underregarded events within the narration. Is Bateman an unreliable narrator?

10. The ending to ‘American Psycho’ is ambiguous and open to interpretation? What is your interpretation of the ending?

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