A Man With An Agenda

'American Psycho' is vile. There, I said it. There is a great deal of terrible things that go on and the apathy of all those surrounding Patrick Bateman, the lack of concern about anything but themselves, is worrying in how accurate it is.

That appears to be Ellis' message, the escalating violence can in places be forgotten in a few paragraphs in the face of the numbing commercialism and status-seeking of the characters, led by Bateman himself.

It is no surprise to find a Brett Easton Ellis novel peopled with the apathetic privileged, but in everything else he's written there is something better, beneath all of that, beyond, that the characters are aware of, are seeking out, or missing.

Patrick Bateman is beyond all of that. Ellis' favorite fringe elements: the clothes, the music, the television, the drugs, are all pushed from the margins to extremes.

What Ellis is writing about is what happens when all of those fringe elements consume and become the focus of our lives - leaving only shallow husks, or worse: fools and monsters.