Violence as Symptom

Simon & Schuster dropped the book before publication after employees protested its graphic violence. Vintage picked it up. But the violence is deliberately excessive because it mirrors the cold, transactional nature of the culture Bateman inhabits — a world where human beings have already been reduced to objects.

Bateman's murders may not even be real. Contradictions accumulate — victims appear alive later, impossible acts go unnoticed, his confession is ignored. Whether real or imagined, the hollow culture he inhabits remains equally disturbing.