Ellis and Controversy

Bret Easton Ellis was only 27 when American Psycho was published, already famous for Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction. The backlash was immediate and severe. The National Organization for Women called for a boycott. Multiple countries banned or restricted the book.

Ellis maintained that the novel was a feminist satire, arguing that presenting misogynistic violence through a hollow male narrator exposes rather than endorses the culture producing such men. Whether readers agree depends largely on whether they trust satire to function when the satirized behavior is described in graphic detail. The debate has never been resolved and probably never will be.