Patrick Bateman is an unlikely pop cultural icon. Yet that’s exactly what the anti-hero of American Psycho has become. Almost 30 years since Bret Easton Ellis’ book was published, and 20 since the movie’s release, Bateman’s Armani-clad mass murderer continues to resonate in the contemporary psyche. Type his name into Google and you’ll find a cosmetic brand named after him (Bateman Skincare), a LinkedIn post offering “American Psycho’s Top 10 Personal Branding Tips” and various first-person articles of the “I Followed Patrick Bateman’s Psychotic Skincare Routine For a Week” variety. Fascination with the film, in particular, has reached seriously nerdy levels. (FYI the “whoosh” sounds made when the characters brandish their business cards in the famous scene was made by slowing down the sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath.) Anyone who’s read the book — still banned in the Australian state of Queensland — may find this fan-boy veneration slightly awkward. The film presented a sanitised version of Bateman as a fairly standard chainsaw-wielding maniac. But the book is essentially torture porn in designer threads. Unfolding with a stylised tone of glazed indifference, the novel reveals Bateman as a serial killer, necrophile and cannibal who occasionally snacks on his…
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