Talk:American Psycho/Archive 2

If you're reading this, fix the following...
"One question often asked by readers is why Bateman is never caught despite the investigation into Paul Owen's disapearance of a well-dressed detective. However, he is thrown off by what an alibi from someone who claims to have had dinner with Paul Owen during his reported disapparence. However, the satirical theme that yuppies all look the same runs throughout the book and suggests the alibi is false."

In particular: "...he is thrown off by what an alibi from someone who claims to have had dinner with Paul Owen during his reported disapparence."

Also, the "However, he" followed by "However, the"

muchos gracias —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.114.145.238 (talk • contribs).

De nada.

I agree, two successive howevers does make the paragraph seem scizophrenic. Overuse of however is a symptom of lazy writing. I have changed a couple of the sentences, hopefully in accordance with your request. Let me know if there is anything else. Rintrah 06:07, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

And fix this too- The article's punctuation is mixed American/British English. Please keep the article in one format or the other. 75.212.197.116 (talk) 03:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

In Minor Characters, shouldn't Marcus' last name be Halberstam with only one "r"? (It's Halberstam in the novel and Halberstram in the film.) 87.95.43.126 (talk) 19:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ Verified via GBooks. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 21:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

If you're reading this, fix the following...
"One question often asked by readers is why Bateman is never caught despite the investigation into Paul Owen's disapearance of a well-dressed detective. However, he is thrown off by what an alibi from someone who claims to have had dinner with Paul Owen during his reported disapparence. However, the satirical theme that yuppies all look the same runs throughout the book and suggests the alibi is false."

In particular: "...he is thrown off by what an alibi from someone who claims to have had dinner with Paul Owen during his reported disapparence."

Also, the "However, he" followed by "However, the"

muchos gracias —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.114.145.238 (talk • contribs).

De nada.

I agree, two successive howevers does make the paragraph seem scizophrenic. Overuse of however is a symptom of lazy writing. I have changed a couple of the sentences, hopefully in accordance with your request. Let me know if there is anything else. Rintrah 06:07, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

And fix this too- The article's punctuation is mixed American/British English. Please keep the article in one format or the other. 75.212.197.116 (talk) 03:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

In Minor Characters, shouldn't Marcus' last name be Halberstam with only one "r"? (It's Halberstam in the novel and Halberstram in the film.) 87.95.43.126 (talk) 19:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ Verified via GBooks. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 21:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Plot summary madness
Who are all these people coming out of the woodwork to re-write the plot summary so that it's full of POV and other useless nonsense? Do you think it's the same person using different IP addresses? For those determined to add their 2 cents: please follow Wikipedia guidelines for plot summaries. Thank you.--TEHodson 22:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Possibly. I did a full revert of the edits, though. Not sure if they even read the book. Take this edit, for example. I think can think of at least one graphic murder scene on top of my head (the one with Bateman slicing someone's eyes). Nymf hideliho! 07:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I reverted that edit and responded by trying to define what "graphic" means. I think he was trying to say it isn't written in "purple prose" but uses clinical, detached language, but hadn't the language skills himself to articulate the thought accurately. It's odd that there's been this sudden spate of edits--I assume they're mostly from the same person, i.p.-hopping. I hate attending this page, but I do it. I don't even like the damn book, but as a writer, I have to say it's an interesting exercise. I wish I didn't have to say it, but I do (oh, the humanity).--TEHodson 08:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll go on record here as one of the users who has been doing some plot-cleanup, though my IP should remain consistent. The version I found here was incomplete, somewhat confusing, and not terribly well written. I've made attempts to solve some of those problems. If other editors would like to work together to create a coherent plot summary I would be more than willing to do so. I will also say here that I agree that the use of the phrase "graphic language" is somewhat misleading. The murders are described in graphic detail, but this is not the same as graphic language. Graphic language would indicate profanity, slang, etc. As someone who has read the book, Patrick's narration shifts from graphic language to non-graphic language when describing his murders: He refers to "cunts" in sex scenes but "vaginas" in murder scenes, etc.66.170.204.148 (talk) 02:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Some specific points of complaint:


 * Though the book is rather slice-of-life, it does have a narrative arc that is lost in the supposed "good" version of the plot summary. Bateman's murder of Paul Owen is an important event, yet the summary mentions nothing of it, and the segment on Patrick visiting Owen's apartment completely lacks context. Someone reading this summary will be left wondering who Paul Owen is and how/why Patrick murdered anyone in his apartment. Likewise, nothing is mentioned of Patrick's "Chase, Manhattan" rampage, which serves as a climax of sorts to the book, and directly results in Patrick's confession. (Like the murder of Paul Owen, this omission from the summary leaves someone reading the article contextless to why-- and when-- Bateman confesses to his attorney).


 * "His mask of sanity." A minor quibble, but Bateman never says "His mask of sanity." He may say "My mask", but not in the third person. This may be a typo but it's still not good writing and shouldn't be something to which we actually revert.


 * The final paragraph is, quite simply, poorly written. This chunk-- "The ambiguity is heightened by the fact that mistaken identity is a recurring theme throughout the book. Characters are consistently introduced as other people, or argue over the identities of people they can see in restaurants or at parties. Whether any of the crimes depicted in the novel actually happened, or were simply the fantasies of a delusional psychotic, is deliberately left open"-- is easily summed up in the convention of the unreliable narrator. Further, discussion of themes does not belong in the summary, and, unsourced, is the sort of NPOV writing we're ostensibly working to weed out.66.170.204.148 (talk) 02:41, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi #66 etc. I'd recommend that you create a user ID, as anonymous editors tend to be dismissed here, mostly because they do drive-by edits of little or no value and often make terrible messes, and also tend to not know WP protocol, which you've just demonstrated by reverting an edit by a well-known editor first and coming to discuss it on the talk page second, rather than the other way round. When something's been in dispute or is causing difficulty of any kind, we talk about the problem here first, resolve it, then make the changes out of consensus. So I'm putting it back to what it was while we discuss it here.


 * All that being said, you make some good points. If you've been here before, you should know that dealing with this article is a nightmare, and just trying to keep it from degenerating completely has been my goal. How about you copy and paste the offending sentences or paragraph(s) here and then write your version (also here), keeping out any and all interpretation of motivation and any emotional language. Then let's look at it and make suggestions. The Paul Owen bit is important, I agree. I usually re-write plot summaries myself, usually for clarity, style, and brevity, but I don't want to re-read this book in order to do so. Another idea would be for you to create your ID and your own sandbox and re-write the plot summary there, give us the link to it here, and I'll copy-edit it (which I'm very good at). The sandbox page also has a Talk page attached to it so we can all comment on what you're doing. That is probably the best way to re-work this plot summary. I agree it needs help. I hope, too, that you will then help to protect the page by keeping it on your watchlist so as to prevent destruction of your hard work. That's what WP editors do, and it's why we're a bit intolerant of those who don't even bother to create an ID so we can leave messages and know we're dealing with the same person again and again. If you're interested in doing this, please start by saying so here before making any more changes to the article itself. I will, in the meantime, take a harder look at the summary in light of your comments and see if I can make any improvements. I look forward to hearing from you.--TEHodson 02:58, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * To #66etc. I've just removed a great deal of fat from the plot summary to allow room for those things you think are important. Please re-read it and tell me what things you think should be added (such as the rampage noted above), including where you'd put the additions in. We need to keep this brief. I have no idea how to resolve the problems of the final paragraph, which should end with the ending of the book. I hope you'll come back and make suggestions and improve the plot summary. Thanks.--TEHodson 03:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, below is the summary I've worked out. I don't think that it's complete but I think it's a good step forward from our mutual efforts. I'll post the summary first, then my concerns about my own work:


 * Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho is about the daily life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, 26 years old when the story begins, comes from a privileged background, having graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard (class of 1984), and then Harvard Business School (class of 1986). He works as a vice president at a Wall Street investment company and lives in an expensive Manhattan apartment on the Upper West Side, where he embodies the 1980s yuppie culture.


 * The first third of the book details a series of Bateman's Friday nights, as he and his colleagues travel to various cafes and nightclubs, where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette. Bateman's present tense, stream of consciousness narration is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s musicians, specifically Genesis, Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston. Bateman additionally details his various sexual relationships: He is engaged to a fellow yuppied named Evelyn, for whom he possesses no deep feelings, and frequently solicits sex from attractive women, whom he refers to as "hardbodies." Bateman additionally toys with the idea of a relationship with his secretary, Jean, a meek woman who does little to hide her infatuation with him and who allows him to emotionally manipulate her.


 * As Bateman continues to describe his day-to-day activities, mundane details become interspersed with descriptions of brutal murders he carries out in secret with no apparent motivations. After killing one of his colleagues, Paul Owen, one evening, Bateman appropriates his apartment as a place to kill and store more victims. Bateman also documents his interactions with his estranged family, including his senile mother, whom he visits in a nursing home, and his younger brother, Sean Bateman, a hedonistic college dropout who, with Patrick Bateman, also appears in Ellis's earlier novel The Rules of Attraction.


 * As the book progresses, Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. The description of his murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from stabbings to drawn out sequences of torture, rape, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and the separation between his two lives begins to blur: He nearly kills Jean, and, on a vacation intended to save their relationship, drowns Evelyn's dog. Upon their return to the city, he breaks up with her by tricking her into eating a urinal cake. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations, and confesses his murderous activities to his co-workers, who treat his confessions as humor. His friends do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely (such as hearing the words "murders and executions" as "mergers and acquisitions"). Bateman begins to experience incidents such as seeing a Cheerio interviewed on a talk show, being stalked by an anthropomorphic park bench, and finding a bone in his Dove Bar. These incidents culminate in Bateman engaging in a city-wide rampage during which he shoots several people in front of multiple witnesses, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched in a helicopter. Bateman holes himself up in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses to all of his crimes. Nothing comes of the confession, and Bateman resumes his life.


 * A confused Bateman confronts Harold Carnes, questioning him about his confession the night of the rampage. Carnes, mistaking Bateman for a mutual colleague named Davis, congratulates him on what he believes to be a practical joke, only expressing disappointment that "Davis" pretended to be Patrick, as he and their friends all consider Bateman to be too much of a coward to ever harm anyone. When Bateman insists that he murdered Paul Owen, Carnes informs him that he recently had lunch with Owen in London, calling into question whether Bateman has experienced any of the incidents he has described or if he is an unreliable narrator.

OK. So. What I see wrong:

1) Should we note that the violence does not begin until a considerable way into the book? I read it five years ago and am now "skim reading" it after it was given as a Christmas present. I do not believe that anyone is actually killed until over 100 pages into the 400 page book. For a literary work called "American Psycho" notorious for its violent content, I can't help but feel this is important.

2) No mention of Luis. He has no real bearing on the plot but he is a frequent character and his girlfriend, Courtney, is one of Patrick's consistent conquests.

3) The final confrontation with the taxi driver. From a literary standpoint this only appears to serve the purpose of calling into question Patrick's sanity one final time: In a book filled with brutal murders, when finally confronted about one, Patrick genuinely does not remember killing/may not have actually killed this man. It's a sort of climax of the story, but in terms of what is discussed in an abbreviated plot summary, is it still important?

I think there's still some work to be done here, but I believe the above summary is a step in the right direction.66.170.204.148 (talk) 01:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

This plot outline refers more to the movie or to a subjective reconstruction of events than the book. In fact, the cheerio, dove bar, and park bench incidents all happen AFTER the crime spree in the book, so how can the crime spree be their culmination? 04:26, 23 January 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt2h (talk • contribs)


 * Someone gave you the book as a Christmas present? Keep an eye on him. Seriously, though, I'm glad you're back and did the work. Why do you not just make a User ID and do this properly? Onto the summary: your word count is way over the maximum (summaries should be 400-600 words; your is 712, and is longer than the one I did yesterday, which is also over the limit at 688). Have you read my edited version, which is on the page now? Have you read the guidelines for plot summaries? They're meant to give a rough sketch of the main plot, not re-create the experience of the book. Some comments, which answer your questions among other things: it is not necessary to break the book into thirds at all, or state how long it takes for violence to erupt. It's self-evident that things change from the sentence: "As Bateman continues to describe his day-to-day activities, mundane details become interspersed with descriptions of brutal murders he carries out in secret." Notice that I ended the sentence before you did above. Those extra words are not necessary. Luis is not important in this context. Neither is all the detail about his family, though I did leave it in yesterday. It should come out, and end with "details his interaction with his family." Get rid of all the detail about the dog and its urine. This bit is good and should stay: "These incidents culminate in Bateman engaging in a city-wide rampage during which he shoots several people in front of multiple witnesses, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched in a helicopter. Bateman holes himself up in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses to all of his crimes. Nothing comes of the confession, and Bateman resumes his life." Get rid of the mistaken identity by the lawyer--doesn't matter. The summary should end with the first sentence of your final paragraph. You've re-created the ending, rather than referred to it, which is all we should be doing in a plot summary. The appropriation of Paul's apartment is important--it's a major plot point. You cannot use the word "confused" to describe Bateman. You can only say he confronts the lawyer. This is why writing plot summaries is so hard and why it's a discipline to maintain them--everyone wants to give a feel for the characters and the atmosphere of the book, but this isn't a review and our interpretations have to be kept out as absolutely as possible. It's hard to do. It's especially hard when one really loves a book (though I can't imagine anyone really "loving" this one). I'm going to take those things you've added which are relevant and put them in, and remove some more of the cruft from what's there now. Let's see how that reads, and revisit your concerns tomorrow if I've failed to include something you genuinely find important. Make a case for it. I'm not in charge, by the way, just more experienced, so I'm taking a leadership role right now. That doesn't mean I get final say, so do keep talking. Enlist support if you think I'm not being flexible enough (this is why we make identities, so our work gets known and we have allies when there's a difference of opinion). It's nice to be collaborating on this. I get tired of this article and keep almost taking it off my watchlist. Please do reassure me you'll be on point to maintain what you've helped keep up with.--TEHodson 05:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay--I made another pass at it, including your ideas (but not always in the way you presented them). I included all the structural and stylistic elements in the first paragraph to set up the summary, then when into some detail. Please tell me whether the visit to Paul's clean apartment happens before or after the confrontation with the lawyer. I remember it after, but check, please. I don't want to re-read the book (though I do have it), even to skim it. Let me know what you think of what I've done. The word count is 672 now. I'm tired and am going to bed. Talk to you tomorrow.--TEHodson 06:02, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think this is progressing nicely. I've submitted another edit below. My main problem at this point is how to address the novel's more surreal touches, specifically the constant mistaken identity and Patrick's ambiguous psychosis. The segment about the Cheerio and park bench fit where they are, but whether the novel's ambiguity should be addressed or not in the summary, and if so, where, is my concern.

Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho is about the daily life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman, from his recreational life amongst elite Wall Street yuppies to forays into torture and murder.

Through present tense stream-of-consciousness narrative, Bateman describes his daily life, ranging from a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues (where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette) to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother and senile mother. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s Pop music artists.

As Bateman describes his day-to-day activities, the mundane details become interspersed with descriptions of brutal murders he carries out in secret. After killing one of his colleagues, Paul Owen, one evening, Bateman appropriates his apartment as a place to kill and store more victims. As the book progresses, Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. Descriptions of his murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from stabbings to drawn out sequences of torture, rape, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and the separation between his two lives begins to blur. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations, and confesses his murderous activities to his co-workers, who treat his confessions as humor. His friends do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely, hearing the words "murders and executions" as "mergers and acquisitions", for example. Bateman begins to experience incidents such as seeing a Cheerio interviewed on a talk show, being stalked by an anthropomorphic park bench, and finding a bone in his Dove Bar. These incidents culminate in Bateman engaging in a city-wide rampage during which he shoots several people in front of multiple witnesses, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched in a helicopter. Bateman holes himself up in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses to all of his crimes. Nothing comes of the confession, and Bateman resumes his life.

Bateman and Carnes have a confrontation about Bateman's confession. Carnes is amused at what he considers to be a good joke, and tells Bateman that he is too much of a coward to have committed such acts and claims that he had dinner in London with Paul Owen a few days previously. Returning to Owen's apartment, Bateman finds it in perfect condition, with no sign of any of the violence that occurred there. He runs into a real estate agent showing the apartment to prospective buyers, and who appears suspicious of Bateman.

The book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues in a club on a Friday night, engaging in mundane conversation. Bateman comes to the conclusion that he is proud of who he is, but fails when he attempts to articulate why. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.170.204.148 (talk) 04:45, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I've made a couple more changes, but left in the structural info--it's not strictly plot-related, but this section usually does mention it if a book (or film) is structured in an unusual way. Also, no parentheticals; the rule is, if it belongs in parentheses, it isn't necessary. I use the m-dash instead for asides like that. I think it's in good shape now, and am sick to death of it. I've asked a couple of times whether you're going to create an ID so you can keep watch on and protect this version (which as you can see, I made major changes to yesterday), or if you're expecting others to do it without you. Can you explain why you haven't made an ID; it's surprising, since you take this seriously. Anyway, thanks for your good work.--TEHodson 06:18, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Tranquilizer use definitely needs to be included in this article. Comment
One glaring oversight in this article is Bateman's increasing addiction to prescription tranquilizers. At first he needs them to sleep. And as he goes deeper into his shadow self??? he needs both more powerful and higher dosages of the tranquilizers to calm his nerves after the killings, dismemberments, et cetera. I believe by the end of the novel he is taking the very powerful Miltown, no longer even manufactured. Mixing the tranquilizers with hard liquor, as Bateman does, would definitely cause hallucinations and even a self-induced psychosis.User:JCHeverly 18:37, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I have read the book 5 or 6 times, and I don't particularly remember this part. Can you point me to a page in the book? Nymf (talk) 18:41, 20 December 2013 (UTC)


 * No, I can not. I read the novel a few years ago after seeing the movie.  One scene in the movie shows Bateman/Christian Bale pouring a phial filled with valium into his mouth at a phone booth.  As I remember it in the novel, it appears in some stream of consciousness passages.  I think he starts with Ativan and progressively works his way up.  A good place to start would be the phone booth part of the novel.User:JCHeverly 22:55, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Question regarding taxi driver "you killed Solly" scene
Hello, I have always liked this book very much since it came out and I am glad someone (or multiple someones) have put in the time and effort to write quite a good article about it, including the theme of the "unreliable narrator" (which it seemed to me that most people missed when the book was originally released). I did have one question. Why is the scene with the taxi driver and "you killed Solly" not discussed in the plot section? From all the discussion, it looks like it was there at some point but was later taken out. I always found that particular scene highly significant since it is the first and only time someone recognizes Bateman as a murderer, the person who recognizes him is not a fellow yuppie but instead a working-class cab driver, and it raises the question of whether Bateman actually has committed some actual murder as opposed to just fantasizing it. I'd be curious to know if there just wasn't much scholarship on it to make it worth including, or was there some other rationale for leaving it out? Best regards, TheBlinkster (talk) 03:18, 14 May 2015 (UTC)