30 Years of 'American Psycho': Bret Easton Ellis's Novel Still Haunts

Bret Easton Ellis's novel 'American Psycho' turns 30. Set between spring 1988 and December 1989, the book critiques Reagan-era America through the hallucinated narrative of Patrick Bateman, a yuppie serial killer. Ellis, born in Los Angeles in 1964, uses Bateman to allegorize Dante's Inferno, linking the character to Dorian Gray and Fitzgerald's Lost Generation. The novel's graphic violence and cannibalism serve as metaphors for a society consuming itself through waste, commodified relationships, and consumerism. The article also discusses artist David Onica, Bateman's favorite, whose work 'Sunrise with broken plates' (valued at $20,000 but claimed at $50,000) epitomizes art as status symbol. Onica, along with Eric Fischl and Julian Schnabel, captured the postmodern nightmare of the 1980s. Ellis's novel presciently critiqued 'creative finance' and U.S. foreign policy in Africa, with only Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street' (1987) and the Rolling Stones' 'Highwire' (1991) offering similar warnings. The book's intellectual honesty and poetic despair remain relevant as social media has democratized the obsession with image that once belonged to the rich.