LogFAQs > #968441120

Patrick's psychopath shtick and the murders are a desperate attempt at being unique and having agency in a world where everyone is such an interchangeable drone that they're acting like personalized business cards are fascinating fashion statements. It's even kind of sad at points. Like the movie plays the Huey Lewis and the News stuff for laughs but in the book it's almost depressing and relatable even because he has all these opinions about music and other stuff he likes to categorize that he obviously wants to share with people and relates to his own life, but when he's interacting with other characters they rarely actually seem to care or even notice anything he says.

It makes a lot more sense if you're thinking about it from a logical story-set-in-our-world standpoint that none of it could have happened. But the book doesn't take place in our world, it takes place in a gray miserable postmodernist parody of it. It leaves the door open for either interpretation: either Patrick Bateman is attempting to escape conformity through fantasy, or the universe itself disregarded his attempt at being unique and having agency and is just continuing to grind on. Honestly, the message is the exact same bleak conclusion either way and I don't think you're ever supposed to truly known in a concrete sense because even Paul, the most realistic and feasible murder he commits, is called into question in the end.