Alison Kelly of The Observer notes that while "some countries [deem it] so potentially disturbing that it can only be sold shrink-wrapped", "critics rave about it" and "academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities".

Ellis said, "American Psycho was a book I didn't think needed to be turned into a movie", as "the medium of film demands answers", which would make the book "infinitely less interesting". Bateman also repeatedly talks about his life as if it were a movie; he seems weirdly cognizant that he is a fictional character, a villain in a story instead of an actual human being.Its critique was never just that the shallow consumerism of the Reagan years held, caged beneath it, the bloodthirsty, animal rage of the suppressed individual, but also that even when this rage was unleashed—in American Psycho, through murder, rape, cannibalism, necrophilia—everyone would be too self-absorbed to care. Bateman most definitely harbors no feelings or sympathy towards women, he deconstructs the women he meets, piece by piece, until they're reduced to just a sum of boobs, ass and vagina. A version of the musical is the focus of the musical episode titled "Chapter One Hundred and Twelve: American Psychos" of the sixth season from the series Riverdale. Observing another side of potential behavior coming from the affluent American society of consumerism is explained through C. At the end of the story, Bateman confronts Carnes about the message he left on his machine, only to find the attorney amused at what he considers a hilarious joke.

He is, by definition, a psychopath which has as one of its primary characteristics, the “inability to feel guilt, remorse or empathy towards another person. it creates (here goes my generalization), as does all 'good art', the ineffable feeling only able to be expressed through that particular work. A man addicted to his superficial, perfect life, he pulls us into a dark underworld where the American Dream becomes a nightmare . the moral voice comes not from the narrator or characters within the novel, but from the reader herself.Even before it finally found a publisher, critics griped about its gruesome descriptions of sex, drugs, and violence. the dread that easton ellis creates in this book goes far beyond DFW's simple assertion that american psycho 'does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is. It became a cult hit and reappraised as a black comedy, a satire of Regan’s America, and a postmodern critique of capitalist consumption - especially after the 2000 film adaptation directed by Mary Harron.

Social media and platforms such as 4chan, Reddit or TikTok have seen in him a reflection of the modern culture’s obsession with sex, money and physical appearance. One of the biggest literary events of 2023 occurs today (17 January), when Bret Easton Ellis’ first novel in 13 years, 'The Shards', finally gets released. The novels are also linked by common, recurring characters, and dystopic locales (such as Los Angeles and New York). The book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues at a new club on a Friday night, engaging in banal conversation.Bateman's epistemology and ethics in regards to his actions and way of thinking throughout the novel is a reflection, through his violence, which raises the questions of the moral and ethical understanding of all individuals in Bateman's position and status, and how they might act and think similar or completely identical in a consumer world built on capitalism as people see in today's American society.