Summary

In “second self,” Ellis opens with the suggestion that Patrick Bateman, a character in his novel American Psycho, had hints of an autobiographical nature. He began writing the novel in 1986 and indicates that he was “living in a kind of dreamworld, too — the surrealism I was experiencing personally mutating back into the fictional domain of Patrick Bateman” (64). He details that he originally intended for the novel to be one that showed Bateman as a person who did not really fit in with society but at the same time was “seduced and trapped by the greed of an era” (64). It was during a meal with hipster friends that Ellis decided that Bateman would imagine himself to be a serial killer.

Ellis notes that he only felt like himself when he was working on the novel. He was unusual because he was...