After years of keeping schtum on the subject, cult author Bret Easton Ellis has opened up about the fate of Patrick Bateman; his original American Psycho. First made famous by the 1991 novel of the same name, the much-loved (and much mental) investment banker has become a symbol of all that is wrong with the modern world – spawning countless memes, mockeries, and mimics.
Despite all the insane popularity, though, Ellis has refused to cave under pressures for a sequel. Aside from a brief mention in mock memoir Lunar Park, Bateman – with all his axe-wielding, Huey Lewis-listening madness – has remained locked away and never heard of again.
...Until now. In a new interview with Town and Country magazine, the author has revealed where he thinks the character might be 25 years down the line – and sadly, it’s bad news for the Cali tech bros. “If I had written the book in the past decade, perhaps Bateman would have been working in Silicon Valley, living in Cupertino with excursions into San Francisco or down to Big Sur to the Post Ranch Inn,” Ellis mused. “(He’d be) palling around with Zuckerberg and dining at the French Laundry, or lunching with Reed Hastings at Manresa in Los Gatos, wearing a Yeezy hoodie and teasing girls on Tinder. Certainly he could also just as easily be a hedge-funder in New York: Patrick Bateman begets Bill Ackman and Daniel Loeb.”
It’s not such a surprising scoop. The Valley’s tech world has long been attracting some particularly douchey, Bateman-y types: with 60 per cent of women reportedly being sexually harrassed by their Silicon co-workers. One recent story from earlier this week revealed even darker depths, too – with tech bro Justin Keller writing a letter to San Francisco’s mayor urging him to remove the “homeless and riff raff” from the streets. The home of the next generation of psychopaths? It’s starting to look that way.
(H/T Uproxx)
