Editing American Psycho (section)

==Plot==
Set in [[Manhattan]] during the [[Wall Street]] boom in 1989, ''American Psycho'' follows the life of wealthy, young [[investment banker]] named Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his mid-20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite of [[New York City|New York]] to his forays into murder by night. Through [[present tense]] [[Stream of consciousness writing|stream-of-consciousness]] narrative, Bateman describes his daily life, ranging from a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues—where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper [[etiquette]]—to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother and senile mother. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s [[pop music]] artists. The novel maintains a high level of ambiguity through mistaken identity and contradictions that introduce the possibility that Bateman is an [[unreliable narrator]]. Characters are consistently introduced as people other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. Deeply concerned with his [[vanity|personal appearance]], Bateman gives extensive descriptions of his daily aesthetics regimen.

After killing Paul <!--DO NOT CHANGE TO ALLEN; ALLEN IS MOVIE NAME, OWEN IS BOOK NAME! -->Owen, one of his colleagues, Bateman appropriates Paul's apartment as a place to host and kill more victims. Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. His murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from simple stabbings to drawn-out sequences of [[rape]], torture, [[mutilation]], [[Human cannibalism|cannibalism]], and [[necrophilia]], and his grasp on sanity begins to slip. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations and on several occasions openly confesses his murderous activities to his coworkers, who never take him seriously, do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely—for example, hearing the words "murders and executions" as "mergers and acquisitions". These incidents culminate in a shooting spree during which he kills several random people in the street, resulting in a [[SWAT]] team being dispatched in a helicopter. This narrative episode sees the first-person perspective shift to third-person and the subsequent events are, although not for the first time in the novel, described in terms pertaining to cinematic portrayal. Bateman flees on foot and hides in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses all his crimes to an answering machine.

Later, Bateman revisits  Paul <!--DO NOT CHANGE TO ALLEN; ALLEN IS MOVIE NAME, OWEN IS BOOK NAME! -->Owen's apartment, where he had earlier killed and mutilated two prostitutes, carrying a surgical mask in anticipation of the decomposing bodies he expects to encounter. He enters the perfectly clean, refurbished apartment, however, filled with strong-smelling flowers meant, perhaps, to conceal a bad odor. The real estate agent, who sees his surgical mask, fools him into stating he was attending the apartment viewing because he "saw an ad in the ''[[The New York Times|Times]]''" when, in fact, there was no such advertisement. She tells him to leave and never return. It is implied that the apartment was cleaned up by the building owners and the murder or murders covered up in order to ensure the highly valuable property does not diminish in price.

Bateman's mental state continues to deteriorate and he begins to experience bizarre hallucinations such as seeing a [[Cheerios|Cheerio]] interviewed on a talk show, being stalked by an [[Anthropomorphism|anthropomorphic]] park bench, and finding a bone in his [[Dove Bar]]. 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. Mistaking Bateman for another colleague, Carnes claims that the Patrick Bateman he knows is too much of a coward to have committed such acts. In the dialogue-laden climax, Carnes stands up to a defiant Bateman and tells him his claim of having murdered Owen is impossible, because he had dinner with him twice in [[London]] just a few days previously.

The book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues at a new club on a Friday night, engaging in banal conversation. All the men in the bar agree that economic success does equal happiness before reruns of the [[inauguration of George H. W. Bush]] and a [[Ronald Reagan]] speech appear on the bar's TV.

The book closes with a description of a sign in the bar — with the text appearing in [[all caps]] and in a different font from all the rest of the novel's text — that reads "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT."