We’re Not Through Yet: The Patrick Bateman Debate

The confrontation with the dark, the violent, and the different inevitably results in a pressing desire to explain, define, and categorize. That darkness, which causes the split subject to move into a state of crisis, can be termed the abject, the uncanny, the grotesque, the monstrous, or the absurd. (…) Putting the horrifying into linguistic terms gives an illusory sense of relief, wholeness, and separation from the horrifying; however, what happens when the failure of this linguistic relief becomes apparent?

I contend that the draw to the abject is something unequivocally human, and it is the portrayal of individuals who are fully immersed, obsessed with the desires outside the realm of what is deemed normal by society, who force others to recognize the universally erotic allure of what disgusts them. [via]

What it looks like spelled out.