Business cards feature most prominently in the chapter “Pastels.” Bateman, Van Patten, Price, and McDermott are out to dinner and showing off their newest business cards to one another, obsessing over the fonts, paper color and thickness, and style of the cards. Another banker, Scott Montgomery, joins them and leaves his card, and Bateman is completely mesmerized by it. The nearly-phallic obsession with business cards and one-upping each other through them is another example of those in Bateman’s world focusing only on a shallow, materialistic valuing of other people. The person with the most well-designed business card is the person with the most value, and Bateman seems to have thought that this would be a battle he would easily win. When Bateman becomes entranced by Montgomery’s business card, however, the reader can infer a sense of insecurity on Bateman’s part, a feeling which he would never talk openly about, even directly to the reader.
Business Cards Symbol Timeline in American Psycho
