The author of “American Psycho” criticizes New York: “How the hell does anyone live here?”

He thinks you have to be an “American psycho” to live here.

While writer Bret Easton Ellis may have made his literary bones in New York, he probably isn’t going to be returning anytime soon. On a recent trip to the Big Apple to promote his new book, Shards, the writer wondered, “How the hell does anyone live here?” and pondered how anyone could call the now “unrecognizable” metropolis their home.

“I arrived Wednesday night during this terrible storm, and then the usual trouble getting your luggage, an hour of waiting in the Delta carousel, and then a trip to New York,” the frustrated 58-year-old Vanity Fair satirist said of his life. recent promotional tour. “I thought: “How does someone live here?”

The New York refugee, who currently resides in his homeland of Los Angeles, has owned an apartment in Gotham City since 1987, but has reportedly not slept there in a decade, according to Vanity Fair.

Ellis said he first became disillusioned with the city after making a pilgrimage to his old Astor Place locations in 2016 to meet a potential tenant.

“I haven’t been to New York for at least 10 years,” said the Rules of Attractiveness author, whose dig in the East Village/Union Square where he wrote American Psycho recently went on the market for £1.50. million dollars. “Around Fourth Avenue, 13th Street, I looked up from my phone and suddenly panicked.”

He did not know his whereabouts.

“I told the driver, ‘You’re in the wrong area… We’re going to 13th Street between Third and Fourth.’ He said, “Here it is.” I could not believe this change, ”recalled Ellis.

While the writer didn’t elaborate on exactly how New York changed, Ellis suggested that it was a far cry from the ’90s, which he described as a “glorious time” for living in the metropolis.

“I talk to a lot of people who just agree to be young and live in New York during that period and be involved in the magazine world, the glorious magazine world,” the author boasted.

It was during these supposedly serene days that Ellis wrote his opus American Psycho, the basis of the 2000 Christian Bale film of the same name. The premise is that a psychopathic investment banker apparently manages to get away with murder due to the superficial 1980s yuppie corporate culture.

It can be argued whether the glory days of the Big Apple have passed along the path of the dodo. However, according to NYPD data from August last year, modern-day New Amsterdam is seeing an increase in unrest, with major crime up 36% in 2022.

Other symptoms of perceived urban decline are rampant homelessness and an influx of migrants, many of whom until recently lived in the Watson Hotel in Midtown on taxpayer money.