It’s a standing testament that American Psycho (2000) is one of my most favorite films of all time. Christian Bale, being one of my favorite actors of all time (A true Batman/Bruce Wayne) in my humble opinion.
I’m still slowly, slowly, reading through the novel.
It’s been published/in print for 30 years, this year, and yet I stumbled across a stark, if not horribly placed typo.
Ah, yes, the dreaded typos. The things we as writers don’t see, the things we as writing editors don’t notice no matter how many times we read the same passage over, and over again (they’re invisible to us, you see).
A large dog-eared page in my paperback (yes, I’m one of those people) pp. 157:
Coming slowly up the street is an old queer wearing a cashmere turtleneck, a paisely wool ascot and a felt hat, walking a brown and white sharpie, its bunched-up face sniffing low to the ground.
In the rest of the paragraph, the word shar-pei is used a number of times, and yet this first introduction of the dog is misspelled. I sat there for a good while, re-reading it, thinking I’d lost my marbles, thinking I’d read it wrong, suuuurely. There’s even a part in this scene where the dog’s owner corrects Bateman into how to pronounce the breed.
I was wondering, had I missed something? Had the mispelling been completely intentional? Sometimes writers do that, don’t they?
It’s like sitting in English class in high school, your teacher telling you to ‘dissect the meaning of this sentence when the author says the sky was blue’. Like, is it blue because it’s fucking blue, or is it blue because it’s meant to enunciate to us in littler certain terms that there is an impending depression to barrage upon our protagonist on the only day in the entire book where they mention the sky is blue.
But no, despite racking my very small pea-brain, I couldn’t really think of any striking similarities. I mean, Sharpie is a brand of marker, and I mean yeah, the hideousness of the brachycephalic breed in question certainly stands out from a crowd of Bichons and Poodle-oodle-mixes you’d happen across during late 80’s Manhattan, trophy dogs in the purses of the wives of stockbrokers like a Sharpie, but I don’t really think that was the intention.
After my introspection, I’ve come to the conclusion, it’s just that. A typo.
And being a self-published, self-edited writer it brushed my ego a little bit. In a good way. A tiny tickle that made me smile a bit. A laugh, a chuckle, even. Like hey, one of my favorite writers, this infamous piece of literature still managed to be published with a tiny spelling error.
We’re not perfect. Humans are imperfect creatures, computers (hello spell-check and auto-correct on my Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, you’ve much to learn) are even further still. It’s just a little reminder that we can work our asses off until they’re bruised and swollen and tiny little mistakes will still make it through the cracks.
It’s not a fatalistic remark, I swear, it’s more of an assurance that it’s acceptable. Tiny little niggles, weird spelling errors (of course in minute amounts) is okay, and I think as any creative person, anyone who creates or designs or anything here and there in between should accept this and pry that little smile across their lips.
It’s okay. We’re human.
You’re doing awesome even still.
Lyana Lim Palmer | Dark Urban Fantasy Author 