ok so american psycho has “abandon all hope ye who enter here” as its first line, a reference to divine comedy, which is found on the entrance to hell. it serves as a warning for what’s to come
glamorama does something similar in part 2, where victor takes an ocean liner to london, possibly referencing river styx
river styx is the passageway that souls of the dead take to go from the realm of living to the underworld, realm of the dead... which entails taking a boat
there’s the obvious comparison of navigating water on boat to reach a place of suffering
in terms of the reader going through that passage: the differences between part 1 and afterwards are big. shit gets Fucked Up for sure
in literal terms though, having to do with the characters on the boat: there’s an abundance of old people, something victor constantly bemoans. it would make sense for the elderly to be in the boat with him, because they’re likely to pass soon
in victor’s own words: “I’m passing dozens of worried old people asking if this unscheduled stop is going to delay the arrival [...] and I’m wondering what if it fucking does? You’re old. If I was a ship director my answer would’ve been, ‘It doesn’t matter, you’ll be dead before we dock this boat.’”
additionally, guess how the only characters we get the names of, marina and felix, end up??
this also explains this line: “the only light in the cabin as a dead guy sang me to sleep, dreams intervening, peaking with a voice shouting out, then fading, hello? hello? hello?”
while victor has been experiencing some cracks of reality, his state of mind was earlier expressed through dreams. in this line, he states this as a fact, similar to how he does with the movie being filmed
the one thing that denies this theory are the Wallaces, who we know are still alive through the tape victor sees in part 6. so far my reasoning is, since they're part of the whole "scheme," part of "the game," they are able to cheat death. whether that be because they have body doubles, or they ARE body doubles (thus being "already dead"), they don't conform to the rules of the novel