{"id":4657,"date":"2019-09-20T21:00:31","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T21:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bracketyackrc.wpengine.com\/?p=4657"},"modified":"2019-09-20T21:00:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T21:00:31","slug":"american-psycho-high-literary-art-and-potential-great-american-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=4657","title":{"rendered":"American Psycho\u2014High Literary Art and Potential Great American Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Ethan Perritt<\/em><\/p>\n

The Great American Novel. It\u2019s what every author aspires to write but most will never achieve. There are, however, a tiny percentage that do. So in comes Bret Easton Ellis, a young writer with just two novels under his belt\u2014and he does just that. <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> is the Great American Novel. It follows Patrick Bateman, a yuppie, Wall Street office hound who just so happens to have a penchant for murder on the side. Through this, the reader gets a brilliant commentary of Reagan-era America. Depictions of racial inequality, materialism, and more blatant racism give a good look at the cultural zeitgeist of the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

In essence, the novel captures everything about the late 1980s, wraps it up, and then hands it to the reader and says, \u201cGo form an opinion.\u201d The novel ends abruptly, Bateman sitting at a table monologuing to the reader after a series of murders, recognizing his confession has meant nothing. It\u2019s ironic, then, that the reader can extrapolate so much from this supposed nothingness.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the novel is also a personal statement about the author himself. Ellis was able to take his commentary on 80s politics and criticize his inherent consumerism. When this is all put together, it\u2019s nothing short of genius. From an aesthetic perspective, <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> is the perfect example of postmodernism \u2014 the pervasive philosophy of the time. And if the Great American Novel is a novel of outstanding literary merit that manages to capture the culture of the US at a certain time, I would contend <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> is just that. While Ellis\u2019 work hasn\u2019t yet been accepted into the literary canon, I believe we\u2019re not too far from that happening. And when it does, <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> will be at the forefront of the list of novels claiming the title of Great American Novel.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Ethan Perritt The Great American Novel. It\u2019s what every author aspires to write but most will never achieve. There are, however, a tiny percentage that do. So in comes Bret Easton Ellis, a young writer with just two novels under his belt\u2014and he does just that. American Psycho is the Great American Novel….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}