Genre

American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis

American Psycho: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

American Psycho is a prototypical work of late postmodernism. Ellis's novel bears many characteristic elements of the literary movement: Patrick Bateman is an antihero and unreliable narrator, the novel features brutally direct and practical descriptions of sex and violence, and it features cutting socioeconomic satire. Perhaps the most postmodern feature of the novel is Ellis's manipulation of the truth. Postmodernists asked whether the novel, as a literary form, is capable of depicting life as truly lived; by the end of American Psycho, it is unclear whether the events of the novel happened, or whether Patrick imagined them, lied about them, or some combination of the two. Is the novel an honest depiction of a man's delusions, or a dishonest depiction by a first-person narrator of his own true actions? Ellis keeps these questions ambiguous, a hallmark of postmodern literature.