Blank fiction

According to the book American Consumer Culture and it's Society: From F Scott Fitzgerald's 1920s Modernism to Bret Easton Ellis' 1980's Blank Fiction. By Johannes Malkmes, the term ‘blank fiction’ along with other terms such as ‘the blank generation’ is used to describe the style of writing by a group of writers during the 1980’s which included the author of our set novel; Bret Easton Ellis. Their style focuses on the consumer society in America at the time, a time of MTV, the yuppie and where greed is good.


Malkmes states that the content of blank fiction texts ‘must be interpreted as reflection and metaphors of the material consumer culture of the late 20th century American society.’ The writers dealt with all aspects of urban life at the time, crime, drugs, sexual excess, media overload, consumer culture and it's madness, inner-city decay and fashion crazed night-life. All of these aspects are present in Easton Ellis' novel Less Than Zero, including sexual excess, drugs and media overload.                   
                   
Malkmes' book helps us to understand the representation of the 1980's as a society of excess of drug use, sex, media consumption and fashionable night-life in Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero as a reflection of consumer society in America and what was going on at the time.