Was 80s literature as crap as 80s clothes?

I love Martin Amis, but not as much as I love Will Self (always have had strange taste in men)

For me the ultimate poseur (quintessential 80's phrase that) was Brett Easton Ellis

I was thinking some more about this, as you do.

Primo Levi. He's more essentially 70s I guess really than 80s (Periodic Table, I have just checked, was published in 1975) - but as he died (so tragically) in 1987, he belongs to the 80s and counts as the very total opposite of that meretricious unit-shifting MI is talking about.

His essay/memoir about the chemistry of paint recipes is I think my most sustaining fable - it comes up in my mind over and over again - like yesterday, sitting in a grim meeting working through the papers for a wildly over-complicated financing deal, based at bottom on trades done before, but with all kinds of weird hangovers and red herrings and interpolations from the specifics of the last deal. Anyone else have something like that, that they've read once and then ever after they find it informing their life again and again?

I also wore badge objecting to things. And some of mine were even in Welsh.

I also used to crimp my hair....gawd help me, I must have looked like Crystal Tips!

The other thing that occurred to me, re 80s literature, was that the 80s were I think the first decade in which book publicity became a really glossy marketing exercise, as part of the whole shift in publishing to becoming much more of a business selling products (very in tune with the times, of course). So books were pushed and hyped in a much more commercial way than they'd ever been before, on a basis not entirely to do with their literary merits; while at the same time publishing houses merged and became huge corporate enterprises.

Deeply sensible dh has suggested \link{http://www.granta.com/back-issues/7?usca_p=t\this} as our touchstone for the best & worst of 80s literature. And there it is on our shelves, dessicated and gently yellowing.

Adore possession, in fact all AS Byatt. has penelope Lively been mentioned? Likes Moon Tiger which I think won the Booker in the 80s. Amis's Money and London Fields were fantastic novels that summed up the period for me - he's never been that good since.

Marina - have never met another Hilary Mantel fan - I've read everything she's written (and met her too she is delightful).

I want to read the new Jay Mcinerny ,just to catch up with those characters again (I did like Brightness falls, against my better judgement)

extremely pointy flat shoes from Kensington market. Hyper hyper came later!!!!

punk/goth = me !
I honestly did get photographed by tourists quite often when hanging about in public places with my friends. They seemed to think we looked sufficiently weird to warrant a picture. Wish I'd charged for it!

I wore noisy trousers and a lot of earrings, mostly in one ear. Even an ear cuff.

See, the States were still fairly conservative, so you could be really really cool there when actually you would be a bit of an also-ran in the UK. My students used to be impressed with my trousers, which was sweet of them.

I still have, and wear, the wonderful butchy DM-soled brogues-with-bits-chopped-out that I bought from a directional boutique in Boston in, hm, probably 1987. Someone complimented me on them just a month ago.

Tell me to go away, or alternatively you lot stop being interesting. Thanks.

loved Crow Road (and in fact all Ian McEwan, I even went to see him read at Waterstones which is slightly embarassing).

Cannot stand Martin Amis, the sheer arrogance of the man is enough to make me want to rip his books up.

Good job none of us ever fell in a pond all badged up, I'd have sunk like a stone, with my ginormous folding gilt fan earrings and all...

Ian McEwan = perfect literature for moody sixth-formers I think. The frisson of reading First Love, Last Rites and knowing your mum would be

badges!!!! had loads of them - rock against racism, anti nazi league ( mind you I think that was more late 70s!)support the miners, no cruise etc. Wish I still had 'em.

Gold lippy, ah, yes, I remember it well...usually worn with rock 'ard sludge green Leichner nail varnish.
MI, I shared a flat with an adorable Mohican-wearer for a time. The sweetest of guys, it took hours of Robin starch and crouching next to a radiator to achieve scary perfection...
Did you distress and customise your Laura Ashleys though?

excellent badge MI

aaah, what a nostalgic trip for moi....1983 for me! I was OBSESSED with Paul Auster and Ian McEwan but could never get past the first few lines of Possession.Love The Crow Road and The Wasp Factory too. Lots of Tom Wolfe for good measure, but the film version of Bonfire of the Vanities sucks....

I had the electric blue mascara and the gold lipstick and the nein danke badge
since you ask (ed motherinferior)

I had a 'nuclear family no thank you' badge . And by that time I had taken to chopping my own Mohawk haircut with my nail scissors, when my boyfriend wasn't using them to trim his stubble.

My 20s were not my best decade, really - I was a mess in lots of ways. I am hoping for a Magnificent Old Age to compensate.

Did you have rainbow toe socks and an atomkraft - nein danke badge though MI? And a Chinese padded jacket? And Chinese velvet slippers? and electric blue mascara?
And did you frizz your hair by putting it into lots of silly little plaits....

(I wore several brightly coloured woolly jumpers all on top of each other and lots of badges Objecting to things. Especially Bloke Things. Then I wondered disconsolately why nobody ever tried to chat me up.)

I am reading this thread and wondering what the hell I read in the 1980s....lots of stuff with black and white spines I would not recommend, apart from the Colour Purple.

I agree that quite a lot of that 'we're so shallow, aren't we deep about it' stuff makes me cringe (I can't do Martin Amis. I have tried).

Maggie Gee is still, I think, rather good.

And I do still try with Iain Banks but mostly out of misplaced adoration from the Crow Road.

Armistead...ahhhhh....

1988

and I until 1981...

sorry, couldn't resist! errr, primary school until '86....

I knew that was coming you sprig...do tell, primary was it?!
Which Topsy and Tim did it for you, youthful-show-off-person...