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Original poster

Was 80s literature as crap as 80s clothes?

85 replies

Nightynight · 17/03/2006 07:43

Remember all those worthy, Booker Prize winning authors in the 1980s? Was it just me, or were they all really (whisper) ?

And isnt there a whole load of more interesting fiction being published today?

VS Naipaul, Martin Amis, Anita Brookner, AS Byatt, Salman Rushdie, Roddy Doyle, Ben Okri....I really tried to read their stuff in the 80s but I couldnt usually get past the first few pages.

I have revisited some of it recently, and find it just as turgid, just as pseudo-intellectual, just as boooooooring.....

is it just me, were the rest of you in raptures over Hotel du Lac, The Famished Road and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha?

OP posts:
Original poster
Nightynight · 17/03/2006 12:06

oh, marina, I forgot Remains of the Day. The only Booker Prize winner I liked, for years!

nope, sorry about the others though - they just dont do it for me. Especially Martin Amis, whom I loathe.

Read Bonfire of the Vanities, it was good and I enjoyed it a lot, but it isnt really deeper than a John Grisham, is it??

Marina, have you read any Orhan Pamuk? I really enjoyed My Name Is Red. And I was almost crying over the end of Snow, when the guy commits suicide.

OP posts:
Carmenere · 17/03/2006 11:59

Jay McInerney - he definiely falls into my preferred genre of American '80's writers Smile

Marina · 17/03/2006 11:57

Remains of the Day...

Marina · 17/03/2006 11:57

Carmenere - Armistead for President! They are the quintessential 80s read for me too :)
I will stand up for vintage Mart though NN - The Rachel Papers and London Fields two of his books I love.
And, ahem, Julian Barnes, William Boyd and Ian McEwan! Jay McInerney...Tom Wolfe...
Margaret Atwood? Carol Shields?

zippitippitoes · 17/03/2006 11:40

I did try another of his after Butterfly something? and didn';t get on with it for me he was a one novel hit, but I loved the famished Road..magical

Original poster
Nightynight · 17/03/2006 11:38

I'll give the Famished Road another go on your recommendation, zippi!

I just find the younger generation of "literary" writers much more readable.

OP posts:
niceglasses · 17/03/2006 08:12

Was Donna Tartt's Secret History 80s??? Mind you, never quite understood ALL the fuss about that one.......

Carmenere · 17/03/2006 08:08

I loved Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz - these titles always really seem to be 80's books to me (mind you they are all American!)

niceglasses · 17/03/2006 08:05

I thought Paddy Clarke was good - but my dh is Irish so prob had vested interest IYKWIM. Read Hotel du Lac and kind of got it - but not exactly action packed. Never got away with Rusdie too much. I love GGMarquez - thought Love in time of Cholera brill. Only other one I can remember really enjoying was Timothy Mo 'Sour Sweet' which was great, but not sure if 80s. Think more of a question of about what the worthies think is worthy of the Booker prize - prefer the Orange prize now meself..........

zippitippitoes · 17/03/2006 07:53

Ben Okri The Famished Road is a brilliant book I think. Very evocative and totally engrossing....not sure it was the eighties though, thought it was early nineties?

I think Oscar and Lucinda probably would be dated now

Isabell Allende, Amy Tan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez i rate too (spot a theme?)