Was 80s literature as crap as 80s clothes?

[Nightynight]

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?

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?)

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..........

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!)

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

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

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

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

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?

Remains of the Day...

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

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.

No, NN I haven't. But thanks for the tip because I am always looking for new reads and will look out for him.

Martin Amis can be alternately gripping and loathesome IMO. Dead Babies was a horrible book with a repulsive title. His later stuff has been rubbish.

And there's Graham Swift as well...Waterland?
Jonathan Coe...What a Carve-up?

I think my favourite Marge Piercy novels (Vida, Woman on the Edge of Time) are seventies but I also like Fly Away Home, set in Boston, which is a very 80s novel.

And Eight Months in Ghazzah Street, for me Hilary Mantel's masterpiece, was also 80s I think.

Waterlands - Graham Swift was excellent.

The first two Barbara Vine novels - A Dark-Adapted Eye and A Fatal Inversion - fantastic.

My favourite Jay McInerny - Brightness Falls - wasn't published until the 1990s I think.

great minds Marina!

I was quite obsessed with London Fields for a while.

The Colour Purple

Sorry slight hijack - but has anyone read the new Jay McInerney yet? I read a sniffy review of it the other week, saying it's not a patch on his early stuff. That would be a shame cos I'm really looking forward to it!

thank you for those suggestions too.

I warn you, dx thinks that OP is a pseud, but I like him!

My choice here is dictated by the tastes of the majority of English speakers in Munich. The central library has a dire collection of classics, Booker Prize winners, thrillers and books with titles like "20 short stories by New Zealand women." There are four volumes of Sylvia Plath's poetry.
Hugendubel (the main bookseller) has a very American, male oriented selection.
sigh - how I miss Oxfam!

Iain Banks - his eighties and early nineties stuff was excellent.

I loved the Rachel Papers. I also think you either love or loathe Martin Amis.

The secret history (was that 80s or 90s?) was good but if you are a connoisseur of good detective/thriller novels, I doubt it opened any new doors - it was beautifully written though.

me too dino.
The Murderee.
Marmaduke going supervoid, which seemed to my pre-children mind a ridiculous impossibility...
NN I am not remotely deterred by your dx's views

i liked 80s clothes

Oh, seriously, if you like good thriller/detective noves you have to read the early Barbara Vine ones!

The Crow Road - his loveliest novel IMO and exemplarily dramatised by the BBC...

Marina, how spooky...

I had a very beautiful, unhinged friend who was nicola six...

likes that book