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?

Yes yes yes to the Crow Road. My favourite (Nineties, and I was going through a dark patch at the time) was Complicity however.

dino...A Fatal Inversion. I think that stands as an excellent novel in its own right, outside its genre. She is very underrated, largely I think thanks to the proto-Midsummer Murders cuddly Wexford dramatisations.

I love those early Vine books - it's almost as if they are unadulterated

Such a good question, nightynight - makes me want to go and find out what I was reading then - is there a web archive somewhere of Booker prizewinners/bestseller lists? I really did think Midnight's Children was wonderful but then there was that tiresome consequential global vogue for magical realism which I could really not be doing with.

It also strikes me as when the vogue for books with Ever Such A Shocking Predilection Denouement (eg Golding's Rites of Passage) began. Not very keen on that mode either, much as I love other Goldingses.

Oh, though, Slaves of New York has lasted rather well, I find.

I loved Oranges are not the only fruit, by Jeanette Winterson.

I'm reading Dead Air at the moment (a Banks novel). It's the first of his I've read in ages.

I haven't read that one. I did feel that the quality tailed off a lot - I thought The Business was very...formulaic, if that's the word.

What I'm finding as we discuss all these books is that it really was a good period for TV dramatisations. Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, The Crow Road, A Fatal Inversion, all of them done in such a way as to enhance their enjoyability still further.
Ooh, when did Hanif Kureishi write Buddha of Suburbia?
I have not felt tempted by Iain Banks in yonks either...

I can't think of a good recent dramatisation....apart from Rebus (but personally, I don't think that works very well anyway)

Buddha of Suburbia must be 80s

And what about Fay Weldon? Loved the books, and can remember at least one fab tv dramatisation...

I'm sure Buddha of Suburbia is 90s - because I went to a pre-publication reading of it after I came back from the States (which was in 1990). Most of my 80s novel-reading was US stuff, I realise - I had a very different 80s, all Bonfire of the Vanities and so on.

Oh, re Predilection stuff: DM Thomas ugh ugh ugh. Defines a kind of 80s writing for me.

(that sounded like me snippily contradicting you, dino - actually was a cross-post!)

Qutie right - 1991. Memory playing tricks then...

Possession was fab. I remember going into Waterstones in Manchester to buy it before my finals and keeping it on my desk through all the miserable, tedious weeks of revision, and then starting it as soon as the exams were over.

(well, as soon as I'd recovered from the hangover. Obviously.)

It was worth the wait.

whhen was nice work written? great book & dramatisation.

As bink suggests:

\link{http://www.swindon.gov.uk/textV2/libraries/readingroom/readingroom_litawards/readingroom_literaryawards_manbooker/literaryawards_manbooker_prizewinners.htm\hurrah for Swindon Libraries!}

Whatever happened to Keri Hulme...

What we need is an archive of "Guardian books of the year 1980-1989" don't we? - as in not the prizewinners but the critical choices? Does that exist?

I really enjoyed my 80s wardrobe for what it was. (no, I did not wear shoulder pads & power suits - I was a struggling art student in Paris). And my 80s literature, which was mostly hanging around Shakespeare & Co with all the other literary wannabees.

What I think is really pathetic fashionwise is this obsession with the 60s/70s.

And now for something completely different?

Misleading x-post from me now bink! Have been trawling around for that kind of site without success so far.

DM Thomas....ugh.
Jeffrey Archer...quadruple ugh with sauce on...

Nice Work is 80s I think Hoxty but I must confess to preferring his earlier, 70s stuff like How Far Can You Go?

Yes I was too, but have also not revisited dino...

We bicker over PC. Dh loves, I roll eyes...

Love Peter Carey
The Tax Inspector
The Illywhacker

Was a bit disappointed with Jack Maggs tbh