Literary Stars

Brats.

In the mid 1980s a group of hotshot young writers attained celebrity with novels that explored the decade-long obsession with drugs, money, cheap sex, instant gratification—and celebrity. This literary "brat pack," which included Jay Mclnerney, Bret Easton Ellis, and Tama Janowitz, shrewdly tapped the passive MTV mindset of young Americans. Their chief subject—young, privileged urban hipsters disillusioned by the seeming decadence of their empty social scenes—made them the darlings of the yuppie-hungry media and millions of wanna-be-hip readers. These stories were light on plot and character but rich in dropped names, pop-culture references, and slick surface descriptions of galleries, lofts, offices, studios, and shopping malls. The Village Voice dubbed the style "socialite realism." Mclnerney's Bright Lights, Big City (1984), narrated in the second person, traces the aimless days and cocaine-laden...

[The entire page is 2062 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass