Birth Year Project: 1984

Well-Known Books:

Many of the writers who appear time and again on bestseller lists of this period published books in 1984—Frederick Forsyth, Frank Herbert, John Jakes, Robert Ludlum, Norman Mailer, Robert B. Parker, Mario Puzo, Danielle Steel . . . but not works they're known for. 

Four novels stand out:

• Lincoln, Gore Vidal

• The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy

• Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney¹

• The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros

And two other widely read literary novels: 

• Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner

• The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike

But a number of 1984's books achieved renown only later: 

• Money, Martin Amis²

• The Bone People, Keri Hulme³

• Neuromancer, William Gibson⁴

My List:

• Stones for Ibarra, Harriett Doerr⁵

• English Creek, Ivan Doig⁶

• The Lover, Marguerite Duras⁷

• Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich⁸

• The Tie That Binds, Kent Haruf⁹

• The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, José Saramago¹⁰

[Note: Bright Lights, Big City and Neuromancer would also be on my list.]

1. Bright Lights, Big City. I read this nonstop as my brother-in-law drove us up to Michigan's U.P., enthralled by the voice: 

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again it might not.

2. Money. Amis was the son of British novelist, Kingsley Amis. Acerbic, prolific, widely considered one of the major writers of his generation. Money was his fifth novel, but the first of the popular "London Trilogy." My own favorite is Time's Arrow (1991), in which, with devastating effect, time moves backwards. [I was about to add a link to a page on this novel, but it spoiled the revelation(s) that Amis pulls off—all I'll say is there's a major thematic reason for the time reversal.]

3. The Bone People. Hulme was the first New Zealander and first debut novelist to win the Booker Prize.

4. Neuromancer. This was Gibson's first novel; my guess is that most of its readers (like me) went back and dug it up after reading a later novel, such as Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) or Pattern Recognition (2003). Gibson is often cited as the originator of the cyberpunk genre.

5. Stones for Ibarra. Doerr's debut novel, published when she was 74. Read more about her:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060910124225/http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1997/novdec/articles/doerr.html

6. English Creek. When I first lived in Montana, in the mid-1970s I saturated myself in Montana writing; Doig's memoir, This House of Sky: Landscape of a Western Mind (1978) was a prime mover in that process. Doig went on to write thirteen novels; English Creek is the first of the "McCaskill Trilogy"—followed by Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1997) and Ride with Me, Mariah Montana (2000).

7. The Lover. Duras wrote a slew of short novels, also plays, reportage, screenplays, essays, etc. L'amant won the Prix Goncourt, was translated into dozens of languages, and is her most-read book. It's loosely autobiographical, the account of a teen girl's affair with an older man in the French Indochina of the 1920s. Except for this novel, I seldom think, Wow, now that's a great book when I read her . . . but I always read her; I want to spend time with her mind. I have a special fondness for a short novel/novella Ten-Thirty on a Summer Night (1960)—the English translation is often packaged with several other short ones. 

8. Love Medicine. Erdrich's first novel—sometimes called a "novel-in- stories." It was the launch of prolific writing career; Erdrich was (and is) a major force in drawing national attention to Native American writers—a few others in my pantheon: Sherman Alexie, Debra Magpie Earling*, Joy Harjo, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch.

*Earling has a brand new book: The Lost Journals of Sacajewea.

https://www.elliottbaybook.com/item/YoqefBrscwmPuvVBw9P-nA

9. The Tie That Binds. Kent Haruf wrote six humane, quietly powerful novels; in a better world he'd be seen as a national treasure. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Haruf]

10. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Saramago was the 1998 Nobel Laureate in Literature. This isn't my favorite Saramago novel—that would be Blindness (1995), a transcendent, world-class novel. But Ricardo Reis is an interesting artifact: The title character happens to be one of the hundred or so heteronyms/pseudonyms used by the esoteric Portuguese writer, Fernando Pessoa [The Book of Disquiet]. What happens to character when his creator dies? Saramago was my first Portuguese writer, and led me to discover Antonio Lobo Antunes—his works are much harder to read than Saramago's, but their density is enthralling; try The Natural Order of Things (1992). 

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Birth Year Project: A standing invitation

You supply your birth year [in a comment]; I'll respond with a short list of books published that year—the popular/well-known titles first, then some books I'd recommend. If your year's already been used, fret not; I'll do a fresh one.

Extra credit: You read one of the books (ideally one you're unfamiliar with), then tell me what you thought. If we get enough of these, I'll aggregate and post. 

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