Brat Pack (literary)

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The Literary Brat Pack were a group of young American authors, including Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz, Jay McInerney and Jill Eisenstadt, who emerged on the East Coast of the United States in the 1980s. It is a twist on the same label that had previously been applied to a group of young American actors who frequently appeared together in teen-oriented coming-of-age films earlier that decade. The earliest published use of this term to refer to writers from that generation was in an article by Bruce Bawer that was entitled "The Literary Brat Pack", that appeared in the Spring 1987 issue of the short-lived West coast magazine Arrival and was included in his 1988 book Diminishing Fictions. Bawer devoted special attention to the writers Meg Wolitzer, David Leavitt, Peter Cameron, Susan Minot, and Elizabeth Tallent, and contrasted the often great critical acclaim they had garnered with their "decidedly modest accomplishments." Shortly thereafter, an article in the New York newspaper Village...

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