What were you reading in the 90s? 5 literary experts go back in time
- Written by: Jo Case, Senior Deputy Books + Ideas Editor, The Conversation
What were you like in the 90s? This question is a social media trend right now, with achingly nostalgic slideshows of old photos, set to music.
When bookish types think about what we were like, we also remember the books that helped make us who we are. So the Books & Ideas team asked five literary experts for their picks.
Because we never just engage with the new, their answers range from stone-cold classics (one from the late 60s, which was all the rage in the 90s) to iconic works from the decade.
And yes, of course: we asked for a 90s photo too.
Possession by A.S. Byatt
During the 90s, I was a rock journalist in London, so reading was an antidote to my hedonistic lifestyle – and a good way to keep my intellect stimulated. Interviewing rock stars was fun but the conversations could be limited! I loved wild, feminist writers like Angela Carter and Margaret Attwood.
But a novel that really stood out for me was Possession (1990) by A.S. Byatt, which follows two academics researching the unknown relationship between a pair of fictional Victorian poets. I remember being utterly entranced by both the main storylines, and I was blown away by Byatt’s extraordinary ability to master so many narrative forms and the brilliant way in which she wove all of the strands together.
Having read Jung in my teens, I was fascinated by symbols and archetypal imagery. Possession was brimming with these, and it also played into my love of mystical themes and dark romance.
Liz Evans is a novelist and adjunct researcher, English and writing, University of Tasmania.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
In 1995, I was in late high school, and me and my friends were obsessed with all things 1960s. The Beatles and Bob Dylan, hippies and protesters (and smoking dope), the youthful dream of being part of something big, something positive, even something revolutionary – even though somehow it all led to nothing much.
Against this background, my best mate’s mum, Vicky Feltham, gave me a copy of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). It was about Ken Kesey and the “Merry Pranksters”, who introduced LSD to San Francisco, the Grateful Dead and the world. It changed the way I thought about writing. Prose could be utterly fruity and insane, yet tethered to actual events.
Acid Test also provided an answer (of sorts) to “what went wrong” with the counter-cultural revolution. (Hint: too much LSD.) That embarrassing, deeply uncool book made me want to become a nonfiction writer.
Tom Doig is the author of creative nonfiction books and a lecturer in creative writing, The University of Queensland.
Natalie Kon-yu, in the 90s and now. The God of Small Things was was ‘one of the earliest books I can remember understanding from the inside out’.
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy’s 1997 debut, The God of Small Things, follows a southern India family over two timelines: 1969 and 1993. Its vivid descriptions have stayed with me. “The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat.” And: “Chacko said that going to see The Sound of Music was an extended exercise in Anglophilia.”
I especially loved its disjointed narrative and the way Roy brought the past and present together. I didn’t realise at the time, but it was one of the earliest books I can remember understanding from the inside out.
I understood how Mammachi and Baby Kochamma had been rendered powerless by colonisation and how their anxieties were played out in their family in terrible ways. I knew these people. The book was – is – a gift.
Natalie Kon-yu is associate professor, creative writing and literary studies, at Victoria University.
Ali Alizadeh, in the 90s and now. A ‘superb, gutsy reading’ of The Monkey’s Mask influenced him studying epic poetry.
Photo: Michael Sundermeijer (left)
The Monkey’s Mask by Dorothy Porter
I didn’t read all that much in the 1990s. I was much more interested in visual arts, film and popular music. Dorothy Porter’s crime novel in verse, The Monkey’s Mask (1994), made a definite impression, though.
A story of sex and murder in the poetry scene, it influenced my artistic and scholarly trajectories. It was edgy, entertaining and accessible. And very popular. That a work by a contemporary Australian poet could become a bestseller and appeal to the general reader contradicted many of my reservations about pursuing literature.
Seeing Porter give a superb, gutsy reading of the book at a writers’ festival was also impactful. Her novel in verse was not the only reason I decided to do an honours and then a PhD on epic poetry, but it definitely was a reason.
Ali Alizadeh is a writer and senior lecturer in creative writing and literary studies at Monash University.
Edwina Preston, in the 90s – the decade she discovered Dickens – and now.
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
The 90s was the decade of my twenties – the halcyon years, my friends and I call them. Music-wise, I was listening to Primus, The Breeders, Slint, Soundgarden … but my reading? This was the decade I discovered Dickens.
I had not read Dickens in my youth – not even Great Expectations. The novel that did it for me was Bleak House (1853), about a disputed will, and, as in so many of Dickens’ novels, questions of “mysterious” parentage. (Could we not all be the secret children of vastly wealthy forebears? This seems to be the only way to put a roof over one’s head these days.)
Bleak House is vast, many-peopled, farcical on so many levels: the interminable ludicrousness of the central legal case, Jaryndice vs Jaryndice; the delusionally energised and hopelessly neglectful Mrs Jellyby; the imperious and tragic Lady Dedlock.
Now, looking back, I wonder if Dickens and Les Claypool (of Primus) exist on a continuum: both mad(dish) geniuses.
Edwina Preston is a novelist and PhD candidate, creative writing, at University of Melbourne.
Authors: Jo Case, Senior Deputy Books + Ideas Editor, The Conversation
