Beattie, Ann
Identification American novelist and short-story
writer
Born September 8, 1947; Washington, D.C.
During the 1980’s, Ann Beattie continued to write fiction
that chronicled and examined the baby-boom generation as
it developed greater affluence and cultural influence in the
United States.
Originally known as the voice of the Woodstock gen-
eration of the 1960’s and 1970’s, Ann Beattie pro-
duced work in the 1980’s that continued to track
this generation as it aged and became known by a
new name: “yuppies.” As members of the baby-boom
generation began to marry, have children, and—in
some cases—become affluent, they became identi-
fied with this stereotype of the young urban (or up-
wardly mobile) professional. Beattie suggested that
as the generation matured, its initial desire for per-
sonal liberty and gratification—associated with the
youthful counterculture of the 1960’s—had devel-
oped into a coherent social and moral perspective.
Although Beattie’s depiction of the narcissistic
sense of entitlement of a generation that began to
age into power and status in the 1980’s was often sa-
tiric, she also suggested that this generation’s deter-
mination to preserve its juvenility had resulted in an
emptiness that was as sad as it was amusing. The lib-
ertarian principles that came to be a marker of this
generation also ran the risk of failing to sustain both
family and community; the issue of children became
a particular puzzle for Beattie’s baby boomers, who
chose to base their lives on the premise that the man-
dates of the untrammeled self must necessarily dis-
place the needs of the weak and the vulnerable.
In addition to tracking the ups and downs of the
baby-boom generation in the 1980’s, Beattie is identi-
fied with that decade’s development of minimalism, a
style of writing short fiction that Beattie is said to have
pioneered. This sober and understated style of writ-
ing returned fiction to a realism that had been up-
ended by the more romantic and experimental works
of fiction celebrated in the 1960’s, and it was meant to
be a correction of those works’ excesses and falsifica-
tions. As well as her identification with the minimalist
literary movement, Beattie was identified as a leader
in what was known as the “short-story renaissance” in
the 1980’s, a resurgence of interest in short fiction
that was a consequence of minimalism’s commercial
and critical success. Her greatest collection of short
stories,The Burning House, was published in 1982; an-
other collection,Where You’ll Find Me, and Other Stories,
was published in 1986. In addition to her short sto-
ries, Beattie developed a greater interest in the novel
form, publishingFalling in Place(1980),Love Always
(1985), andPicturing Will(1989), all of which fea-
tured the problematic personal lives of former hip-
pies newly reinvented as yuppies.
Impact Beattie’s stories and novels supplied a
knowing, topical commentary on what was happen-
ing to baby boomers as they moved through the
1980’s. Her realistic fiction earned her a reputation
as a major voice of her generation, both as its social
historian and as a social critic.
Further Reading
McCaffery, Larry, and Sinda Gregory, eds.Alive and
Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980’s.
Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Montresor, Jaye Berman, ed.The Critical Response to
Ann Beattie. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1993.
Margaret Boe BirnsSee also Big Chill, The; Literature in the United
States; Minimalist literature;thirtysomething; Yuppies.100 Beattie, Ann The Eighties in America
Ann Beattie.(Sigrid Estrada)