John Hughes ensured the persistence of the teen
comedy as a cinematic genre for decades afterward.
Also, despite its flaws,St. Elmo’s Firecan readily be
seen as the prototype for an immensely popular tele-
vision genre that developed in its wake: prime-time
teen soap operas such asBeverly Hills, 90210, and
The O.C.which featured multilayered narratives and
large casts of characters almost exclusively in their
teens and twenties.
Further Reading
Blum, Daniel. “The Brat Pack.”New York, June 10,
1985, 40-47. The article that gave the group its
name. Good representation of the sort of public-
ity that Brat Pack members received at the time.
Davies, Steven Paul, and Andrew Pulver.Brat Pack
Confidential. London: Batsford, 2003. Brief but
comprehensive and insightful study.
Tyler, Parker.Magic and Myth of the Movies. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1970. Seminal cinematic text
explaining how actors become archetypes for their
era, as the Brat Pack did.
Thomas Du Bose
See also Brat Pack in literature;Breakfast Club, The;
Broderick, Matthew; Film in the United States;
Hughes, John; Teen films.
Brat Pack in literature
Definition American novelists Tama Janowitz, Jay
McInerney, and Bret Easton Ellis
In the 1980’s, a high-profile group of young people made
fortunes in such industries as investment banking and
computer start-up companies. The popular portrayal of this
general trend influenced the reception of a group of young
fiction writers who were dubbed the “Brat Pack” by the me-
dia. They were highly publicized as authentic voices of a
new, hip generation, and they embraced that role and the
publicity it brought them.
The three definitive members of the Brat Pack rose
to fame during three consecutive years in the middle
of the 1980’s: Jay McInerney in 1984 forBright Lights,
Big City; Bret Easton Ellis in 1985 forLess than Zero;
and Tama Janowitz in 1986 forSlaves of New York.
Although Janowitz had published a first book,Amer-
ican Dad, in 1981, it had received almost no atten-
tion. It was the publication and notable success of
McInerney’s first novel that led publishers to look
for other works about young, urban people, written
by young authors who were themselves immersed in
urban settings. The rapid publication and acclaim
awarded these books led the press to invent the term
“Brat Pack,” modeled on the term “Rat Pack” that
designated three crooners in the 1970’s: Frank Sina-
tra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin.McInerney and Ellis Jay McInerney was born on the
East Coast, attended Williams College in Massachu-
setts, and in 1977 received a Princeton Fellowship to
travel to Japan, where he studied and taught English
at Kyfto University. Returning to the United States
in 1979, he worked first atNew Yorkmagazine and
later as a reader of unsolicited manuscripts at Ran-
dom House. He became familiar with the haunts
and habits of 1980’s youth culture in New York,
which he used as background forBright Lights, Big
City. The novel portrayed its characters as drug-
addled, angst-ridden, superficial young men and
women. The novel was fast-paced and written in the
second person, instead of the more conventional
first or third person. It was considered by critics to
express the zeitgeist of the 1980’s, and McInerney
was often taken to be the model for the novel’s pro-
tagonist, a charge he denied.Bright Lights, Big City
was adapted for a 1988 film of the same name, for
which McInerney wrote the screenplay. Despite the
wide popularity of the book, the movie adaptation
was not a success. McInerney published two more
novels in the 1980’s:Ransom(1985) andStor y of My
Life(1988), but neither fulfilled the promise of his
first work.
Bret Easton Ellis’s literary debut occurred when
he was only twenty-one. His novel, Less than Zero, por-
trayed the rich, drug-soaked Los Angeles party scene
of the times, full of disaffected and vacuous youth.
He was considered part of that scene, having grown
up in Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley,
but he moved east to attend Bennington College
in Vermont. Like McInerney, his novel seemed to
capture the mood of what was then called the twenty-
something generation, and it sold well.
In 1987, Ellis moved to New York, and his second
novel, Rules of Attraction, appeared. His novels fit
into the postmodern movement with their atten-
dant techniques of self-reference, the presence of
real characters, and a flat style of narration.Less
than ZeroandRules of Attractionwere both made intoThe Eighties in America Brat Pack in literature 139