The Novels of 1982

A close look at some of the novels turning 40 this year.

In 1982, the biggest bestselling novel of the year turned out being the same as the highest grossing film of the year, which was none other than the novelization of E.T., or rather, E.T. the Extra- Terrestrial Storybook, written by William Kotzwinkle.

Based on this fact alone, you may already be assuming certain things about the books I’m planning to review for their 40th anniversaries, most likely that the golden age of literature must certainly have ended in the 80s, and all that was being published now were commercialized books that were more concerned with following through with the latest pop culture trends rather than exploring the meaning of our our troubled lives or all the changes our society was going through.

But before you can make any further complaints, how about you allow me to go over some of the other novels that were published this year first?

If you look at some other well-known titles that were published in 1982, E.T. being the biggest bestseller of the year seems both appropriate and slightly misleading in terms of representing the year as a whole. It’s appropriate because there were a few major sci-fi titles published this year, with at least three of them being sequels to famous novels within the genre. It also wasn’t the only title highly associated with Steven Spielberg of the year. In fact, three novels published this year went on to become future Spielberg adaptations.

However, it can’t be said that all the novels of 1982 were simply commercialized books. A close examination of the settings of many of this year’s books shows that only a few of them had contemporary settings. While 1981 seemed to be dominated by mysteries and thrillers, several writers in 1982 seemed to focus more on historical novels. However, some of these historical novels were more complex than readers at the time may have been used to, with protagonists that were more complex than the typical historical fiction hero and themes that went beyond how important bravery, hard work, and patriotism were in terms of helping people in the past overcome obstacles.

For instance, let’s start by looking at our two major literary award winners (and future Spielberg adaptations) of the year. We’ve first got The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which was the first novel by an African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. The heroine here is Celie, a semi-literate black woman living the American South during the first half of the 20th century who faces years of physical and sexual abuse under the hands of the man she believes to be her father and then her husband. She devotes most her time to working in the fields and looking after her family, all while wondering about the fates of certain people who were once in her life, including her daughter who was conceived through rape and her sister who leaves the family to live a life of her own. For her, liberation comes after she starts to become friends with her husband’s mistress, who helps her find both true love and independence for the first time in her life.

This is a book where the way forward is far from being clear and easy despite Celie’s clear courage, and the fact that it’s been challenged by both conservatives and liberals over the years shows the power this novel has to make everyone uncomfortable to some extent. It makes readers look into suffering experienced by individuals within certain communities and question what exactly it takes for those living under such difficult circumstances to improve their situations.

The other novel is Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally, which won that year’s Booker Prize. Many of you are probably familiar with this story already thanks to the powerful Spielberg adaptation which won an Oscar for Best Picture, yet some of you may not know that this wasn’t originally published as a nonfiction book, but rather as a novel that’s based on true events.

 Much like The Color Purple, this is a story about overcoming oppression where the protagonist doesn’t quite live up to our first impressions. The main character and eventual hero of the story, Oskar Schindler, starts out as a member of the Nazi Party who has Jews working in a factory he runs in occupied Poland primarily for the intention of making a good profit and living a luxurious lifestyle. But as the war goes on and he becomes more aware of the cruelty of the more dedicated Nazi members and the suffering the Jews go through, he becomes more dedicated to helping save lives as opposed to only looking out for his best interests, and as a result, around 1,200 Jews survived the Holocaust due to his efforts. While certain aspects of this story are already familiar to many, it never fails to be less shocking or moving the more we learn about it, and it serves to show how sometimes it’s those you least expect to make a difference who do it nonetheless.

Even some of the novels from more popular authors went under a similar route. This was the year where Stephen King published three books (including one, The Running Man, which was published under the pen name Richard Backman), and yet none of them were primarily horror stories. Instead, one of the books he gave readers was Different Seasons (the 7th biggest bestseller of the year according to Publisher’s Weekly, by the way), a collection of four novellas where one of the stories, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption told the story of two men in prison where the time period ran from the 1940s to the 70s, while another, The Body, told the coming-of-age tale of four boys living in a small town in 1960. This may have seemed different for his typical readers at the time, who would have been more used to his horror fiction, but they’ve since come to be as synonymous with his work as novels like The Shining, Pet Sematary, and IT are, as anyone who’s seen The Shawshank Redemption or Stand by Me could tell you.

As for the writers who did write horror this year, several wrote historical novels that remained within the genre. Beetlejuice and A Nightmare Before Christmas screenwriter Michael McDowell, who’d been publishing several horror novels since 1979, wrote a horror novel this year named Katie, which is set in 1870s New York and tells the story of a psychic young killer and a young woman, whose grandfather was killed by this girl, who tries tracking her and her equally dangerous family down only to face some undesirable consequences as a result. We got another historical horror novel from A Song of Ice and Fire writer George R.R. Martin through Fevre Dream, a story about vampires set in the 1850s.

Other historical novels published this year include North and South by John Jakes, The Man from St. Petersburg by Ken Follett, and War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, which was the third book of 1982 to get a film adaptation from Spielberg.

As for other genres, we got a few notable science fiction sequels this year. Among them include Life, the Universe, and Everything, which is the third novel in Douglas Adams’ comedic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sci-fi series, as well as 2010: The Year We Made Contact, the sequel to Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. We also got the Hugo Award winning Foundation’s Edge, a continuation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. As for fantasy, the year’s most well-known novel is probably Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, the first novel in the Dark Tower series.

As you may have already noticed, many of the novels I’ve mentioned are either set in the past, the future, or in different worlds. However, there were some notable contemporary novels. One of the major ones we got this year was Nancy Garden’s YA classic Annie On My Mind, which is one of the first young adult novels to be about a lesbian relationship. It tells the story of private school student Liza, who falls in love with working- class Annie, whom she meets at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. They start coming to terms with their sexual orientation as they grow closer to each other, and Liza soon faces trouble when a teacher and fellow student become aware of both her own relationship and that of two other teachers in the school.

We also got the Newberry Medal winning Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt. This is the sequel to the 1981 novel Homecoming, in which four siblings become homeless after being abandoned by their mother and their efforts to survive and look after each other. In this novel, the kids now have someone to look after them, yet titular character Dicey is struggling to adjust to her new life.

 Both these stories appear to be a continuation of the real issues themes of many children’s and young adult novels of the 70s at a time when we started seeing less of these novels being published, and I certainly think the former novel should be read if you want to check out an early LGBT YA novel and see how far we’ve come on such stories since this book was published, while the latter novel could give you an early example of stories dealing with the impact child abandonment has on kids as well as adoption.

So overall, several of the major novels of 1982 seemed to be centered around different time periods and even worlds, with fewer than usual set in the present. Some may say that 1982 can be viewed as a transitional year for fiction as a result, paving the way for both the more popular genre fiction which did very well throughout the 80s as well as some of the literary fiction that was to be published later, since we did see more well-known historical novels like Lonesome Dove and Beloved (which were both Pulitzer Prize winners) being published throughout the decade.

Although I do wish there were at least a few more novels from this year that gave us some good 80s slice of life, many of these titles are impressive nonetheless, with some that could probably be considered the best books of the decade. I can’t promise to review every title I’ve brought up here, and there may be several others I’ll find that I’ll review in addition to those mentioned in this essay, but I’ll be doing my best to review several of these novels as close to their original date of publication as possible. Be sure to look out for them, and I hope you’ll enjoy discovering these novels as much as I will.

Source for all Images: Google