Commonly acknowledged literary predecessors of Beattie are post-World War II writers such as J. D. Salinger, John Updike (as he wrote in the 1950s), and John Cheever. Thomas Pynchon and Donald Barthelme are also predecessors in that they present views of modern life as fragmented and chaotic.

Beattie and these Postmodernist writers are identified as "minimalists," supposedly characterized by flat, deadpan prose and the refusal to provide solutions for the human predicaments they write about. Her early stories and novel, Distortions (1976) and Chilly Scenes of Winter (1976) drew the criticism that she wrote merely about her own "Woodstock" generation, but both Beattie and subsequent critics have commented on the unfairness of using her subject matter against her (as Beattie put it, no one criticized James Joyce for writing about Ireland). The term "minimalist" also needs qualification, especially in Beattie's case, for the problems of modern...