Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

What was the best novel, written by a US based author in English in the years 1980 to 2000, the final fifth of the 20th century?  Someone asked me that question recently on an online forum and I came up with three quite offhand, but I'm open to suggestions: My off-the-cuff three: Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire (1981) . Updike, Memories of the Ford Administration (1992). Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full (1998). 

Over at Yahoo!Answers, I fielded the following question, "How did the Cuban Missile Crisis fit into the Cold War? How does it help one to understand the cold war?" My answer:  "The Kennedy administration found it necessary to make a concession but impossible to be SEEN making a concession. They publicly claimed they wouldn't offer any tit-for-tat regarding withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba, but privately through a back channel they DID offer a tit-for-tat in connection with missiles in Turkey. And that was accepted." Added. They had to keep this back channel a secret so they could get headlines that said things like  "Reds Back Down on Cuba."  Returning to my yahoo answer.... "Robert Caro has a good account of this in his latest volume of his biography of LBJ, who was of course VP at the time. "How it helps one understand the cold war is that it offers an example of a dangerous combination of power politics and juveni...

I remember when I was in high school I became interested in Dante's DIVINE COMEDY. (For those of you who may be curious, I was reading the Sayers/Reynolds translation, which preserves the terza rima scheme of the original verse.) This was a matter of some consternation to various kin and neighbors, who thought I could not possibly understand such a book and it could only hurt my lil' teenage mind to try. One neighbor lady (whom I will shroud in anonymity hereafter -- the initials NL shall be enough) somberly sought to discuss the book with me. The conversation went something like this: NL: What do you think the book is about? CF: (staggered a bit at the vastness of the ground a proper answer would cover): Well, Dante was writing at a time when the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor were engaged in a struggle for power. He used the three afterlife destinations to suggest his own take.... NL:   No no, you're missing the point. His point was the kind of l...