Introspection and Retrospective of the 1950's

In which I consider my current relationship with my National Book Award reading challenge, how my reading has evolved in the past six months, and what comes next.

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

Last week, I finished reading the books on the 1959 National Book Award longlist for Fiction, officially wrapping up this first decade of award reading. Over a decade ago, I had this idea of reading all of the award books I could in the hopes that it would make me a smarter, more cultured, more thoughtful person. Then, last year, I thought reading all of the fiction longlist books would help me to better understand fiction as a whole, or at least fiction through the eyes of this specific award I had fallen in love with. I figured that if I read all of the books ever longlisted for fiction, I would be able to predict which books would be on future lists, I would be better able to spot trends, to see direct influences from one book to another. I didn’t really think this idea through, I just knew this was a goal I had always wanted to pursue, and that I now had a reason—no matter how shaky—to get me going. Over these last six months, I’ve learned a lot about my shortcomings as a reader, the limitations of my specific lens. I’ve considered new ways of framing the conversations around these books, and thought about how I can approach the rest of these books moving forward. This week’s letter is a consideration of the work I’ve read so far, but also about what reading it has taught me about myself as a reader and as a person.

When I first began this project in January, I did so with the idea that by starting at the beginning, I would figure out everything that I needed to know. It’s the same way I’ve always operated when investigating my self, by starting at my earliest memory and working my way forward—but I always forget to include the context of my family, my Momma and my Granny, the ways that their lives have informed my own. I think this is kind of the same thing. I always forget about the greater context. In fact, when I started this project, I didn’t think at all about anything aside from craft. The National Book Award website says it’s looking for the best written book of the year, and so I thought, “okay, I just need to see which books have the best sentences and the best structures and the most well developed characters.” I picked up that first year’s winner, The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren, and began reading with this unearned confidence, assuming I would know just by studying the work on its own merits whether or not it was worthy of this award.

Algren’s novel is an exploration of the impact of war, of addiction, and also a portrait of Chicago and the working class people of the late 1940’s. On its own, the work is captivating—Algren writes such beautiful sentences, has a delicate sense of rhythm that creates a perfect harmony with the gritty, dark subjects he takes on. When read now, it reads as an accomplished novel, but one that doesn’t always handle its subject matter in a way that would be considered appropriate today. I think this is where I first learned the necessity of situating a book within its historical context. While the book hasn’t aged well in the way it writes about disability, or of addiction, it was seen as a major step forward at the time of its publication. Algren was considered an important writer for the working class people who felt underseen and underrepresented in fiction at the time. Which is why this was also such a bold choice for the very first winner for the National Book Award for fiction. This context matters, because without meeting a book on these terms, I don’t think one can successfully consider its merits.

In the newsletter where I initially covered The Man With the Golden Arm, I mentioned that I wished I could have known which writers had inspired Algren as far as style and structure, that I wasn’t as aware of these things, but that I could trace a line from him to today’s brilliant crime writer, Megan Abbott. I didn’t fully understand this at the time, but my lack of familiarity with the books and writers that influenced the writers featured in these early longlists meant that I couldn’t consider how these books were all in conversation with each other. This was another moment where I didn’t know what I didn’t know, until I did.

I have always been the kind of person who thinks there are shortcuts to understanding. Starting at 1950 might have given me a small indicator of what style of book, what subject matter, what type of character was in fashion at the time, but it doesn’t actually help in understanding the overall state of literature during this period. I didn’t think about historical context, what was happening with books in the few decades prior to this. I was somehow surprised that a majority of these books were about World War II, when that war had ended less than a decade earlier. My perspective was so limited. Weirdly, this made me think about something Karen Russell once said when she spoke about writing Swamplandia!, and how she found the balance between her artful prose and accurately portraying these young characters. She said that in order to sustain a certain level of believability in writing these young people who narrated these stories with such adult vocabulary, she had to keep to the reality that young people often miss that greater perspective. Their focus is much more lasered into the moment, and I think that’s true. In many ways, it feels like this is what I expected of these books—to be well written and only about what was on the page—and I also think this is how I have often been as a reader and as a person, not considering the greater context, while hiding this fact with pontification.

As I made my way through the first half of the Fifties, a few things I noted were that men mostly wrote about war—mostly World War II, because many of them had served and were wanting to communicate their experiences, their disillusionment with war, their new understanding of what war actually was. I did find it odd that in some ways, these books felt removed from political commentary. It felt like the two weren’t related when they’re unquestionably stitched together. I’m not really sure what to make of this, but I will say that I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying these novels. My favorite of them all was The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. In the letter where I covered several of these war books, I mentioned that I was convinced that The Caine Mutiny was possibly the great gay novel of the Fifties, and I stand by that. He writes about this man in his underwear playing with a set of balls, and I haven’t gotten it out of my mind since.

According to many of the reviews for books written by women featured on these longlists, their books were “only domestic novels”, that they didn’t have very much to say. I see nothing wrong with a domestic novel in itself, but what surprised me was just how much was overlooked by these reviewers. May Sarton, one of the two writers to be longlisted three times this decade, took much inspiration from Virginia Woolf both stylistically and also in how she wrote about war in the ways she showed the aftermath. Woolf’s characters, especially in books like Mrs. Dalloway, have clearly been influenced by the war in one way or another, and Sarton does something similar by subtly showing the ways her character’s lives have been changed following the war. Characters have post traumatic stress, they have lost people, the economy is different. The social commentary is clear and nuanced. Sarton also pulls stylistically from Woolf, while somehow maintaining a modern feel—much like recent National Book Award winner, Trust Exercise by Susan Choi. It’s moments like this where I get excited to see the echoes, the reoccurrences in literature.

Starting in 1955-56, we began to see an exploration of suburbia in fiction, which makes sense—Suburban neighborhoods were established around this time. It makes me think a lot about that movie Blast From The Past and shows like Leave It To Beaver and this idea of a perfect family with a perfect home and a perfect life. There are those who tried to solidify this idea, and those who pushed against it. I actually think Wright Morris, whose novel The Huge Season was longlisted in 1955, might be the first book to take the unhappily married man looking for freedom and frame it within the suburban lifestyle. There were other books that poked holes through this fantasy, like The Bad Seed and The Night of The Hunter. It’s interesting to think that it’s an idea we’re still fighting with now, especially within the thriller genre, where we see books like Gone Girl and The Girl On The Train wrestling with perfect exteriors hiding dark secrets.

It was around this halfway point that I began to wonder if a certain style would establish itself as at the forefront of this period. There is a lot of criticism around the current state of literature—mostly what I see is that everyone says it’s homogenous. But in the Fifties, everyone was trying out their own thing, establishing their own voice, coming at things with their own clear, distinct perspective. There were some things that were more popular than others—the picaresque novel was certainly ‘en vogue’, and southern gothic fiction seemed to be a big hit. Two of the most popular winners of this decade were Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and The Adventures of Augie March by eventual Nobel prize winner, Saul Bellow—both picaresque novels. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy was also a picaresque novel—it didn’t win, but has never gone out of print. These were books that had been hailed as ‘The Great American Novel’ by many, at one point or another, so one could argue that if nothing else, the Fifties claimed the picaresque narrative as the style of their time.

Saul Bellow, while only longlisted twice this decade—including the win for Augie March—was probably the most successful writer to come out of this decade. He is still the only person to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and as I stated above, also won the Nobel Prize. The Adventures of Augie March was considered the Great American novel for decades, until maybe around the eighties or early nineties, and much of his work received great acclaim. I mentioned this when I covered Augie March, but I do find it interesting that the book didn’t win the Pulitzer that year, that the Pulitzer didn’t choose any book, given that that award is specifically trying to award the next Great American novel. I don’t know, just an observation.

To me, the best novel to come out of this period is unquestionably Invisible Man. It was the most compelling, had the most to say and with the clearest vision. It was entertaining all throughout and he did such interesting things stylistically that we still marvel at today. I covered this novel back in February, and I think the newsletter is worth checking out, but out of all of the books I have read over these last six months, this is the one that is still clearest in my mind.

Going back to this idea of The Great American Novel, I have so often made this distinction between the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, in that one award is looking for the best book by an American writer, and the other is looking for the best written book dealing with American life. Throughout the last decade, there have been so many books longlisted for the NBA that took place outside of the U.S., sometimes outside of our own reality, and because of that, I had convinced myself that these books would offer all that I needed in regards to the whole of literature. This wasn’t the Pulitzer, where all of the books were specifically about American life. But the reality is, because both of these awards feature solely American writers, even if the work takes place outside of the U.S., it’s likely that these books will still be exploring American ideas. This isn’t a bad thing, but it has made me aware of my flawed thinking in assuming that I could discover the whole of great literature from one award.

To understand the whole of literature, which I now realize is what I was so desperate for, it would be, I imagine, the same way it must feel for a person when first entering heaven. To be assaulted with all of the knowledge of the universe, like Eve and then Adam with the forbidden fruit—not an apple, according to my Granny. Maybe if I had come to this realization too soon, I would have been too overwhelmed and given up on my much larger goal before even starting it. At a certain point I asked myself, is my lack of understanding God’s punishment for seeking too much knowledge? It’s always moments like this when I can tell I was raised Pentecostal and also when I realize that I’ve always looked for ways to excuse my stupidity and lack of knowledge.

It was around the time that I had this realization that I ended up feeling a little burnt out on the project. I read the books on the last two longlists quickly, rushing through them in the hopes that I could get to something better when I was done. I realize now that maybe it’s just that I was moving through all of these books in too close succession. I should clarify that I do feel like I gave these books adequate attention, it’s just that when you immerse yourself in a certain project for too long, you can lose perspective, ya know? I don’t know, it mostly just reminded me of when I was making playlists for my wedding and deciding which Madonna songs to choose. I went through her entire discography over the course of one sitting, and while most of her albums are total bops, when done this way, you’re going to get burnt out. I think at a certain point, it wasn’t always these books, it was me.

I will say, despite my burnout, there was one author who was featured on the last two longlists who I am now a big fan of—Bernard Malamud. His work was so captivating and well written and it went down so easy, like Barefoot Moscato or a Strawberry Daquiri, but classy. He was longlisted for his novel, The Assistant, winning the next year with his short story collection, The Magic Barrel, and I don’t know how on earth we don’t talk about him as much as we do some of these other famous hoes. His work is actually a really great counter to Saul Bellow, especially in how they write about Jewish American identity. I think if there was one author from the Fifties whose work I would absolutely want to pursue the rest of, it’s Malamud. (But also, there are several, I’m just emphasizing so y’all will check him out, since it seems like he’s under read.)

Anyway, when I started writing this wrap-up, I realized that my ideas came more from my general experience than with a single book, and also that I didn’t know how to type up a retrospective to an entire decade of literature, when all I had discovered was what all I didn’t know. I did a lot of googling and realized that it’s really difficult to find anything accessible that’s written about literature of the Fifties. I was hoping to have some help, some guidance—this is probably just punishment for always copying other people’s homework as a kid. I can’t trust my own thoughts and ideas about things, because I don’t know if they’re “right” or if I am totally off base and a bad reader. I know this piece is probably different than you might have expected, but it’s the only way I knew how to write it.

I did end up finding one article, from The New York Times, where John Aldridge discussed the anthology ‘Fiction of The Fifties’, edited by Herbert Gold. In one section of his review, he says something about the book that also speaks to how he saw literature of the decade as a whole:

Perhaps [the artistic adolescence] is why Herbert Gold, in choosing the title for his collection, avoided the use of a definite article. He did not want to suggest a unity or singleness of effect where none exists. He may, in fact, have been trying to suggest the exact opposite: that fiction in the Fifties has been remarkable, if at all, precisely for its failure to take a line, adopt a tone, find a style, or strike an attitude. It has been a fiction peculiarly lacking in obsessive interests, dominate trends and influential figures, and it has taken such shape as it has, as well as much of its material, very largely from the condition of its separation from, and unremitting search for, a subject centered in the realities of the present time.

I disagree with what he says about the literature of this time lacking in obsessive interests—the majority of the work of this decade, as I have said, was focused on WWII and its aftermath—but maybe he means something deeper, some element more psychological or more tied to human experience outside of the collective trauma that nobody could really escape at the time. I’m not sure. But I do agree that there wasn’t a specific tone or style during this period. What here reads as a criticism is actually what is so highly praised by writers today. If work of now is considered too homogenous, too similar in style and tone and in its consideration of ideas, then obviously it’s a great thing that the writers of the Fifties were able to distinguish themselves so clearly from one another. Right?

I can’t speak for the whole of literature in the Fifties—this award only highlighted a small number of books each year, as it does now—but I do think that the books I’ve read and reviewed over the last six months say a lot about the period. Writers of this time all appeared to be working very hard at creating distinct voices, it seems like they worked really hard to get you to hear what they wanted to say. These books were all challenging and accomplished in their own ways. And as I said, they really do speak to the time in ways that I’m not sure someone reviewing these works could really predict as close as decade’s end. I’m still not entirely sure what I think of these books so far, I’m not entirely sure how to wrap my head around how to frame these books in relation to the whole of literature, but I am still glad I am on the journey. I’m glad you’re here with me.

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If you wanted a list of some of my favorite books of the decade that I think you should check out, here is a list:

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

Marjorie Morning Star by Herman Wouk

The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow

The Grass Harp by Truman Capote

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

Seize The Day by Saul Bellow

Love Among The Cannibals by Wright Morris

The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

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Let me know if you have any thoughts on literature from the Fifties, or any thoughts about what I’ve discussed today. And thanks for tuning in. Hope you’ll stick around as I enter into the Sixties real soon!

Until then,

XOXO