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Scanning the "bestseller" lists of long-gone years, you find title after title you've never heard of—on the whole, you're tempted to conclude, books that sell the most hardcover copies, month to month, are not books widely remembered and esteemed by later generations. But these lists are hugely different from the comprehensive records of books that sold the most copies over time, in all formats. Have a look at this Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books
The Bestseller list of 1946 has recognizable names (Daphne du Maurier, Taylor Caldwell, Erich Maria Remarque) but no stand-out titles. Even among the eighty-some fiction titles Wiki cites, it's a thin year. This might reflect the fact that 1946's books were written during or just after WWII—the wave of books about the war, the Holocaust, and related matters (with one exception, below), had yet to arrive.1 2
Three vastly different titles achieve both "wide recognition" and "lasting significance":
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren 3
Hiroshima, John Hersey 4
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, Benjamin Spock 5
Four works by World Writers:
Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis [Greece] 6
Mr. President, Miguel Ángel Asturias [Guatemala] 7
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen [stories], Tadeusz Borowski [Poland] 8
All Men are Mortal, Simone de Beauvoir [France] 9
My List:
Independent People, Halldór Laxness 10
The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers 11
The Big Clock, Kenneth Fearing 12
Norman Mailer's, The Naked and the Dead (1948), was the first novel by a participant of WWII, followed by James Jones’s From Here to Eternity (1951). The story concerns American soldiers taking a mountainous, densely jungled island in the Philippines. As the novel progresses it gradually becomes a tale of futility, misjudgment, and pointless sacrifice.
The Naked and the Dead spent 62 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Rinehart and Company wouldn’t let Mailer use the word “fuck” so he changed them all to “fug.” Actress Tallulah Bankhead reportedly once said to Mailer, "Oh, hello, you're . . . the young man that doesn't know how to spell."
The underground rock band, the Fugs, took their name from Mailer’s novel.
The story of Willy Stark, thinly veiled portrait of assassinated Louisiana governor, Huey Long, as narrated by Jack Burden, once an idealistic young reporter who became Stark's aide. The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction has this to say: “But this sensuously written novel is much more than a book about politics. Its core is the decay of promise."
Warren was an esteemed poet and literary critic as well, co-founder of the Southern Review, associated with the “New Criticism.” In my 40s, I discovered the poetry he wrote late in life, found it wise and quietly eloquent. Warren is the only writer to win Pulitzers in both fiction (for All the King’s Men) and poetry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Penn_Warren
The opening sentence of John Hersey's, Hiroshima:
At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.
Nine months after the dropping of the bomb, Hersey spent three weeks in Japan interviewing survivors. His account, written in a matter of weeks that summer, appeared in in the August 31, 1946, issue of The New Yorker, introduced by this editorial note:
"TO OUR READERS. The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use. The Editors."
Boomers (like me) were raised on this book. Wiki summarizes it well:
Spock and his manual helped revolutionize child-rearing methods for the post-World War II generation. Mothers heavily relied on Spock's advice and appreciated his friendly, reassuring tone. Spock emphasizes in his book that, above all, parents should have confidence in their abilities and trust their instincts. The famous first line of the book reads, "Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Common_Sense_Book_of_Baby_and_Child_Care
Made into a classic film starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates (1964). I don't know if this novel is still read outside the Greek diaspora, but Kazantzakis is a giant figure in Modern Greek literature. Also known for The Last Temptation of Christ (1955)—roundly condemned by the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches (as was Martin Scorsese's 1988 film adaptation). Kazantzakis was nominated for the Nobel Prize nine different years.
If you’ve read Roberto Bolaño [The Savage Detectives (1998), 2666 (2004)], you’ve experienced late fruit of a literary movement that began in the 1960s/1970s, called the Latin American Boom, which brought to the world’s attention a group of major novelists, poets, and essayists—Julio Cortázar (Argentina), Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), and others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_Boom
Miguel Ángel Asturias (winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize for Literature) is a principal forebear of this movement. Penguin recently published a new translation of Mr. President with a foreword by Vargas Llosa.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1967/asturias/biographical/
Borowski's fiancée was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 as a member of the Polish resistance movement in Warsaw. Trying to learn what had happened to her, he too was arrested. He spent two years at Auschwitz and later was marched to Dachau, only escaping death by virtue of the camp's liberation by U.S. soldiers in 1945. Penguin Classics has recently brought out a new edition of this work.
De Beauvoir wrote fiction, biography, personal essay, tracts on philosophy, politics, etc. Her most enduring and influential work is The Second Sex (1949), a “foundational” work in feminist theory. She was a complex, fascinating figure, at the epicenter of mid-century intellectual life, long-time consort of Jean-Paul Sartre, lover of Nelson Algren (The Man With the Golden Arm), et al. Read about her:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir
And about this novel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Men_Are_Mortal
Winner of 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature, from Iceland. This novel is considered the centerpiece of this career. I read it years ago based on the rave intro by Brad Leithauser, and, to be candid here, found it a bit of a slog. But many revere this book. Ten years ago, I walked through Laxness's residence outside Reykjavik—kept much as it was, books and all, and it felt a great honor.
Recently I read another, Under the Glacier [intro by Susan Sontag], much shorter and stranger and a hell of a lot funnier. From a Salon review: If there were any justice in the literary world . . . this amazing little volume would inspire a cult following . . . Under the Glacier is hilarious . . . A luminous tale of timeless mythic profundity.
Archipelago has just issued a new translation of Salka Valka [1931-32], which I mean to read this summer. Archipelago books are such handsome artifacts—you just want to hold them! Alice Munro: Laxness is a beacon in twentieth century literature, a writer of splendid originality, wit, and feeling.
McCullers was a a chronicler of the Deep South’s small-town misfits—a story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet as well as novelist. Her other major works are The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) and The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson_McCullers
Fearing was a well-known proletarian poet of the 1930s. In the 40s, he turned to writing psychological thrillers inspired by true crime, including The Big Clock and Clark Clifford's Body (1942). The novel has been filmed three times, most recently as No Way Out with Kevin Costner (1987). A reference guide to detective fiction calls The Big Clock "a truly brilliant story, laid in a large mass-communications organization . . . Tone and talk are sharp and often bitter—the whole business is a tour de force worthy of the highest praise."
This book has gotten more attention since the recent film adaptation with Cate Blanchett and Bradley Cooper. There was also a 1947 version with Tyrone Power. But you should read the bio statement for Gresham's life.
I’ve been collecting Signet pulps (late 40s to 1959). They're staring at me from across the room—150 or so, plastic-sleeved. They're known for their lurid covers—several artists including James Avati became famous for these illustrations. This imprint was an offshoot of the New American Library; the slogan on the back cover says: Great reading for the millions. True, there was a wealth of good trashy stuff (also sci-fi, westerns, Italian fiction and the odd nonfiction title), but easily a third were reprints of first-rate novels—Faulkner, Mailer, Dreiser, Mann, Nabokov, Dylan Thomas, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Nevil Shute, Flannery O’Connor. They even manage a modestly sexed-up cover for Arthur Koestler’s, Darkness at Noon.
A number of the titles in the Birth Years Project were Signet pulps:
The Naked and the Dead
On the Beach
An American Tragedy
Appointment in Samarra
The Street
The Young Lions
I, Robot
From Here to Eternity
The Invisible man
Sample of Signet pulps in David's Noir-Title Hall of Fame:
Requiem for a Redhead, Lindsay Hardy
Stone Cold Blonde, Adam Knight
The Flesh Was Cold, Bruno Fischer
Uneasy Street, Wade Miller
Kiss Me Deadly, Mickey Spillane
The Bottom of the Bottle, George Simenon
The Snake Pit, Mary Jane Ward
The Bandaged Nude, Robert Finnegan
Let the Night Cry, Charlie Wells
Not sure how I stumbled onto this, but I’m glad I didn’t get put off by its being “fantasy,” which I tend to skip. This is the first book of The Gormenghast series. It does have an ancient, self-contained fantasy world, but there’s a dark wit and enough off-the-wall-ness that I found myself happily engrossed. Characters like the Machiavellian Steerpike, Mr. Flay, Fuschia Groan, Nannie Slagg, Mr. Rottcodd (curator of the Hall of Bright Carvings), and, of course, Titus himself, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, seventy-sixth Earl of Groan. Titus Groan is the best of the three completed books, IMHO. Check out this account of Peake’s life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mervyn_Peake
Some subscribers of this Substack were once students at Pacific University’s low-res MFA Program in Writing (at which I taught). One of our guest faculty members was Tayari Jones, acclaimed novelist of An American Marriage (winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction and an Oprah’s Book Club selection). In researching Petry, I came upon a 2019 piece Jones wrote for the Guardian. I commend it to you wholeheartedly:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/14/the-street-the-1940s-african-american-thriller-that-became-a-huge-bestseller
Though Welty wrote six novels, she is remembered primarily as a short story writer (do yourselves a favor and read "No Place for You, My Love," first published in the September 20, 1952, issue of The New Yorker, reprinted in various places including The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980). She is also esteemed as a photographer of the South.
Delta Wedding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Wedding