1944 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: An American Dilemma by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, 44, explores the history of U.S. black-white relationships and examines the moral and psychological dilemmas posed by years of professing equality while practicing inequality; Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 by Buffalo-born historian Richard Hofstadter, 28, who wrote it as his Columbia University Ph.D. thesis 2 years ago; How New Will the Better World Be? by Carl L. Becker; Lee's Lieutenants (third of three volumes) by Douglas Southall Freeman; Lost in the Horse Latitudes by H. Allen Smith.

Author Ida M. Tarbell dies at Bethel, Conn., January 6 at age 86; sociologist Robert E. Park at Nashville, Tenn., February 7 at age 79; economist and humorist Stephen Leacock of throat cancer at Toronto March 28 at age 74; Fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile is killed by communists at Florence April 15 at age 68; medieval historian and French Résistance leader Marc Bloch is killed by a German firing squad outside Lyons June 16 at age 57, having been captured in March by Vichy police and tortured by Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie; Antoine de Saint-Exupery is shot down while on a reconnaisance mission over the Mediterranean and dies July 31 at age 44.

Fiction: Dangling Man by Canadian-born U.S. novelist Saul Bellow, 29; A Bell for Adano by Time magazine journalist-novelist John (Richard) Hersey, 30; A Walk in the Sun by Portland, Me.-born war novelist Harry (McNab Peter) Brown, 27; Strange Fruit by Florida-born novelist Lillian (Eugenia) Smith, 46, is about a lynching in a racially-segregated Georgia town in the years following World War I (its realistic language and ironic treatment of miscegenation, sexuality, and abortion cause an uproar, and the book is banned by Boston's Watch and Ward Society); The Lost Weekend by Summit, N.J.-born novelist Charles (Reginald) Jackson, 41, is about alcoholism; The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham; Winter Tales by Isak Dinesen; The Ballad and the Source by Rosamond Lehmann; The Golden Fleece (in the United States, Hercules, My Shipmate) by Robert Graves; The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary; There Were No Windows by Norah Hoult; Forest of Anger (L'Education européene) by Lithuanian-born French novelist Romain Gary (originally Romain Kacew), 30, who has joined Gen. Charles de Gaulle at London after serving with the Free French forces in Europe and North Africa. His depiction of the horrors of war will be republished under the title Nothing Important Ever Dies after being revised; The Dwarf (Dvargen) by Swedish novelist Par Lagerkvist, 53; The Green Years by A. J. Cronin; Love on the Supertax by English novelist-critic Marghanita Laski, 29; The Leaning Tower, and Other Stories by Katherine Ann Porter; Boston Adventure by Covina, Calif.-born novelist-short story writer Jean Stafford, 29; The Feather Merchants by Max Shulman; Green Dolphin Street by English novelist Elizabeth Goudge, 44; Dragonwyck by New York-born novelist Anya Seton, 28, daughter of nature writer Ernest Thompson Seton; Alina by journalist-novelist Martha Gellhorn, whose bumpy 4-year-old marriage to Ernest Hemingway will end next year; While We Still Love (in England, The Unconquerable) by Helen MacInnes; Jassy by Norah Lofts.

Pulp fiction writer Max Brand (Frederick Shiller Faust) is killed May 14 at age 51 while observing an Allied assault in Italy as war correspondent for Harper's magazine. He has written an estimated 30 million words in his career; humorist-playwright George Ade dies at his estate near Brook, Ind., May 16 at age 78; Nobel novelist-playwright Romain Rolland December 30 at age 78 in the house he bought 7 years ago at Vézelay, Switzerland (he married a young Russian widow 10 years ago).

Poetry: To the German Rendezvous (Au rendez-vous allemand) and Worthy of Living (Dignes de verre) by Paul Eluard, whose works are circulated in secret among members of the Résistance; Flight into Darkness by Ralph B. Gustafson; Beast in View by Muriel Rukeyser; The Soldier by Conrad Aiken; V-Letter and Other Poems by Karl Shapiro, whose "Elegy for a Dead Soldier" is widely acclaimed; The Enchanted Echo by Ontario-born Royal Canadian Air Force enlistee Alfred Wellington "Al" Purdy, 26, who dropped out of school at age 17, rode the rails west to Vancouver, and worked in a mattress factory before joining the air force; The Walls Do Not Fall by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle); The Phoenix and the Tortoise by Kenneth Rexroth; Rendezvous with America by Missouri-born poet Melvin (Beaunorus) Tolson, 46, contains the six-part poem "Dark Symphony," contrasting European-American history with black American history.

French authorities arrest poet-political theorist Charles Maurras in September for having given strong support to the Pétain government; now 76, he will be sentenced in January to life imprisonment and excluded from the Académie Française, into which he was received in 1938.

Poet John Peale Bishop dies of coronary disease at Hyannis, Mass., April 4 at age 51; Futurist poet-novelist-playwright Filippo Marinetti at Bellagio December 2 at age 67.

Juvenile: The Park Book by Norfolk, Va.-born author Charlotte Zolotow (née Shapiro), 29, with illustrations by H. A. Rey; The Cat Club by Bridgeport, Conn.-born New York author Esther (Holden) Averill, 42, introduces the shy black cat Jenny Linsky and her bright red scarf.

Kewpie doll author-illustrator-designer Rose Cecil O'Neill dies at Springfield, Mo., April 6 at age 69; author Margery Bianco at New York September 4 at age 63.