1945 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (essay) by Vienna-born British philosopher Karl (Raimund) Popper, 43, who observes the philosophical linkages between fascism and communism; History Is on Our Side by Joseph Needham; The Yogi and the Commissar by Arthur Koestler; General Theory of Law and State by Hans Kelsen, now 64, who wrote the Austrian constitution that was adopted in 1920, served as a judge of Austria's Supreme Constitutional Court until 1930, emigrated to America in 1940, and has been teaching at Harvard; Italy and the Coming World by Luigi Sturzo, who will return from exile next year; The Age of Jackson by Ohio-born historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 27, who has served with the OSS in Europe; Black Boy (autobiography) by Richard Wright, whose book will have sales of more than 500,000 copies within a year (but who will move to France because he cannot buy a house under his own name in Greenwich Village); The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller, who toured the United States from 1940 to 1941 and deplores the human cost of commercialization and mechanization; Men at Work by economist Stuart Chase; Agriculture in an Unstable Economy by South Dakota-born University of Chicago economist Theodore W. (William) Schultz, 43; The Egg and I by Boulder, Colo.-born, Seattle-raised writer Betty MacDonald, 37, has sales of 1 million copies its first year. The author quit her art studies at the University of Washington in 1927 to marry insurance salesman Robert E. Heskett, he bought a chicken ranch on the Olympic Peninsula for $450, she grew to hate everything about chickens except the eggs, and the couple split up in 1931; Home to India by Madras-born U.S. writer Santha Rama Rau, 22, whose mother, now 52, is a leader of India's women's movement; Mme. Pompadour (biography) by English writer Nancy (Freeman) Mitford, 40; The Turn of the Tide by H. M. Tomlinson.

Historian Johan Huizinga dies at De Steeg, Netherlands, February 1 at age 72; Carl L. Becker at Ithaca, N.Y., April 10 at age 71; author Albert Jay Nock at New Canaan, Conn., August 19 at age 74; man of letters Maurice Baring at Beauly, Inverness, Scotland December 14 at age 71.

Fiction: The Animal Farm: A Fairy Story by George Orwell; The Age of Reason (L'age de raison) and The Reprieve (Le Sursis) by Jean-Paul Sartre (first two novels in a trilogy); La Douleur by French novelist Marguerite Duras (Marguerite Donnadien), 31, who has worked for the Résistance during the war; Christ Stopped at Eboli (Christo si e fermato ad eboli) by Italian physician-novelist Carlo Levi, 43, whose documentary novel reveals the social and human problems of Lucania, where he was confined in the mid-1930s for anti-Fascist activities; The Serpent (Ormen) by Swedish novelist Stig Dagerman, 22; Krane's Café (Kranes Konditori) by Cora Sandel; Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood; Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh; That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis; Loving by Henry Green; A Fearful Joy by Joyce Cary; Cannery Row by John Steinbeck; The Crack-Up by the late F. Scott Fitzgerald, who left it incomplete; The Egyptian (Sinuhe, egyptilänen) by Finnish novelist Mika (Toimi) Waltari, 40; The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford; The Ghostly Lover by Lexington, Ky.-born novelist Elizabeth (Bruce) Hardwick, 29; Memoirs of a Shy Pornograher by Kennetch Patchen; By the Waters of Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Canadian novelist Elizabeth Smart, 32, who has had four children by the English poet George Barker; The Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen; The Friendly Persuasion by Indiana-born novelist Jessamyn West, 43; The Tin Flute (Bonheur d'occasion) by Manitoba-born novelist Gabrielle Roy, 36, is about impoverished working-class urban dwellers; Before the Chaos (Avant le chaos) (stories) by poet Alain Grandbois; Forever Amber by Minnesota-born novelist Kathleen Winsor, 29.

Novelist Gilbert Patten ("Burt L. Standish") dies in poverty at Vista, Calif., January 16 at age 78; Franz Werfel of pneumonia at Beverly Hills, Calif., August 26 at age 54; Ellen Glasgow at her native Richmond, Va., November 21 at age 71; Theodore Dreiser at Hollywood, Calif., December 8 at age 74.

Poetry: Selected Poems by John Crowe Ransom; A Street in Bronzeville by Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks, 28; Tribute to the Angels by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle); The Black Seasons by Engish poet Henry Treece, 33, who has served as an intelligence officer in a bomber command and will turn to writing children's fiction; Rescue (Ocalenie) by Czeslaw Milosz.

Poet Paul Valéry dies at Paris July 20 at age 73 (he is given a state funeral).

Juvenile: Stuart Little by E. B. White of the New Yorker magazine, whose protagonist is a mouse (illustrations by New York-born Garth [Montgomery] Williams, 33); The Famous Invasion of Sicily by the Bears (La Famosa Invasione degli Ursi in Sicilia) by Dino Buzzati; Pippi Longstocking (Pippi Langstrump) by Swedish author Anna Lindgren (née Ericsson), 37, whose free-spirited, freckle-faced, carrot-top heroine is the daughter of Pipilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint, wears oversized shoes and stockings that don't match, and will reappear in sequels that (like the original) will be translated into dozens of languages.

Author Felix Salten dies at Zürich October 8 at age 76.