1946 | Literature
Literature
Nonfiction: Hiroshima by John Hersey, whose documentary account of six people who survived last year's U.S. nuclear attack on the Japanese city occupies the entire August 31 issue of the New Yorker magazine and then appears in book form; The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture by anthropologist Ruth Benedict, who has never been to Japan but whose book will nevertheless be a classic in its field; Thunder Out of China by Boston-born former Time magazine foreign correspondent Theodore H. (Harold) White, 31, and his colleague Annalee Jacoby, who have quit Time because publisher Henry Luce has refused to run articles critical of Chiang Kai-shek's corrupt regime; Chinese Science by Joseph Needham, who headed the British Scientific Mission in China during the war and traveled about the country collecting rare scientific books and manuscripts (see 1954); Man's Search for Meaning by Viennese-born psychiatrist Viktor (Emil) Frankl, 41, who has survived the horrors of the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps (his book will be translated into 24 languages and have sales of more than 10 million copies); The Case Against the Nazi War Criminals by Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, who returns to his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court at year's end; Journal, 1939-42 by André Gide; The Stricken Land by Rexford Guy Tugwell is about Puerto Rico (Tugwell has left the island to join the faculty of the University of Chicago); The Art of Plain Talk by Viennese-born U.S. author Rudolph Flesch, 35.
Philologist-writer Logan Pearsall Smith dies at London March 2 at age 80; author-critic Gertrude Stein at Paris July 27 at age 72; naturalist-writer Ernest Thompson Seton at Santa Fe, N.M., October 23 at age 86.
Fiction: Zorba the Greek (Vois Kai Politeia Tou Alexi Zorba) by Nikos Kazantzakis; Independent People by émigré Icelandic novelist Halldor Laxness (originally Halldor Gudjonsson), 44; The Berlin Stories ("The Last of Mr. Norris" and "Goodbye to Berlin") by Christopher Isherwood; The President (El Señor Presidente) by Guatemalan novelist Miguel Asturias, 47; Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty; The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers; Memoirs of Hecate County (stories) by Edmund Wilson; All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, whose protagonist Willie Stark is transparently based on the late Huey Long; Ladders to Fire by Paris-born New York novelist Anaïs Nin, 32; Back by Henry Green; Miracle de la rose by playwright Jean Genet; "The Courtesy Call" by Osamu Dazai, who expresses nihilistic despair (he has been the victim of a wartime air raid and has said that he was deceived by the emperor); The Foxes of Harrow by Georgia-born novelist Frank (Garvin) Yerby, 36; Williwaw by West Point-born novelist (Eugene Luther) Gore Vidal (Jr.), 21, who joined the Army Reserve 4 years ago instead of going to Harvard (he had been a mediocre student at Exeter and served in the Aleutians); This Side of Innocence by Taylor Caldwell; B. F.'s Daughter by John P. Marquand; The River by Rumer Godden; The Train (Sputniki) by Russian novelist Evira (Federovna) Panova, 41; Letty Fox: Her Luck by Christina Stead; The River Road by Frances Parkinson Keyes; Green Grass of Wyoming by Mary O'Hara; Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House by Detroit-born Fortune editor Eric (Williams) Hodgins, 46; The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing; Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes; Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey; I the Jury by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born comic-strip writer Frank Morrison "Mickey" Spillane, 28, whose raunchy Mike Hammer detective novel emphasizes sex, sadism, and violence, drawing scorn from critics.
French authorities prosecute Paris publisher Maurice Girodias for publishing works by the American novelist Henry Miller; it is France's first obscenity case since the one involving Flaubert's Madame Bovary in 1844.
E. Phillips Oppenheim dies on the Isle of Guernsey February 3 at age 79, having written three to five spy and suspense novels per year since 1896; Thomas Dixon of 1905 The Clansman notoriety dies at Raleigh, N.C., April 3 at age 82; Booth Tarkington at Indianapolis May 19 at age 76; novelist-historian H. G. Wells at London August 13 at age 79.
Poetry: Lord Weary's Castle by Boston-born poet Robert (Traill Spence) Lowell (Jr.), 29, who has served a term in prison for his pacifism in World War II; The Double Image by English poet Denise Levertov, 23; Deaths and Entrances by Dylan Thomas; Cities, Plains, and People by Lawrence Durrell; Paterson by William Carlos Williams; Poems—North and South by Worcester, Mass.-born poet Elizabeth Bishop, 35, includes "Florida," "The Map," "The Fish," "The Man-Moth," "The Unbeliever," and "A Miracle for Breakfast"; Family Circle by Philadelphia-born poet Eve Merriam (originally Moskowitz), 30; The Moving Image by Australian poet Judith Wright, 31.
Poet Countee Cullen dies of uremic poisoning at New York January 9 at age 42.
Juvenile: Mistress Masham's Repose by T. H. White; The Little Island by New York-born author Margaret Wise Brown, 35, illustrations by Leonard Weisgard, 30; The Kid Comes Back by John R. Tunis.
Wanda Gág dies at New York June 27 at age 53.