1948 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It by Richard Hofstadter; The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders by Waco, Texas-born Columbia University sociologist C. (Charles) Wright Mills, 32; War Lords of Washington by Petoskey, Mich.-born Civil War historian (Charles) Bruce Catton, 48; Jefferson the Virginian by Mississippi-born historian-editor Dumas Malone, 56; The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson by Daniel J. Boorstin; The Seven Storey Mountain by French-born U.S. Trappist monk Thomas Merton, 33, creates a sensation with its autobiographical revelations; The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth by Robert Graves, who posits the existence of an all-important religion based on the worship of a goddess that is rooted in ancient times but has continued into the Christian Era; On Tyranny: An Interpretation of Xenophon's Hiero by philosopher Leo Strauss, who came to America 10 years ago, has been teaching at New York's New School for Social Research, but will move next year to the University of Chicago; The Origins of Intelligence in Children (La Nakissance de l'intelligence chez l'enfant) by Jean Piaget; The United States and China by South Dakota-born Harvard professor John King Fairbank, 41, who has pioneered the development of modern Chinese studies as an academic discipline.

Historian-political scientist Charles A. Beard dies at New Haven, Conn., September 1 at age 73; anthropologist-author Ruth Benedict of a heart attack at her native New York September 17 at age 61.

Fiction: Cry, the Beloved Country by South African novelist Alan (Stewart) Paton, 45, principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory since 1935, who indicts the apartheid society of his native land. His book will be issued in 20 languages and have sales of 15 million copies worldwide; Interview with Death (Interview mit dem Tode) (stories) by Hans Erich Nossack; Snow Country (Yukiguni) by Yasunari Kawabata; Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku) by Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima (originally Kimitake Hiraoka), 23, who gains quick celebrity and some notoriety for his semi-autobiographical novel of a homosexual with strong sadistic impulses; The Roadsign at the End of the Road (Owarishi michi no shirube ni) by Tokyo-born medical student-novelist Kobo Abe (originally Kimifusa Abe), 24; Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner; The Young Lions by novelist-playwright Irwin Shaw, now 35, who wrote scripts for radio shows and Broadway before serving with the U.S. Army in Europe; The Naked and the Dead by New Jersey-born infantry veteran Norman Mailer, 25, whose novel excoriates the hypocrisy of war; Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens, whose war novel about a Florida military air base brings attention to his neglected earlier novels; Remembrance Rock by Carl Sandburg; Other Voices, Other Rooms (stories) by New Orleans-born New York writer Truman Capote, 23; The World Is a Wedding (stories) by Delmore Schwartz; Walden Two by behavior psychologist B. F. Skinner is about a utopian community; The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene; Message from a Stranger by New York novelist-essayist Marya Mannes, 43; Never Love a Stranger by New York-born Universal Pictures junior executive Harold Robbins, 32; No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku) by Osamu Dazai; The Political Prisoner (Il carcere) by Cesare Pavese; House of Liars (Mentzogna e sortilegio) by Italian novelist Elsa Morante, 30; "The Lottery" by San Francisco-born writer Shirley (Hardie) Jackson, 29, in the June 26 New Yorker magazine; Dinner at Antoine's by Frances Parkinson Keyes; The Atom Station (Atom stooin) by Halldor Laxness, who has written the book in Los Angeles; The Aunt's Story by Australian novelist Patrick White, 36; Concluding by Henry Green; The Stain in the Snow (La Neige était sale) by Georges Simenon.

The late Scott Fitzgerald's widow, Zelda, dies at age 47 in a March 11 fire that destroys the Asheville, N.C., mental hospital where she has been a patient; novelist Osamu Dazai commits suicide by throwing himself into a Tokyo reservoir June 13 at age 38, leaving incomplete a novel entitled Goodbye (Sayonara); philosopher-novelist Georges Bernanos dies of liver cancer at Neuilly-sur-Seine outside Paris July 5 at age 60; novelist-playwright Susan Glaspell at Provincetown, Mass., July 27 at age 66 (or possibly 72).

Poetry: The Pisan Cantos (72 to 84) by Ezra Pound, who wrote them during his imprisonment at the end of World War II. Now 63, Pound has been arrested by U.S. military authorities in Italy and indicted for treason in connection with pro-Fascist anti-Semitic propaganda broadcasts that he made for the Italians. Judged mentally unfit to face trial, he will be confined to St. Elizabeth's Hospital at Washington, D.C., until 1958 (see 1949); The Lost Son and Other Poems by Theodore Roethke; The Dispossessed by John Berryman; Stranger at Coney Island by Kenneth Fearing.

The Bollingen Prize for achievement in U.S. poetry is established by philanthropist-art collector Paul Mellon, 41, who names the prize for the Swiss town where psychoanalyst Carl Jung spends his summers. Fellows in American Letters of the Library of Congress meet as an advisory board in November to decide what was the best book of verse by a U.S. poet published in the past year; the board's members include Leonie Adams, Conrad Aiken, W. H. Auden, Louise Bogan, Garrison Chapin, T. S. Eliot, Paul Green, Robert Lowell, Katherine Anne Porter, Karl Shapiro, Theodore Spencer, Allen Tate, Willard Thorp, and Robert Penn Warren (see 1949).

Poet Vicente Huidobro dies at his native Santiago, Chile, January 2 at age 54; poet-novelist Claude McKay at Chicago May 22 at age 58.