1950 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: The Labyrinth of Solitude by Mexican poet-diplomat Octavio Paz, 36, angers many of his compatriots by portraying Mexicans as a people wounded and confused by centuries of bitter divisions between Indian and Spanish cultures, radical atheism and religious fanatacism, revolutionary idealism and official corruption, machismo and mother worship: "The Mexican can bend, can bow humbly, can even stooop, but he cannot back down, that is, he cannot allow the outside world to penetrate his privacy"; The Lonely Crowd by Philadelphia-born University of Chicago social sciences professor David Riesman Jr., 41, with New York-born poet Reuel Denney, 37, and New York-born sociologist Nathan Glazer, 27, analyzes inner-directed, outer-directed, and other-directed character types. Twentieth century Americans are more likely to be other-directed, say the authors, working to get ahead within a group and adjusting to the needs of others, so where earlier, inner-directed, Americans pioneered new production efficiency, the emphasis now is on efficient administration (see Whyte, 1956); The Human Use of Human Beings by Norbert Wiener warns against abuse of the new technology; Childhood and Society (essays) by German-born U.S. psychoanalyst Erik H. (Homburger) Erikson, 47, who emigrated to America in 1933, has worked with Sioux children on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, and joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1942; The Nature of Personality by psychologist Gordon W. Allport; The Arabs in History by Bernard Lewis; The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling; Testament for Social Science by English social scientist Barbara Frances Wootton, 53, endeavors to assimilate the social and natural sciences; Agrarian Socialism by New York-born sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, 28; Command of the Sea by Cambridge history lecturer Sir (Francis) Harry Hinsley, 31, whose work with British intelligence at Bletchley Park during the war helped decipher Germany's Enigma codes; The England of Elizabeth by A. L. Rowse; England in the Eighteenth Century by Cambridge University historian J. H. (John Harold) Plumb, 39; A Dictionary of Underworld by Eric Partridge; Hollywood: The Dream Factory by anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker expresses concern about the impact on society of a community that is dominated by crass values and projects those values in the films it makes; Worlds in Collision by Russian-born U.S. physician Immanuel Velikovsky, 55, draws on mythology, archaeology, astronomy, and other disciplines to evolve a theory that the Earth barely avoided colliding with several other celestial bodies sometime about 3200 B.C. (see Donnelly, 1883); Dianetics—The Modern Science of Mental Health by pulp-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, whose work will be a perennial bestseller. His book Dianetics: The Evolution of Religion as Science is also published (see religion, 1954).

Author-lecturer (and animal collector) Frank Buck dies at Houston March 25 at age 66; literary critic F. O. Matthiessen jumps to his death from the 12th floor of Boston's Manger Hotel April 1 at age 48 after several years of increasing depression; journalist-author Agnes Smedley dies of acute circulatory failure at Oxford, Enlgand, May 6 at age 58; political scientist and socialist theorist Harold J. Laski at London September 24 at age 56.

Fiction: The Wall by John Hersey deals with the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis; "For Esme—With Love and Squalor" (story) by New York writer J. D. (Jerome David) Salinger, 31, in the New Yorker magazine April 8; The Delicate Prey and Other Stories by Paul Bowles; The Short Life (La vida breve) by Uruguayan novelist Juan Carlos Onetti, 41; Strong Wind by Guatemalan novelist-story writer Miguel Angel Asturias, 50; A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute; The Grass Is Singing by Persian-born Rhodesian novelist Doris (May) Lessing (née Tayler), 31; Some Tame Gazelle by English novelist Barbara Pym, 37; The Preacher and the Slave by Wallace Stegner deals with the late labor organizer Joe Hill; Simple Speaks His Mind (stories) by Langston Hughes, whose newspaper columns have chronicled the adventures and philosophy of his fictional character Jesse B. Simple; Follow the Dawn by Shelby Foote; Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway, who viciously caricatures his ex-wife, Martha Gellhorn; A Stretch on the River by Dubuque, Iowa, novelist Richard (Pike) Bissell, 37, who has served as a Mississippi, Ohio, and Monongahela riverboat pilot; The Martian Chronicles (stories) by Ray Bradbury; Farmer in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein; The Dreaming Jewels by Staten Island, N.Y.-born science-fiction novelist Theodore Sturgeon, 32; Needle by Somerville, Mass.-born science-fiction novelist Hal Clement (Harry C. [Clement] Stubbs), 28; Pebble in the Sky and I, Robot by Isaac Asimov; The Beautiful Visit by English novelist Elizabeth (Jane) Howard, 27; Kate Hennigan by English novelist Catherine Cookson (née Katie McMullen), 44, who has been encouraged to write her autobiographical novel by her husband, Tom, after years of suicidal depression related to a stillbirth and three miscarriages; The Drowning Pool by John Ross MacDonald (Kenneth Millar); The Brass Cupcake by Pennsylvania-born mystery novelist John D. (Dann) MacDonald, 34; Strangers on a Train by Texas-born mystery novelist Patricia Highsmith, 29.

Novelist George Orwell dies of tuberculosis at London January 21 at age 46, having written, "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot"; novelist-playwright Rafael Sabatini dies while on holiday at Adelboden, Switzerland, February 13 at age 74; Edgar Rice Burroughs at Los Angeles March 19 at age 74, leaving 15 unpublished manuscripts; Heinrich Mann dies at Santa Monica, Calif., March 12 at age 78; Joseph Hergesheimer at West Chester, Pa., April 25 at age 74; Cesare Pavese commits suicide in a Turin hotel room August 27 at age 41 shortly after receiving the coveted Premio Strega.

Poetry: Canto General by Pablo Neruda, who lived through the civil war in Spain from 1935 to 1939, returned to Chile in 1945 after working for Spanish Republican refugees at Paris, and has been publishing his epic hymn to virgin America since 1947; "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet" by John Berryman; Mink on Weekdays (Ermine on Sunday) by New York-born M-G-M subtitle writer Felicia Lamport, 33; Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks, whose work wins the first Pulitzer Prize for literature ever given to a black author.

Poet Edgar Lee Masters dies at Melrose Park, Pa., March 5 at age 80; Edna St. Vincent Millay goes up to bed at her Austerlitz, N.Y., farm Steepletop the night of October 18, takes a sleeping pill, goes back to the staircase where she has left a bottle of wine, pitches forward, breaks her neck, and dies at age 58.

Juvenile: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis is the first of his Narnia Chronicles; Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren is published in America (see 1945); If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss; Amos Fortune, Free Man by Buffalo, N.Y.-born author Elizabeth Yates, 44, illustrations by British artist Nora Unwin; The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber.