1961 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: Nobody Knows My Name (essays) by James Baldwin, who returned to the United States from France in 1957 but will live much of his life abroad; Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, 35, who begins teaching at Yale; Pattern and Growth in Personality by Harvard psychologist Gordon W. Allport; Reconstruction after the Civil War by historian John Hope Franklin; The Burden of Southern History by C. Vann Woodward, who leaves Johns Hopkins to become Sterling Professor of History at Yale; A Study of History (12th and final volume) by historian Arnold Toynbee, now 72, whose first volume appeared in 1934; The Origins of the Second World War by A. J. P. Taylor, who creates a controversy by saying that the conflict could have been avoided had Britain and France not vacillated between appeasing Adolf Hitler and standing up to him; The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William L. Shirer; Citizen Hearst: A Biography of William Randolph Hearst by W. A. Swanberg; Madness and Civilization (Histoire de la Folie) by French philosopher Michel Foucault, 35; The Useless Sex (Il sesso inutile: viaggo intorno all donna) by Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, 31; The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness by Peter Matthiessen; The Forest People by English-born American Museum of Natural History anthropologist Colin M. (Macmillan) Turnbull, 36, who has done field work among central Africa's Mbuti Pygmies and Ik hunters; The Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre) by Martinique-born writer Frantz Fanon, who dies of leukemia at Washington, D.C., December 6 at age 36.

Fiction: Franny and Zoey by J. D. Salinger; Catch-22 by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born novelist Joseph Heller, 38, who has taken 7 years to write his work about a World War II bomber group that is a metaphor for U.S. society: "There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and he could be grounded. All he had to do was ask: and as soon as he did he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Or be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy, didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to"; A House for Mr. Biswas by Trinidadian novelist V. S. (Vidiadhur Surajprasad) Naipaul, 29; Cat and Mouse (Katz und Maus) by German novelist Günter Grass, 33; Report to Greco by the late Nikos Kazantzakis; The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes; The Moviegoer by Alabama-born novelist Walker Percy, 45; A New Life by Bernard Malamud; The Off-Islanders by Newton, Mass.-born New York journalist turned novelist Nathaniel Benchley, 45; A Shooting Star by Wallace Stegner; The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark; A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene; The Game of Kings by Scottish portrait painter-turned-historical novelist Doroth Dunnett, 38, is the first of a six-volume Lymond Saga; The Spinoza of Market Street (stories) by Isaac Bashevis Singer; Mrs. Golightly (stories) by Ethel Wilson; Seduction of the Minotaur by Anaïs Nin; The Shipyard (El astillero) by Juan Carlos Onetti; Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein; "Seventeen" ("Sebuntin") and "Seiji shonen shisu" by Kenzaburo Oe, whose latter story subjects him to strong criticism from Japan's right-wing elements; Horseman, Pass By by Texas-born novelist Larry (Jeff) McMurtry, 25; Not a Word about Nightingales by Bridgeport, Conn.-born novelist Maureen Howard (née Kearns), 31; The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins; Thunderball by Ian Fleming.

Crime novelist Dashiell Hammett dies of lung cancer at New York January 10 at age 66; Angela Thirkell at Bramley, Surrey, January 29 on the eve of her 71st birthday; Kenneth Fearing of lung cancer at New York June 26 at age 58; Ernest Hemingway of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Ketchum, Idaho (near Sun Valley), July 2 at age 61 after several intervals of hospitalization; Louis Ferdinand Céline dies at Meudon, outside Paris, July 3 at age 67; Mazo de la Roche at Toronto July 12 at age 82; humorist-illustrator-playwright James Thurber at New York November 2 at age 66 after undergoing surgery for a blood clot on the brain ("You can fool too many of the people too much of the time," he has said).

Poetry: Halfway by Philadelpia-born poet Maxine Kumin (née Winokur), 36; Scrap Irony by Felicia Lamport; Double Persephone by Canadian poet Margaret (Eleanor) Atwood, 21; I Am, Says the Lamb by Theodore Roethke; Berlin and 1,000 Fearful Words for Fidel Castro by Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Birds by Judith Wright; Helen in Egypt by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle); Song for a Birth or a Death, and Other Poems and Every Changing Shape by Elizabeth Jennings; The Study of an Object by Zbigniew Herbert, whose search for moral and humanistic values is winning him an international readership. Soviet authorities denounce Yevtgeny Yevtushenko for his poem about the Nazi massacre of Ukrainians at Babi Yar in 1941. "No monument stands over Babi Yar./ A drop sheer as a crude gravestone./ I am afraid," the poem begins, and critics interpret the verse as a protest against Soviet anti-Semitism.

Poet H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) dies at Zürich September 27 at age 75; Robert Hillyer of a heart attack at Newark, Del., December 25 at age 66.

Juvenile: Hop on Pop and Dr. Seuss's ABC by Dr. Seuss; Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver (Jim Knopf und Lucas der Lokomotivführer) by German author Michael (Andreas Helmuth) Ende, 31; The Phantom Tollbooth by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born architect-author Norton Juster, 32, illustrations by Jules Feiffer; The Hapless Child by Edward Gorey; The Silly Book by Binghamton, N.Y.-born New York cartoonist-author Stuart Hample, 35; Where the Red Fern Grows by Oklahoma-born carpenter-turned author-illustrator (Woodrow) Wilson Rawls, 42.

Author Charles Hamilton dies at London December 24 at age 85, having published more than 72 million words of fiction under about 20 noms de plume that included notably "Frank Richards," whose Billy Bunter stories in the Magnet and the Gem entertained children for decades before appearing in book form in the 1940s.