Home > Reading > 1901-1925

Reading Rat

Read Me What to read, 1901-1925 If you believe everything you read you are much worse off than if you were unable to read at all. --William Empson

< 1876-1900 | 1926 on >

Annotations: One to Five stars: (rating) - Etext: (etexts) - Study: (study guides) - Reference: (references) - Criticism: (criticism) - (note) - (comment)

Early 20th Century The theme of twentieth-century philosophy was human limits, with the limits posed by language as the biggest of all. --Boris Maizel, 'Why Talk If We Disagree?' Critical Review, Vol. 17, Nos. 1-2 (2005), p. 6 W. H. Auden remarked that one could not expect to be a major poet if one were born after the 1890s (he was himself born in 1907), and he may have been right. --Joseph Epstein, 'Written to Last', The New Criterion, September 2006, p. 16

Flannery O'CONNOR (1925-1964) Reference: Andalusia | GC&SU Criticism: Niederauer | Downes | Lundquist | Griffith | Mankowski | Smith
Wise Blood (1952)
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) If these stories are in fact the work of a young lady, Evelyn Waugh responded when the publisher sent him advance proofs of the volume, they are indeed remarkable. -- Ronald Weber, 'Catholic Dossier' July-August 1999, p. 30
The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
One star: Complete Stories (1971)

MISHIMA Yukio (Hiraoka Kimitake, 1925-1970) Criticism: Ward
One star: The Sea of Fertility (1969-71)

John HAWKES (1925-1998)
The Cannibal
Second Skin

Jose Cardoso PIRES (1925-1998) Reference: O Delfim
Ballad of Dogs' Beach

ABE Kobo (Abe Kimifusa, b. 1925) Criticism: Ward Reference: Keffer | Kato Koiti
The Woman in the Dunes (1962)

T. CARMI (b. 1925) Reference: Zionist
At the Stone of Losses

Russell HOBAN (b. 1925) Reference: Awl
Riddley Walker (1980)

Philippe JACCOTTET (b. 1925) Reference: portrait 123 | portrait 002
Selected Poems (1988)

Donald JUSTICE (b. 1925) Etext: Reference: Academy of American Poets Criticism: Yezzi | Kramer
Selected Poems (1979)

Kenneth KOCH (b. 1925) Etext: Reference: Academy of American Poets
Seasons on Earth (1987)

PRAEMODYA Ananta Toer (b. 1925) Reference: Bardsley
Buru Quartet: This Earth of Mankind (1980); Child of All Nations (1980); Footsteps (1985); House of Glass (1988)

William STYRON (1925-2006) Reference: The New York Review of Books Criticism: Feeney | Lehmann-Haupt
The Long March (1953)

Gore VIDAL (b. 1925) Criticism: Weblog
One star: Myra Breckenridge (1968) a comic novel with a transexual lead character; it poked fun at American hypocrisies, and was considered shocking at the time... --John S. Major, The New Lifetime Reading Plan (1997), p. 321
Burr (1974)
Lincoln (1984)

Truman CAPOTE (1924-1984) Criticism: Weblog Humor: The Onion The only thing Truman Capote and I have in common was Howard Hunt beat us out for a Guggenheim [Fellowship]. --Gore Vidal, quoted in Literary Agent, by Rachel Donadio, The New York Times Book Review, February 18, 2007, p. 31
Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958)
One star: In Cold Blood (1966) ...and so it happens that one day a naive person with stronger dramatic instincts than most, and less sense of self-perception, comes to believe that sophisticated people believe life to be unbearable, and therefore it is not terrible to carry the belief to its logical conclusion and to deprive his fellow man of their lives. --Rebecca West, A Grave and Remarkable Book, review of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Harper's, February 1966, in The Essential Rebecca West, p. 458

James BALDWIN (1924-1987) Criticism: Yardley | Stein | Howe | Dupee
Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) It does not produce its story as an accumulation of shocks (as most novels of Negro life do), or by puffing into a rigid metaphysical system (as most novels about religion do); it makes its utterance by tension and friction. --Donald Barr, The New York Times Book Review, May 17, 1953
Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Giovanni's Room (1956)
The Fire Next Time (1963)
The Price of the Ticket

Jose DONOSO (1924-1996)
The Obscene Bird of Night

Yehuda AMICHAI (1924-2000)
Selected Poetry Etext: Hebrew Literature | Poets
Travels

Edgar BOWERS (1924-2000)
Living Together: New and Selected Poems

William H. GASS (b. 1924) Criticism: Wolcott
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
Omensetter's Luck

Zbigniew HERBERT (b. 1924) Criticism: Simic
Selected Poems

Josef SKVORECKY (b. 1924) Criticism: Ward The voice of his writing is usually sunny and joyful, the high spirits of Mozart or of Sidney Bechet. The matter of his stories, however, can be very dark indeed. --Neal Ascherson, New York Review of Books, November 21, 2002, p. 37
The Cowards (1958)
The Bass Saxophone (1967)

Michel TOURNIER (b. 1924)
The Ogre
Friday

James SCHUYLER (1923-1991)
Collected Poems

James DICKEY (1923-1997) Reference: James Dickey Society Criticism: Meyers
The Early Motion
The Central Motion

Walter M. MILLER, Jr. (1923-1996)
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)

Norman MAILER (1923-2007) Etext: Criticism: Weblog
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Advertisements for Myself (1959) includes the essay 'The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster' (1957)
The Armies of the Night (1968)
One star: The Executioner's Song (1979)
Ancient Evenings (1983)

Yves BONNEFOY (b. 1923)
Words in Stone

Anthony HECHT (b. 1923) Criticism: Yezzi
Collected Earlier Poems

Michael THELWELL (b. 1923)
The Harder They Come

Eugenio de ANDRADE (b. 1923)
Selected Poems Etext: Levitin

Italo CALVINO (b. 1923) Criticism: Ward | Lethem
I nostri antenati: Il visconte dimezzato (1952); Il barone rampante (1957); One star: Il cavaliere inesistente (1959)
One star: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979)
Invisible Cities
t zero

Nadine GORDIMER (b. 1923) Reference: Nobel Prize Criticism: Weblog
Selected Stories (1974)

Joseph HELLER (1923-1999)
One star: Catch-22 (1961) Criticism: Brustein

Miroslav HOLUB (b. 1923) Criticism: Ward
One star: The Fly

Chairil ANWAR (1922-1949) Criticism: Ward Reference: Authors' Calendar
Complete Poetry and Prose

Jack KEROUAC (1922-1969)
On the Road (1957) Criticism: Adams

Pier Paolo PASOLINI (1922-1975)
Poems

Philip LARKIN (1922-1985) Criticism: Kirsch
One star: Collected Poems (1993)

Vasko POPA (1922-1991) Etext: eleven poems
Selected Poems

Kingsley AMIS (1922-1995) Reference: Kaleidoscope Criticism: Weblog
Lucky Jim (1961)

Donald DAVIE (1922-1995)
Selected Poems

Thomas KUHN (1922-1996) Criticism: Franklin | Fadiman
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) called into question not just the determinateness of the Newtonian world-view and the inviolability and indestructibility of matter in the Newtonian world-view, but the objectivity of the scientific enterprise itself. --James Hall, Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason, Lecture 19: 'Normal Science' at Mid-century, The Teaching Company science is not an entirely rational enterprise, and that its well-established theories (or paradigms) are overturned in a revolutionary, nonlogical process. --Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It, by Steven L. Goodman, The Teaching Company

William GADDIS (1922-1998) Reference: Annotations
The Recognitions (1955)
J. R. (1975)

Kurt VONNEGUT, Jr. (1922-2007)
One Cat's Cradle (1963)
One Slaughterhouse Five (1969)

Howard MOSS (b. 1922)
New Selected Poems

Grace PALEY (b. 1922)
The Little Disturbances of Man

Alain ROBBE-GRILLET (b. 1922)
The Voyeur
Jealousy
In the Labyrinth
The Erasers
Project for a Revolution in New York
For a New Novel

Jose SARAMAGO (b. 1922)
Baltasar and Blimunda (1987) [Memorial do Convento 1982]
Blindness (1997) [Ensaio sobre a Cegueira 1995]
The Cave (2002) [A Caverna 2001]

James JONES (1921-1977)
From Here to Eternity (1951)

Leonardo SCIASCIA (1921-1989)
Day of the Owl (1984)
Equal Danger
The Wine-Dark Sea: Thirteen Stories (1985)

Friedrich DURRENMATT (1921-1990)
One star: The Visit (Der Besuch der Alten Dame 1956) An old lady with virtually unlimited wealth comes back to a small town to avenge herself on the man who dishonored her. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 33
The Physicists (Der Physiker 1962) three men are found in a lunatic asylum, claiming to be Newton, Einstein and a spokesman for King Solomon. The philosophical seriousness of the theme of social scientists' social responsibilities is intentionally deflated by absurdist techniques. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) pp. 33-34

Stanislaw LEM (1921-2006)
The Investigation
Solaris Criticism: Higgins

Betty FRIEDAN (1921-2006)
The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Wilson HARRIS (b. 1921)
The Guyana Quartet

Gabriel OKARA (b. 1921)
The Fisherman's Invocation

Janos PILINSZKY (b. 1921) Criticism: Ward
Selected Poems (1976)
Crater (1978)

Andrea ZANZOTTO (b. 1921) Reference: Bedon
Selected Poetry

Richard WILBUR (b. 1921) Etext: Internet Poetry Archive Etext: Reference: Academy of American Poets Criticism: Longenbach
One star: New and Collected Poems Criticism: Freeman | Mason | Dirda | Kirsch

Keith DOUGLAS (1920-1944)
The Complete Poems

Paul CELAN (Paul Ancel, 1920-1970) Criticism: Ward Against Frost's warning that poetry cannot be exported out of its local idiom, the polyglot exile Celan cannot imagine poetry that is not itself already in motion, caught in a condition of wandering between borders and languages and historical epochs. --Mark M. Anderson, New York Times Book Review, December 31, 2000, p. 12
One star: Poems: a Bilingual Edition (1968)

Amy CLAMPITT (1920-1994)
Westward

Julian JAYNES (1920-1997)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Joan PERUCHO (b. 1920)
Natural History

Amos TUTUOLA (b. 1920) Criticism: Ward
One star: The Palm-Wine Drinkard, and his dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town (1952)

Richard ADAMS (b. 1920) Criticism: Bridgman
Watership Down (1972)
The Girl on a Swing (1980)

Jorge de SENA (1919-1978)
Selected Poems

Primo LEVI (1919-1987)
One star: The Periodic Table (Il sistema periodico 1975)
One star: If Not Now, When? (Se non ora, quando? 1984)
Collected Poems [Ad ora incerta] (1988)

May SWENSON (1919-1989)
New & Selected Things Taking Place
In Other Words

Robert PINGET (1919-1995)
Fable
The Libera Me Domine
That Voice

Sophia de MELLO BREYNER (b. 1919)
Selected Poems

Robert DUNCAN (b. 1919)
Bending the Bow

Frank KERMODE (b. 1919) Etext: Nothing for Ever and Ever Criticism: Poirier
The Sense of an Ending

Doris LESSING (b. 1919) Reference: Retrospective | New York Times Criticism: Weblog As for Mrs Lessing, social historians of the future will be grateful to her for her case-histories of the effect on the average man, who picks up his thought when and where he can, of ideas--such as psychoanalysis and Marxism--worked out by specialist scholars of intelligence much superior to his own, often in totally different environments, and, what is more, at a long time past. --Rebecca West, And They All Lived Unhappily Ever After, Times Literary Supplement, July 16, 1974, in The Essential Rebecca West, p. 462
The Golden Notebook (1962) Criticism: Mort

Iris MURDOCH (1919-1999) Criticism: Brierley | Preece | Taylor | Eilenberg | Jacobs | Oates Miss Murdoch often builds her stories round happenings the like of which can be found in Russian novels and which are known as 'scandals.' A group of people is shown in a state of rest, which is suddenly terminated by the setting up of an action, unexpected and probably of arguable legitimacy, by members of the group. Once the group is in a state of motion it suffers irreversible moral and intellectual changes so that when it settles into a state of rest again it is new in substance and it can be said that, by little or by much, the universe is not the same. --Rebecca West, And They All Lived Unhappily Ever After, Times Literary Supplement, July 16, 1974, in The Essential Rebecca West, p. 463-4
A Severed Head (1961)
Sandcastle (1978)
The Good Apprentice
Bruno's Dream

J. D. SALINGER (b. 1919) Reference: Times Topics Criticism: Marcus | Van Doren John Updike said, half in admiration, half in rebuke, that J. D. Salinger loved his characters even more than God did. --Ralph McInerney, 'Crisis' October 1999, p. 60
Two stars: The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Criticism: Yardley
Nine Stories (1953) 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' (1948) 'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut' (1948) 'Just Before the War with the Eskimos' (1948) 'The Laughing Man' (1949) 'Down at the Dinghy' (1949) 'For Esmé with Love and Squalor' (1950) 'Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes' (1951) 'De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period' (1952) 'Teddy' (1953)

Richard Phillips FEYNMAN (1918-1988) Criticism: Frankel | Ross
Q. E. D. (1985)

Juan Jose ARREOLA (1918-2001) Criticism: Ward
Confabulatorio Total, 1941-1961 (1962)

Fred BODSWORTH (b. 1918)
Last of the Curlews (1955)

Alexander SOLZHENITSYN (b. 1918) Criticism: Fadiman | Ward
One star: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) The Day of Ivan Denisovich, as the title reads in Russian, is the first work to break the taboo and to bring into the open the full truth about Russian concentration camps. --Marc Slonim, The New York Times Book Review, April 7, 1963
Two stars: The First Circle (1968) The time it covers is four days in 1949; and the scene is a prison on the edge of Moscow where several hundred scientists are confined while they work on projects assigned to them by the authorities above. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 312
One star: Cancer Ward (1968)
The Gulag Archipelago Marked the absolute final turning point beyond which nobody could deny the evil of the Evil Empire. --Richard John Neuhaus, The 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century, National Review Online http://www.nationalreview.com/100best/100_books.html
August 1914

Johannes BOBROWSKI (1917-1965)
Shadow Lands

Carson McCULLERS (1917-1967) Criticism: Yardley
One star: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

Robert LOWELL (1917-1977) Etext: Buenos AiresReference: Letters to Bishop Criticism: Hofmann | Tillinghast | Ward
One star: Collected Poems

Heinrich BOLL (1917-1985) the force of Boll's vision depends most often upon the reductions wrought by fear, confusion, and suffering. That is--to collapse three nouns into one--by war. --Sven Birkerts, (The New Republic, 1986)
The Clown (1965)
Billiards at Half-Past Nine

Anthony BURGESS (1917-1993)
A Clockwork Orange (1962)
Nothing Like the Sun

Arthur C. CLARKE (1917-2008) Criticism: Weblog | Van Doren
Childhood's End (1953)
Profiles of the Future (1963)

Louis AUCHINCLOSS (b. 1917) Criticism: Weblog
The Rector of Justin (1964)
Collected Stories (1994)

William H. McNEILL (b. 1917) Criticism: Fadiman
The Rise of the West (1963)

Walker PERCY (1916-1990)
The Moviegoer

Natalia GINZBURG (1916-1991)
Family

Gavin EWART (1916-1995)
Selected Poems

Giorgio BASSANI (1916-2000)
The Heron

Anne HEBERT (1916-2000)
Selected Poems

Judith WRIGHT (1915-2000) Criticism: Koval
Selected Poems

Camilo Jose CELA (1916-2002) Criticism: Ward
Journey to the Alcarria (1948)
The Hive

Orlando VILLAS Boas (1916-2002) and Claudio VILLAS Boas (1918-1998) Criticism: Ward
Xingu: the Indians, their Myths (1973)

Saul BELLOW (1915-2005) Etext: Man Underground Reference: Nobel Prize Criticism: Weblog He was the Jewish Hogarth, excellent at capturing urban grotesques. --Joseph Epstein, 'Written to Last', The New Criterion, September 2006, p. 18
One star: The Adventures of Augie March (1953) ...a modern picaresque with scenes laid in Chicago, Mexico and Paris. --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (3rd Ed. 1988), p. 134
One star: Seize the Day (1956)
Henderson the Rain King (1959)
One star: Herzog (1964) The position of the 43-year-old hero and title character of Saul Bellow's latest and best novel is absurd. Moses E. Herzog believes in reason, but is suffering from a protracted nervous crisis, following the collapse of his second marriage, that leads him to the brink of suicide. --Julian Moynahan, The New York Times Book Review, September 20, 1964 Moses Herzog is a forty-seven-year-old intellectual, a womanizer without being a libertine. He spends about a week in a crazy zigzag flight, searching for self-understanding, stability, comprehension of his country and his period. --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (3rd Ed. 1988), p. 135
Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970)
Humboldt's Gift (1975) The title derives from [protagonist Charlie] Citrine's friend Von Humboldt Fleischer whose sad life is said to be based on that of Delmore Schwartz, a remarkable poet and critic who died in sordid circumstances in 1966. --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (3rd Ed. 1988), p. 135

Arthur MILLER (b. 1915) Criticism: Andrews | Solomon | Edgar | Van Doren
Two stars: Death of a Salesman (1949)
The Crucible (1953)

Dylan THOMAS (1914-1953) Criticism: Ezard | Morris 'He's exactly what I would have been if I had not become a Catholic.' --Evelyn Waugh, quoted in Gallimaufry & more: 'The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,' by Roger Kimball, New Criterion, January 2005, p. 7
The Poems

Weldon KEES (1914-1955)
Collected Poems

Randall JARRELL (1914-1965) Criticism: Tracy | Hilbert
Complete Poems

John BERRYMAN (1914-1972) Etext: Three Dream Songs | on Auden Criticism: Hirsch
Collected Poems

Julio CORTAZAR (1914-1984)
Hopscotch
All Fires the Fire
Blow-up and Other Stories

Bernard MALAMUD (1914-1986) Criticism: Weblog
The Assistant (1957)
The Fixer (1966)
The Stories (1983)

John HERSEY (1914-1993)
A Bell for Adano (1944)
One star: Hiroshima (1946)
The Call (1985)

Ralph ELLISON (1914-1994) Reference: New York Times Criticism: Weblog
Two stars: Invisible Man (1947) Study: Chapter summary ...may be the the century's most translated, celebrated American novel. --Robert G. O'Meally, Atlantic Monthly, July 1999, p. 89

Marguerite DURAS (1914-1996)
The Lover
Four Novels

Octavio PAZ (1914-1998) Criticism: Ward ...[A]ccording to Paz, his entire creative career as a Latin literary giant grew out of the influences he underwent while living, at two different periods, in the United States. --Stephen Schwartz, The New Criterion, February 2001, p. 68
One star: The Labyrinth of Solitude (2nd ed., 1959)
Posdata (1970)
Configurations (1971)
The Collected Poems

Albert CAMUS (1913-1960) Criticism: Fadiman | Van Doren
Three stars: The Stranger (L'Etranger 1942) Because he does not pretend, he is a stranger whom no one understands, and he pays with his life for his affront to society. Since he refuses to play the game, he is isolated from his fellow-men to the point of incomprehensibility and isolated from himself to the point of becoming inarticulate. --Hannah Arendt, The Nation, February 23, 1946 exemplifies the stoicism, bordering both existentialism and fatalism, which Camus advocated. An ordinary man commits a senseless murder, for which he is condemned. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 26
Two stars:The Plague (1947) 'The Plague' is parable and sermon, and should be considered as such. To criticize it by standards which apply to most fiction would be to risk condemning it for moralizing, which is exactly where it it strongest. --Stephen Spender, The New York Times Book Review, August 1, 1948 at one level describes a city infected with plague, but can also be read as an allegory of Europe under Hitler's occupation. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 26
One star: The Fall (1956) shows a marked ideological change. Beneath the irony and blasphemy, Camus is now pleading for recognition of our sinful nature and hope of Grace. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 26
The Rebel

Delmore SCHWARTZ (1913-1966)
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge

Robert HAYDEN (1913-1980) Criticism: Hirsch
Collected Poems

Barbara PYM (1913-1980)
Excellent Women (1952)
An Unsuitable Attachment (1982)

Salvador ESPRIU (1913-1985)
La Pell de Brau: Poems

Sandor WEORES (1913-1989) Criticism: Ward
Selected Poems (1970)

Robertson DAVIES (1913-1995) Criticism: Van Doren
One star: Deptford Trilogy: Fifth Business (1970); The Manticore (1972); World of Wonders (1975);
One star: Cornish Trilogy: The Rebel Angels (1981); What's Bred in the Bone (1985); The Lyre of Orpheus

Aime CESAIRE (b. 1913)
Collected Poetry

Claude SIMON (b. 1913)
The Grass
The Wind
The Flanders Road

R. S. THOMAS (Ronald Stuart Thomas 1913-2000)
Poems

Jean GARRIGUE (1912-1972)
Selected Poems

John CHEEVER (1912-1982)
One star: Collected Stories (1978)
Bullet Park

Nigel DENNIS (1912-1989)
Cards of Identity

Mary McCARTHY (1912-1989) Criticism: Robertson | Kramer
The Group (1963)

Lawrence DURRELL (1912-1990) Reference: International Lawrence Durrell Society Criticism: Weblog
The Alexandra Quartet: Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), Clea (1960)

Patrick WHITE (1912-1990) Reference: Complete Review
One star: Voss (1957)
One star: Riders in the Chariot (1961)
A Fringe of Leaves

Northrup FRYE (1912-1991) Reference: Northrop Frye Centre Criticism: Marchand
Fables of Identity

Edmond JABES (1912-1991)
The Book of Questions
Selected Poems

Eugene IONESCO (1912-1994)
The Bald Soprano
The Chairs
The Lesson
Amedee
Victims of Duty
Rhinoceros

F. T. PRINCE (1912-2003)
Collected Poems

Najib MAHFUZ (1912-2006)
Midaq Alley
Fountain and Tomb
Miramar

Tillie OLSEN (b. 1912) Reference: Modern American Poetry
Tell Me a Riddle (1956-1960)

Flann O'BRIEN (1911-1966)
The Dalkey Archive
The Third Policeman

Mervin PEAKE (1911-1968)
The Gormenghast Trilogy

Alves REDOL (1911-1969) Criticism: Ward
The Man with Seven Names (1959)

Elizabeth BISHOP (1911-1979) Criticism: Gioia | Spires Bishop would have been distressed to see herself included in anthologies of women poets, let alone lesbian ones. Like any poet of real talent, she wanted her work to stand on its own merits. --Cynthia Haven, Times Literary Supplement, February 8, 2002, p. 15
The Fish (1946)
Sestina
Faustina: or Rock Roses
One Art
The Complete Poems

Tennessee WILLIAMS (Thomas Lanier Williams, 1911-1983) Criticism: Ward
Two stars: The Glass Menagerie (1945)
Two stars: A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
Summer and Smoke (1948)

Max FRISCH (1911-1991) Criticism: In the forty years since he quit architecture for writing, he has expressed himself with great inventiveness upon a single theme: the near impossibility of living truthfully. He determined early on that the will to self-deception acts on the character as powerfully and almost as inevitably as gravity acts on the body. --Sven Birkerts, (The New Republic, 1983)
One star: I'm Not Stiller (Stiller 1954) is divided into two unequal parts: the notebooks in prison of the sculptor Anatol Ludwig Stiller, and a brief postscript by the Public Prosecutor. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 32 Anatol Stiller could insist, against all evidence, that he was not the Stiller who had abandoned his wife. In the absence of a deeper contact with the self, a man is just what he tells and what he makes others believe. --Sven Birkerts, (The New Republic, 1983)
Andorra (1961) attacks anti-Semitism, prejudice and complacency in society. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 32
Man in the Holocene (1979) An old man is alone in his house in the mountains during a storm; he takes a foolhardy walk; he suffers bouts of memory loss. As he tacks up bits of information from the encyclopedia, we are given--once again in collage form--all manner of facts about the age of the earth, fossils, climate, evolution, geologic transformation. --Sven Birkerts, (The New Republic, 1983)

William GOLDING (1911-1993)
One star: Lord of the Flies (1954)
The Spire (1964)
Pincher Martin

Emile M. CIORAN (1911-1995) Criticism: Ward
A Short History of Decay (1949)
The Temptation to Exist (1956)
The Fall into Time (1964)
The New Gods (1969)

Odysseas ELYTIS (1911-1996)
What I Love: Selected Poems

Faiz Ahmad FAIZ (1911-1984) Criticism: Van Doren
Poems

Czeslaw MILOSZ (1911-2004) Etext: "Distance" | Internet Poetry Archive Criticism: Driscoll | Kramer | Wieseltier | Anderson | Lane | Eksteins | Foley
The Captive Mind (1953) 'Zniewolony umysl'
Selected Poems

Anatoli RYBAKOV (1911-1998)
Children of the Arbat (1987)

Miguel HERNANDEZ (1910-1942)
Selected Poems

Margaret Wise BROWN (1910-1952) Criticism: Van Doren
Goodnight Moon

Charles OLSON (1910-1970)
The Maximus Poems
Collected Poems

Jose LEZAMA Lima (1910-1976)
Paradiso

Jacques MONOD (1910-1976)
One star: Chance and Necessity (1971)

Jean GENET (1910-1986)
Our Lady of the Flowers
The Thief's Journal
The Balcony

Jean ANOUILH (1910-1987) Reference: Authors' Calendar
Becket
Antigone
Eurydice
The Rehearsal

Subrahmanyan CHANDRASEKHAR (1910-1995)
An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939)

Paul BOWLES (1910-1999)
One star: The Sheltering Sky (1948)

Robert FITZGERALD (1910-1985)
Spring Shade: Poems

Chaim GRADE (1910-1982)
The Yeshiva

Wright MORRIS (1910-1998)
Ceremony in Lone Tree

Malcolm LOWRY (1909-1937)
Under the Volcano

Miklos RADNOTI (1909-1944) Criticism: Ward
Subway Stops (1978)
Forced March (1979)

James AGEE (1909-1955) Reference: Hampson | Reuben Criticism: Steinhardt
Permit Me Voyage (1934)
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with photographs by Walker Evans (1941)

Merce RODOREDA (1909-1983)
The Time of the Doves

Wallace STEGNER (1909-1993) Reference: Times Topics
The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943)
Angle of Repose (1971)

Ernst Hans GOMBRICH (1909- 2001) Criticism: Weblog | Fadiman
One star: The Story of Art (1950) a faultless exposition of the essentials of (mainly Western) art history by a Viennese whose grasp of psychology and music, classical scholarship and modern experimentation, is surely unrivalled. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 5 [H]e made it a mission to put the study of art on a scientific footing. --The Economist 'Look and Learn' August 7th-13th 1999 p. 71 It is a work of deceptive simplicity, discussing artistic change not in terms of style but of the practical problems that artists faced and of the means that they adopted to solve them, and it is written with extreme clarity. --Charles Hope 'New York Review of Books' December 20, 2001, p. 12

Eudora WELTY (1909-2001) Criticism: Tolson
One star: Thirteen Stories (1965)
Delta Wedding
The Robber Bridegroom
The Ponder Heart

Yannis RITSOS (1909-1990)
Exile and Return

Rene DAUMAL (1908-1944)
Mount Analogue

Cesare PAVESE (1908-1950)
Hard Labor: Poems
Dialogues with Lueco

Richard WRIGHT (1908-1960) Reference: Modern American Poetry Criticism: Weblog
One star: Native Son (1940) Mr. Wright's Bigger Thomas is far beyond and outside of helpful social agencies. He represents an impasse rather than a complex, and his tragedy is to be born into a black and immutable minority race, literally, in his own words, 'whipped before you born.' --Peter Monro Jack, The New York Times Book Review, March 3, 1940
One star: Black Boy (1945)

Elio VITTORINI (1908-1966)
Women of Messina

Joao GUIMARAES Rosa (1908-1967) Criticism: Ward
Sagarana (1946)
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (1956)

Claude LEVI-STRAUSS (1908-1973)
One star: Tristes Tropiques (1955)
Structural Anthropology (1958)
One star: The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology (1964)
The Savage Mind (1966)

Tommaso LANDOLFI (1908-1979)
Gogol's Wife and Other Stories

Theodore ROETHKE (1908-1983)
Collected Poems
Straw for the Fire

Simone de BEAUVOIR (1908-1986)
Two stars: The Second Sex (1953) The main themes are introduced at once. Women throughout history have been a disadvantaged group like the proletariat. --Clyde Kluckhorn, The New York Times Book Review, February 22, 1953

Rene CHAR (1908-1988)
Poems

Joseph MITCHELL (1908-1996) Criticism: d’Aulaire
Up in the Old Hotel Criticism: Carduff

Leo ROSTEN (1908-1997)
The Education of Hyman Kaplan, by Leonard Q. Ross (1931)
The Joys of Yiddish (1988)

Rachel CARSON (1907-1964)
The Sea Around Us (1951)
One star: Silent Spring (1962) For all the excesses of the environmental movement, the realization that human technology can permanently damage the earth's environment marked a great advance in civilization. Carson's book, more than any other, publicized this message. --Michael Lind, The 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century, National Review Online http://www.nationalreview.com/100best/100_books.html

Louis MACNEICE (1907-1963)
Collected Poems

Gunnar EKELOF (1907-1968) Criticism: Ward
Dikter (1965)
Diwan over Fursten av Emgion (1965)
Sagan om Fatumeh (1966)
Vagvisare till underforden (1967)
Guide to the Underworld

Gunter EICH (1907-1972)
Moles

W. H. AUDEN (Wystan Hugh Auden 1907-1973)
Musee des Beaux Arts (1938)
In Memory of W. B. Yeats (1939)
The Shield of Achilles (1955)
One star: Collected Poems Into his intricate metaphysical verse he cunningly introduces the vernacular and creates the unique Auden poetic sentence. Thus his work is full of linguistic surprises, often turning on near-rhymes or odd alliterations. --Clifton Fadiman, The New Lifetime Reading Plan (1997), p. 284
The Dyer's Hand (1962)

Robert A. HEINLEIN (1907-1988) Criticism: Weblog | Van Doren
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

Alberto MORAVIA (1907-1990)
1934

Maurice BLANCHOT (1907-2003) Reference:
Thomas the Obscure

T. H. WHITE (Terence Hanbury White, 1906-1964) Reference: Moulder & Schaefer Criticism: Van Doren
The Once and Future King (1958)

Dino BUZZATI (1906-1972) Criticism: Ward
The Tartar Steppe (1945)

William EMPSON (1906-1984)
Collected Poems
Milton's God
Some Versions of Pastoral

Samuel BECKETT (1906-1989) Criticism: Fadiman | Van Doren | Ward with his effort to be an artist working ultimately with a silent mankind, because the 'silent God' has been used up... --Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (1966) p. 242 He's telling us life is meaningless *again*. --Peter Mullen, Reputations - 15: Samuel Beckett, The Salisbury Review, Winter 2006, p. 33
One star: Molloy (1947)
One star: The Unnamable (1953)
Two stars: Waiting for Godot (1953)
One star: Endgame (1957)
One star: Krapp's Last Tape (1959)
Murphy
Malone Dies
Watt
How It Is

Henry ROTH (1906-1995) Criticism: Weblog
Call It Sleep (1934)

R. K. NARAYAN (1906-2001) Criticism: Fadiman
The English Teacher
The Vendor of Sweets
The Guide

Leopold Sedar SENGHOR (1906-2001)
One star: Selected Poems

Jozsef ATTILA (1905-1937) Etext: Reka Criticism: Ward
Works (1973)
Selected Poems and Texts (1973)
Perched on Nothing's Branch

John O'HARA (1905-1970) Criticism: McInerny | Wolcott
One star: Appointment at Samarra (1934)
Butterfield 8 (1935)
One star: Collected Stories (1985)

Henry GREEN (1905-1974) Criticism: Allen
Nothing
Loving
Party Going

Jean-Paul SARTRE (1905-1980) Criticism: Weblog Humor: Smith The Sartrian consciousness is solitary, self-translucid, and alienated in matter, and as a result of scarcity, each man becomes the enemy of every other. --Irving Louis Horowitz, 'Political Reason in the Age of Ideology', essays in honor of Aron, edited by Bryan-Paul Frost and Daniel J. Mahoney
One star: Nausea (La Nausee 1938) the semi-autobiographical hero Antoine Roquentin finds himself trapped in the viscosity of existence. The recognition of his own existence is a point of crisis in a man's life to which he must relate. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) pp. 113-114
One star: Being and Nothingness (1943) According to Sartre, all attempts to incorporate the other into my world as another subject, i.e. to apprehend him at once as an object for me and as a subject for whom I am an object, are unstable and doomed to collapse into one or the other of the two aspects. --Thomas Nagel, 'Sexual Perversion' from 'Mortal Questions (1996) p. 44
One star: No Exit (Huis Clos 1945) Etext: Keefer
Existentialism (L'Existentialisme est un humanisme 1946, translated by Bernard Frechtman)
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
The Words (Les Mots 1964)
The Family Idiot (L'Idiot de la famille 1971–1972)

Robert Penn WARREN (1905-1989)
All the King's Men
World Enough and Time
Selected Poems

Anthony POWELL (1905-2000) Criticism: Schwarz | Allen
A Dance to the Music of Time: A Question of Upbringing (1951)

Pierre KLOSSOWSKI (1905-2001)
The Laws of Hospitality
The Baphomet

Vladimir HOLAN (1905-1980) Criticism: Ward
Selected Poems (1971)

Ondra LYSOHORSKY (1905-1989)
Selected Poems (1971) His native language is Lachian, and he has also written in German, but he has always been under considerable political pressure to write in Czech or Slovak, and it was as recently as 1958 that the first part of his collected poems appeared in Lachian, no further parts being allowed to appear, in the erroneous belief that Lysohorsky's aim was Lachian separatism. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 4

Nancy MITFORD (1904-1973
Madame de Pompadour (1954)

Pablo NERUDA (1904-1973) Criticism: Gorton | Doshi | Schwartz | Stavans | Ward
One star: Canto General (1950)
Residence on Earth
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
Fully Empowered
Selected Poems

Alejo CARPENTIER (1904-1980) Criticism: Ward
One star: The Lost Steps (1953)
Explosion in the Cathedral
Reasons of State
The Kingdom of This World

Isaac Bashevis SINGER (1904-1980) Criticism: Ward As someone in the business, I have more than once been asked who writing over the past fifty or so years is likely to be read a hundred years from now. The only name I can feel any confidence in putting forward is that of Isaac Bashevis Singer. --Joseph Epstein, 'Written to Last', The New Criterion, September 2006, p. 16
One star: The Family Moskat (1950)
Gimpel the Fool & Other Stories (1957)
The Magician of Lublin (1960)
Collected Stories
In My Father's Court
The Manor
The Estate
Satan in Goray

Christopher ISHERWOOD (1904-1986)
One star: The Berlin Stories (1954)
Christopher and His Kind (1977)

Salvador DALI (1904-1989) Criticism: Hughes | Ward
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (3rd Ed., 1970)

B. F. SKINNER (1904-1990)
Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)

Roy FULLER (1904-1991)
Collected Poems

Graham GREENE (1904-1991) Reference: N.Y. Times Criticism: Lodge | Thomson | Lodge | Conroy | Smith | Bergonzi | Walden | Theroux | Price | Evans | Russello | Jones | Royal
Brighton Rock (1938)
The Power and the Glory (1940) Criticism: "Diogenes"
One star: The Heart of the Matter (1948)

Richard EBERHART (1904-2005)
Collected Poems

Ernest MAYR (1904-2005)
Systematics and the Origin of Species

Raymond RADIGUET (1903-1923)
Count d'Orgel's Ball

Nathanael WEST (1903-1940) Criticism: McInerny
Miss Lonelyhearts
A Cool Million
The Day of the Locust

George ORWELL (Eric Blair 1903-1950) Reference: Bohemian Ink Criticism: Weblog Impossible to think of contemporary England producing a figure anything like George Orwell, whose authority came from his moral earnestness, and not from the pose of superior with-it-try. --Joseph Epstein, 'The Literary Life' at 25, The New Criterion, September 2007, p. 7
Burmese Days (1934) ...considered by many to be the most devastating fictional account we have of the evils of colonialism. --John S. Major, The New Lifetime Reading Plan (1997), p. 278
Two stars: Animal Farm (1945) Study: Literature Network The animals on a farm revolt and take over a farm; they will now run it for their own good and according to their own lights, not those of the farmer. ... Subtle changes occur, and heartless cruelties masked by sententious rhetoric from the pigs ... --Charles Van Doren, The Joy of Reading (1985) p. 339 He is questioning the whole notion of the ordered state, perhaps questioning the value of any revolution that sets the ordered state as its goal. --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (3rd Ed. 1988), p. 101
Two stars: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) Study: Literature Network ...democracy and freedom could disappear from the world, to be replaced by a subtly all-pervasive tyranny in which Big Brother watches everyone all the time ... --Charles Van Doren, The Joy of Reading (1985) p. 339 To Huxley's vision of a dehumanized future Orwell adds new dimensions of terror and torture; and of course terror and torture are now prominent features of our world's political landscape. --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (3rd Ed. 1988), p. 101
Collected Essays Etext: Politics and the English Language Every conservative's favorite liberal and every liberal's favorite conservative. This book has no enemies. --Florence King, The 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century, National Review Online http://www.nationalreview.com/100best/100_books.html Orwell has always been more valued by people in the know for his essays than for his immensely popular Cold War books, but the question is, will there be a big enough contingent of people in the know to continue to value him at his best. --Joseph Epstein, 'Written to Last', The New Criterion, September 2006, p. 20

Sadeq HEDAYAT (1903-1951) Criticism: Ward
The Blind Owl (1937)

Johann VON NEUMANN (1903-1957) Reference: HET | Introduction to Buddhism Criticism: Holton and Sopka
Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik 1932)
Johann VON NEUMANN and O. MORGENSTERN (Oskar Morgenstern, 1902-1976)
The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944)

Frank O'CONNOR (1903-1966)
Collected Stories

Evelyn WAUGH (1903-1966)
Vile Bodies (1930)
A Handful of Dust (1934)
One star: Scoop (1938)
Put Out More Flags (1942)
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
The Loved One (1948)

Jean FOLLAIN (1903-1977)
Transparencies of the World: Poems

Marguerite YOURCENAR (1903-1987) Reference: Authors' Calendar
Coup de Grace
Memoirs of Hadrian

Alan PATON (1903-1988)
Cry, the Beloved Country (1948)

Witold GOMBROWICZ (1904-1969)
Ferdydurke
Pornografia
Cosmos

Luis CERNUDA (1902-1963)
Selected Poems

Nazim HIKMET (1902-1963) Criticism: Ward
Secilmis Siirler [Selected Poems] (1954)

Langston HUGHES (1902-1967) Criticism: Younge
The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1921)
"Harlem" in Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
One star: Selected Poems (1995)
The Big Sea
I Wonder as I Wander

John STEINBECK (1902-1968) Criticism: Haas | Flannery
Of Mice and Men (1937)
Two stars: The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Criticism: Windschuttle
Travels with Charley: In Search of American (1962)

Stevie SMITH (1902-1971)
Collected Poems

Gyula ILLYES (1902-1983) Etext: A Sentence About Tyranny