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Read Me What to read, 1901-1925

< 1876-1900 | 1926 on >

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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

If you believe everything you read you are much worse off than if you were unable to read at all. --William Empson

Flannery O'CONNOR (1925-1964) Reference: The Flannery O'Connor Collection Criticism: post
Wise Blood (1952)
In Taulkinham, U.S.A., the city of Fiendish Evangelists, one is brought into a world not so much of accursed or victimized human beings as into the company of an ill-tempered and driven collection of one-dimensional creatures of sheer meanness and orneriness... --William Goyen
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955)
The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
One star: Complete Stories (1971)
The Habit of Being (1978)
The beautiful letters of America's most profound writer this century. --The Intercollegiate Review

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

John HAWKES (1925-1998)
The Cannibal (1949)
Second Skin (1964)

Jose Cardoso PIRES (1925-1998) Reference: O Delfim
Ballad of the Dogs' Beach (A Balada de Praia do Caes 1982)

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

T. CARMI (Carmi Charny 1925-1994) Reference: Zionist
At the Stone of Losses (1983)

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: Academy of American Poets
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 | Times Topics Criticism: Feeney | Lehmann-Haupt
The Long March (1953)

Gore VIDAL (b. 1925) Criticism: post
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: post 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
It presents the metaphysics of anti-realism through a total evocation of reality. Not the least of the book's merits is that it manages a major moral judgment without the author's appearance once on stage. --Conrad Knickerbocker

James BALDWIN (1924-1987) Criticism: post
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
Notes of a Native Son (1955) Criticism: Sol Stein essay | Jonathan Yardley essay | Irving Howe essay
Giovanni's Room (1956)
The Fire Next Time (1963) Criticism: F. W. Dupee review
The Price of the Ticket (1985)

Jose DONOSO (1924-1996)
The Obscene Bird of Night (El obsceno pajaro de la noche 1970)

Yehuda AMICHAI (1924-2000)
Selected Poetry Etext: Hebrew Literature | Poets
Travels (1986)

Edgar BOWERS (1924-2000)
Living Together: New and Selected Poems (1973)

William H. GASS (b. 1924) Criticism: Wolcott
Omensetter's Luck (1966)
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968)

Zbigniew HERBERT (b. 1924) Criticism: Simic
Selected Poems (1968)

Josef SKVORECKY (b. 1924) 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 (1972; Le Roi des aulnes 1970)
Friday and Robinson (1977; Vendredi ou la Vie sauvage)
By turning the shipwreck into a stroke of destiny, Tournier turns the contingent life of Crusoe into the necessary life. From the moment of his awakening on the beach, his every step is toward the 'real' Crusoe who has always been waiting inside. --Sven Birkerts

James SCHUYLER (1923-1991)
Collected Poems (1993)

James DICKEY (1923-1997) Reference: James Dickey Society Criticism: Meyers
The Early Motion (1981)
The Central Motion (1983)

Walter M. MILLER, Jr. (1923-1996)
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
Awesome account of post-apocalypse world and the Second Coming, immaculately conceived in SF terms; postulates the Church as a repository of technological secrets from a past civilization now regarded as sacred writings. --Raphael and McLeish

Norman MAILER (1923-2007) Reference: Times Topics Etext: Criticism: post
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)
Fact or fiction? Not even Mailer knew for sure. --The Intercollegiate Review
One star: The Executioner's Song (1979)
The very subject of 'The Executioner's Song' is that vast emptiness at the center of the Western experience, a nihilism antithetical not only to literature but to most other forms of human endeavor, a dread so close to zero that human voices fade out, trail off, like skywriting. --Joan Didion
Ancient Evenings (1983)

Yves BONNEFOY (b. 1923)
Words in Stone (Pierre ecrite 1965)

Anthony HECHT (b. 1923) Criticism: Yezzi
Collected Earlier Poems (1990)

Michael THELWELL (b. 1923)
The Harder They Come (1979)

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

Italo CALVINO (1923-1985) Criticism: Lethem
The Baron in the Trees (1959; Il barone rampante, 1957);
The Nonexistent Knight (1962; Il cavaliere inesistente, 1959)
t zero (1969, or Time and the Hunter, 1970; Ti con zero, 1967)
Invisible Cities (1974; Le citta invisibili, 1972)
One star: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1981; Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore, 1979)

Nadine GORDIMER (b. 1923) Reference: Times Topics | Nobel Prize
Selected Stories (1974)

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

Miroslav HOLUB (1923-1998) Etext: three poems
One star: "The Fly" (1987)

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

Jack KEROUAC (1922-1969)
On the Road (1957) Criticism: Adams
For its depiction of an era and a life-style. --John Williams Collins III

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: post
Lucky Jim (1961)

Donald DAVIE (1922-1995)
Selected Poems

Thomas KUHN (1922-1996) Criticism: post
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
It pays tribute to scientific 'revolutionaries' who insist on seeing the world differently and reveals the crushing power of 'normal' science. But it reminds us that, in the end, even science is a social and political process. --Mark Moore

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

Kurt VONNEGUT, Jr. (1922-2007) Reference: The Vonnegut Web Criticism: post
One Cat's Cradle (1963)
One Slaughterhouse Five (1969)

Gerald HOLTON (b. 1922) and Katherine SOPKA
Great Books of Science in the Twentieth Century: Physics (The Great Ideas Today 1979, 1979)

Howard MOSS (1922-1987)
New Selected Poems (1985)

Grace PALEY (b. 1922)
The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)

Alain ROBBE-GRILLET (1922-2008)
The Erasers (Les Gommes, 1953)
The Voyeur (Le Voyeur, 1955)
Jealousy (La Jalousie, 1957)
In the Labyrinth (Dans le labyrinthe, 1959)
For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman, 1963)
Project for a Revolution in New York (1972; Projet pour une revolution a New York 1970)

Jose SARAMAGO (1922-2010)
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; Il giorno della civetta, 1961)
Equal Danger (1973; Il contesto, 1971)
The Wine-Dark Sea: Thirteen Stories (1985; (Il mare color del vino, 1973)

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
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

Stanislaw LEM (1921-2006)
The Investigation (1974; Sledztwo, 1959)
Solaris (1961; trans. 1970)
Story of a planet which is a sentient creature, capable of creating duplicates from the memories of the earth people who visit it... . --Raphael and McLeish

Betty FRIEDAN (1921-2006)
The Feminine Mystique (1963)
She pictured the average middle-class American woman (she more or less ignored black or working-class women) as leading a life in which she tried to conform to a false image, and thus suffered inevitable unhappiness. --Martin Seymour-Smith

Wilson HARRIS (b. 1921)
The Guyana Quartet: Palace of the Peacock (1960), The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962), The Secret Ladder (1963)

Gabriel OKARA (b. 1921)
The Fisherman's Invocation (1978)

Janos PILINSZKY (1921-1981)
Selected Poems (1976)
Crater (1978; Krater, 1975)

Andrea ZANZOTTO (b. 1921) Reference: Bedon
Selected Poetry (1975)

Richard WILBUR (b. 1921) Etext: Internet Poetry Archive Etext: Reference: Academy of American Poets Criticism: Longenbach
One star: New and Collected Poems (1988) Criticism: Freeman | Mason | Dirda | Kirsch
Psalm Etext: First Things (May 2009)

Keith DOUGLAS (1920-1944)
The Complete Poems (1977)

Paul CELAN (Paul Ancel, 1920-1970) 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 (1990)

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

Joan PERUCHO (1920-2003)
Natural History (1988; Les histories naturals, 1960)

Amos TUTUOLA (1920-1997)
One star: The Palm-Wine Drinkard, and his dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town (1952)

Richard ADAMS (b. 1920) Criticism: Joan Bridgman essay
Watership Down (1972)
Long, allegorical novel about rabbits; occasional turgidities offset by strong story-line. --Raphael and McLeish
The Girl on a Swing (1980)

A Guide to Oriental Classics
(1st edition 1964) Wm. Theodore de Bary (b. 1919) and Ainslee Embree, Editors
(2nd edition 1975) Wm. Theodore de Bary and Ainslee Embree, Editors Reference: Table of Contents
(3rd edition 1989) Amy Vladeck Heinrich, Editor of this edition, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Ainslee Embree, Editors

Jorge de SENA (1919-1978)
Selected Poems

Primo LEVI (1919-1987)
One star: The Periodic Table (Il sistema periodico 1975)
amalgamates chemical metaphor with personal reminiscence and historical documentation. --Sven Birkerts
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 (1978)
In Other Words (1987)

Robert PINGET (1919-1997)
Fable (1971; trans. 1980)
The Libera Me Domine (1978; Le Libera, Paris, 1968)
That Voice (1982; Cette Voix, Paris, 1975)

Sophia de MELLO BREYNER (1919-2004)
Selected Poems

Robert DUNCAN (1919-1988)
Bending the Bow (1968)

Frank KERMODE (1919-2010) Etext: Nothing for Ever and Ever Criticism: Richard Poirier review
The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (1967; revised 2003)

Doris LESSING (b. 1919) Reference: Retrospective | Times Topics Criticism: post 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
She has consistently gone underground into a woman's being, into the being of our species, tunneling through memory and myth, through Marxism and madness. --John Leonard
The Golden Notebook (1962)

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)
Bruno's Dream (1969)
Sandcastle (1978)
The Good Apprentice (1985)

J. D. SALINGER (Jerome David Salinger 1919-2010) Reference: Times Topics Criticism: post 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)
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), and 'Teddy' (1953)
Franny and Zooey (1961)
Buddy's letter to Zooey is the best and most enduring reminder I have had of the importance of discovering the things that really matter to you, and then doing them with zest because that's the way they deserve to be done. --Avis C. Vidal

Richard Phillips FEYNMAN (1918-1988) Criticism: post
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964, 1966; 1970; 2005)
Outside of art (or maybe not), physics is mankind's most beautiful achievement; these three volumes are probably the most beautiful ever written about physics. --David Gelernter
Q. E. D. (1985)
Personal Observations on the Reliability of the Shuttle Etext: NASA (June 1986)

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

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

Alexander SOLZHENITSYN (1918-2008) Criticism: post
One star: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) Criticism: Philip Rahv review
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
Two stars: The First Circle (1968) Criticism: Daniel J. Mahoney review
One star: Cancer Ward (1968)
It becomes vital to have a theory, and world theories, global diagnoses of the body politic or the human state generally, take on, as though of necessity, an importance not usually accorded them by the healthy. --Mary McCarthy
The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1978)
Marked the absolute final turning point beyond which nobody could deny the evil of the Evil Empire. --Richard John Neuhaus
A World Split Apart (Harvard, June 8, 1978) Etext: First Principles
August 1914 (1984)
Miniatures, 1996-99 Etext: First Things (December 2006)

Johannes BOBROWSKI (1917-1965)
Shadow Lands (Schattenland Strome, 1962)

Carson McCULLERS (1917-1967) Criticism: Yardley
One star: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951)

Robert LOWELL (1917-1977) Criticism: post
One star: Collected Poems (2003)
Buenos Aires Etext: The New York Review of Books (February 1, 1963)

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
Billiards at Half-Past Nine (Billard um halb zehn, 1959)
The Clown (1965; (Ansichten eines Clowns, 1963)

Anthony BURGESS (1917-1993) Reference: Criticism: post
A Clockwork Orange (1962)
Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love Life (1964)

Arthur C. CLARKE (1917-2008) Criticism: post
Childhood's End (1953)
Clarke's vision of humanity becoming godlike reached its ultimate in the film '2001: A Space Odyssey. But 'Childhood's End' expresses this view with even more coherence; it is remarkable for its compassion. --Raphael and McLeish
Profiles of the Future (1963)

Louis AUCHINCLOSS (1917-2010) Criticism: post
The Rector of Justin (1964)
He is an unduly deprecated author because, while a full-time practicing lawyer and responsible New York citizen, he has written a large number of novels dealing, as did much of Henry James and Edith Wharton, with the upper class, or at least the upper professional class, such as old Wall Street law firms. --David Riesman
Collected Stories (1994)

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

Walker PERCY (1916-1990) Reference: Criticism: post
The Moviegoer (1961)
attempts to express modern philosophy through the literary form of the novel. --Thomas K. McCraw
Lost in the Cosmos (1983)
True therapy for the therapeutic age. --The Intercollegiate Review

Natalia GINZBURG (1916-1991)
Family Sayings (1967; Lessico famigliare, 1963)

Gavin EWART (1916-1995)
Selected Poems 1933-1993 (1996)

Giorgio BASSANI (1916-2000)
The Heron (1986)

Anne HEBERT (1916-2000)
Selected Poems (1987)

Judith WRIGHT (1915-2000) Criticism: Koval
Selected Poems (1963)

Camilo Jose CELA (1916-2002)
Journey to the Alcarria (1948; Viaje a la Alcarria)
The Hive (La Colmena 1951)

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

Saul BELLOW (1915-2005) Etext: Criticism: post 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
Saul Bellow's novels lifted the veil that hides the dilemmas of modern man; the intellectual, the artist and the humanist. --Abraham Zaleznik
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 (1915-2005) Reference: Times Topics Criticism: post
Two stars: Death of a Salesman (1949)
The plays of Arthur Miller taught me about survival in a world that is for some tragic heroes a very unfriendly place. --Abraham Zaleznik
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
Poems

Weldon KEES (1914-1955)
Collected Poems (1960)

Randall JARRELL (1914-1965) Criticism: post
Poetry and the Age (1953)
The book for showing how 20th- century poets think, what their poetry does, and why it matters. --Christopher Caldwell
Complete Poems (1969)

John BERRYMAN (1914-1972) Etext: Three Dream Songs | on Auden Criticism: Hirsch
Collected Poems 1937-1971 (1989)

Julio CORTAZAR (1914-1984)
Hopscotch (Rayuela, 1963)
could be said to represent the application of the principles of cubism to the novel. --Sven Birkerts
All Fires the Fire (Todos los fuegos el fuego, 1966)
Blow-up and Other Stories (1968)
Originally published as 'End of the Game and Other Stories' (1967)

Bernard MALAMUD (1914-1986) Criticism: post
The Assistant (1957)
the petty criminal and drifter Frank Alpine, while doing penance behind the counter of a failing grocery store that he'd once helped to rob, has a 'terrifying insight' about himself: 'that all while he was acting like he wasn't, he was a man of stern morality'. --Philip Roth
The Fixer (1966)
The Stories (1983)

John HERSEY (1914-1993)
A Bell for Adano (1944)
One star: Hiroshima (1946)
Those who were talking about fighting and winning nuclear war clearly had not read Hersey. --Howard Hiatt
The Call (1985)

Ralph ELLISON (1914-1994) Reference: Criticism: post
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
The reader who is familiar with the traumatic phase of the black man's rage in America will find something more in Mr. Ellison's report. He will find the long anguished step toward its mastery. The author sells no phony forgiveness. He asks for none himself. It is a resolutely honest, tormented, American book. --Wright Norris
Shadow and Act (1964)
Ellison stressed the the particularity of black experience but also the way it embodied the universality of mankind. --Archie C. Evers

Marguerite DURAS (1914-1996) Criticism: post
The Lover (L'Amant, 1984)
It is not, as some reviewers have suggested, a straight-faced remake of Lolita. The bond between these lovers is more existential than erotic. Indeed, the obsessive intensity of their coupling hints, according to minimalist precepts of exclusion, at the pervasiveness of the despair. --Sven Birkerts
Four Novels (1994): The Square (1959; Le Square, 1955); Moderato Cantabile (1955, trans. 1977); 10:30 on a Summer Night (1961; Dix heures et demie du soir en ete, 1960); The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas (1964; L'apres-midi de M. Andesmas, 1960)

Octavio PAZ (1914-1998) ...[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 1957-1987 (1987)

Albert CAMUS (1913-1960) Criticism: post
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
It is the perfect book for a young, searching mind concerned with the problems of identity and the meaning of existence. --Orlando Patterson
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
Two stars:The Plague (La Peste 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
The Rebel (L'Homme revolte 1951)
One star: The Fall (La Chute 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

Delmore SCHWARTZ (1913-1966)
Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems (1959)

Robert HAYDEN (1913-1980) Criticism: Hirsch
Collected Poems (1984)

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

Salvador ESPRIU (1913-1985)
La Pell de Brau: Poems (1987)

Sandor WEORES (1913-1989)
Selected Poems (1970)

Robertson DAVIES (1913-1995) Etext: Criticism: post
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 (1988)

Aime CESAIRE (b. 1913)
Collected Poetry (1983)

Claude SIMON (b. 1913)
The Wind (1959; Le Vent, 1957)
The Grass (1960; L'Herbe, 1958)
The Flanders Road (1961; La Route des Flandres, 1960)

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

Jean GARRIGUE (1912-1972)
Selected Poems (1992)

John CHEEVER (1912-1982) Criticism: post
Bullet Park (1969)
One star: Collected Stories (1978)
Evocative stories about quietly desperate New York commuters: wives meeting the train with a double Martini in the hand; children, all-knowing, concocting fiendish plots. --Raphael and McLeish

Nigel DENNIS (1912-1989)
Cards of Identity (1955)

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

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

Patrick WHITE (1912-1990) Reference: Complete Review
One star: Voss (1957)
The Australian novelist, with 'Voss'--an account of a doomed explorer crossing the continent in the 1880s--his masterwork... . --Raphael and McLeish
One star: Riders in the Chariot (1961)
A Fringe of Leaves (1976)

Northrop FRYE (1912-1991) Reference: Northrop Frye Centre Criticism: Marchand
Fables of Identity (1963)

Edmond JABES (1912-1991)
The Book of Questions (1976)
If There Were Anywhere But Desert (selected poems, 1988)

Eugene IONESCO (1912-1994) Reference: Criticism: post
The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice chauve, 1948)
The Chairs (Les Chaises, 1952)
The Lesson (La Lecon, 1951)
Victims of Duty (Victimes du devoir, 1953)
Amedee, or How to Get Rid of It (Amedee ou comment s'en debarrasser, 1954)
Rhinoceros (1959)

F. T. PRINCE (1912-2003)
Collected Poems 1935-1992 (1993)

Najib MAHFUZ (1912-2006) Criticism: post
Midaq Alley (1947)
Miramar (1967)
Fountain and Tomb (1988)

Tillie OLSEN (1912-2007) Reference: Modern American Poetry
Tell Me a Riddle (1956-1960)

Flann O'BRIEN (Brian O'Nolan, 1911-1966)
The Dalkey Archive (1964)
The Third Policeman (1968)

Mervyn PEAKE (1911-1968)
The Gormenghast Trilogy: Titus Groan (1946); Gormenghast (1950); Titus Alone (1959)

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

Elizabeth BISHOP (1911-1979) Criticism: Dana Gioia essay 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
One star: The Fish (1946)
One star: Faustina: or Rock Roses (The Nation, Feb. 22, 1947)
One star: Sestina (1956)
The Complete Poems (1983)
Throughtout her career Bishop aimed to bring morality and invention together in a single thought. --David Bromwich
One Art: Letters (1994) Criticism: Elizabeth Spires review

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

Max FRISCH (1911-1991)
One star: I'm Not Stiller (Stiller 1954)
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
Andorra (1961)
attacks anti-Semitism, prejudice and complacency in society. --Philip Ward
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)
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

William GOLDING (1911-1993)
One star: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Golding pointed to a darkness of the soul buried within us... --Roderick MacFarquhar
Pincher Martin (1956)
The Spire (1964)

Emile M. CIORAN (1911-1995) Reference: Criticism: post
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 (1986)

Faiz Ahmed FAIZ (1911-1984)
Poems

Czeslaw MILOSZ (1911-2004) Etext: Internet Poetry Archive Criticism: Jeremy Driscoll essay | Hilton Kramer obituary | Leon Wieseltier obituary | Raymond H. Anderson obituary | Modris Eksteins review
The Captive Mind (1953) 'Zniewolony umysl'
Distance Etext: First Things (November 2004)
Selected Poems: 1931-2004 (2006)

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

Miguel HERNANDEZ (1910-1942) Etext: Poetry in Translation | U Chicago Press
Selected Poems (2001)

Margaret Wise BROWN (1910-1952) Reference: Fan site
Goodnight Moon (1947)

Charles OLSON (1910-1970) Reference: Electronic Poetry Center
The Maximus Poems (1983)
Collected Poems (1987)

Jose LEZAMA Lima (1910-1976)
Paradiso (1966)

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

Jean GENET (1910-1986)
Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre Dame des Fleurs 1944)
The Thief's Journal (Journal du voleur 1949)
The Balcony (Le Balcon 1957)

Jean ANOUILH (1910-1987) Reference: Authors' Calendar
Antigone (1944)
Eurydice (1942)
The Rehearsal (1961; La repetition ou l'amour puni 1950)
Becket, or The Honour of God (1960; Becket, ou l'honneur de Dieu 1959)

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 1931-1970 (1971)

Chaim GRADE (1910-1982)
The Yeshiva (1976-1977)

Wright MORRIS (1910-1998)
Ceremony in Lone Tree (1960)

Malcolm LOWRY (1909-1937)
Under the Volcano (1947)
It is perhaps the most single-mindedly intense novel ever written. ... The themes--if we imagine we are writing a book report--are themes of doom (private and collective), death, salvation versus damnation, Sin (capitalized), expulsion from Eden, and, in the last analysis, the wonder and mystery of all the above. --Sven Birkerts

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

James AGEE (1909-1955) Reference: I Hear America Singing | Perspectives in American Literature Criticism: post
Permit Me Voyage (1934)
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941, with photographs by Walker EVANS)
Its descriptive power (three tenant families in Alabama, 1936) is unsurpassed in exhibiting 'the cruel radiance of what is'. --Richard R. Niebuhr

Merce RODOREDA (1909-1983)
The Time of the Doves (La placa del diamant 1962)

Yannis RITSOS (1909-1990) Etext: Wikipedia
Exile and Return: Selected Poems 1967-1974 (1985)

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

Ernst Hans GOMBRICH (1909-2001) Criticism: post
One star: The Story of Art (1950) [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
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
Art and Illusion (1961)
laid to rest the claim of Ruskin and later criticism that the best painters of nature had learned to look with an 'innocent eye', uncontaminated by concepts or knowledge. --James Ackerman

Eudora WELTY (1909-2001) Criticism: Jay Tolson essay
The Robber Bridegroom (1942)
Delta Wedding (1946)
Decorous, scintillating portrayal of Mississippi aristocratic family in the 1920s. --Raphael and McLeish
The Ponder Heart (1954)
One star: Thirteen Stories (1965)
These perfect gems evoke a particular Southern rural culture--the 'sense of place' that Welty has said is so important to her work--at the same time they reveal mythic, universal human themes and longings. --Elizabeth McKinsey

Peter F. DRUCKER (1909-2005) Reference: The Drucker Institute Criticism: post
The Concept of the Corporation (1945)
The Age of Discontinuity (1969)

Rene DAUMAL (1908-1944)
Mount Analogue (Le mont analogue 1952)

Cesare PAVESE (1908-1950)
Hard Labor: Poems (Lavorare stanca 1936, 1943)
Dialogues with Lueco (Dialoghi con Leuco 1947)

Richard WRIGHT (1908-1960) Reference: Modern American Poetry Criticism: post
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
One star: Black Boy (1945)

Elio VITTORINI (1908-1966)
Women of Messina (Le donne de Messina 1949)

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

Tommaso LANDOLFI (1908-1979)
Gogol's Wife and Other Stories (1963)

Theodore ROETHKE (1908-1983)
Collected Poems (1961)
Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63 (1972)

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

Rene CHAR (1908-1988) Etext: Wikipedia
Selected Poems (1992)

Joseph MITCHELL (1908-1996) Criticism: Emily d’Aulaire review
Up in the Old Hotel (1992) Criticism: Christopher Carduff review

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

Claude LEVI-STRAUSS (1908-2009) Reference: Times Topics Criticism: post
One star: A World on the Wane (Tristes Tropiques 1955)
Structural Anthropology (1963; Anthropologie structurale 1958)
The Savage Mind (1966; La Pensee sauvage 1962)
One star: The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology (1969; Le Cru et le cuit 1964; from Mythologiques I–IV)

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. --Michael Lind

Louis MACNEICE (1907-1963)
Collected Poems (1966)

Gunnar EKELOF (1907-1968)
Dikter (1965)
Diwan over Fursten av Emgion (1965; "Diwan on the King of Emgion")
Sagan om Fatumeh (1966; "The Tale of Fatumeh")
One star: Guide to the Underworld (Vagvisare till underforden 1967)

Gunter EICH (1907-1972)
Pigeons and Moles: Selected Writings (1991)

W. H. AUDEN (Wystan Hugh Auden 1907-1973) Etext: Reference: The Academy of American Poets Reference: The W. H. Auden Society Etext: Criticism: post
Musee des Beaux Arts (1938)
In Memory of W. B. Yeats (1939)
The Shield of Achilles (1955)
The shield of Achilles in Homer has emblazoned upon it the triumphs of the future. Auden, looking into the shield, sees the horrors of the modern state. --Karl Shapiro
The Dyer's Hand (1962)
his literary essays bring his expertise intelligently and practically to bear on other poets, from Shakespeare to Cavafy, and allows his unschematic wit to play ingeniously and informatively among the great and the fugitive. --Raphael and McLeish
One star: Collected Poems (1991) 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

Robert A. HEINLEIN (1907-1988) Criticism: post
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

Alberto MORAVIA (1907-1990)
1934 (1982)

Maurice BLANCHOT (1907-2003) Criticism: Norman Mararasz obituary
Thomas the Obscure (Thomas l'Obscur 1941)

T. H. WHITE (Terence Hanbury White, 1906-1964) Reference: Moulder and Schaefer fan site
The Once and Future King (1958)
Compendious (700-page) fantasy on the life of King Arthur. White's combination of slapstick and erudition is unique--as if Laurel and Hardy were set down in a Middle Ages exact to the last detail. --Raphael and McLeish

Dino BUZZATI (1906-1972)
The Tartar Steppe (1952; Il deserto dei Tratari 1945)
Giovanni Drogo is sent to the Bastiani Fortress, on the edge of the Tartar steppe, and he waits for the Tartar to attack. --Philip Ward

William EMPSON (1906-1984)
Some Versions of Pastoral (1935)
Milton's God (1961)
Collected Poems (1984)

Samuel BECKETT (1906-1989) Reference: The Samuel Beckett End Page Criticism: Tim Parks review essay | post 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
Murphy (1938)
One star: Molloy (1947)
Malone Dies (Malone meurt 1953)
One star: The Unnamable (L'innommable 1953)
Watt (1953)
Two stars: Waiting for Godot (1953; En attendant Godot 1948-1949)
One star: Endgame (1957; Fin de partie 1955-1957)
One star: Krapp's Last Tape (1959)
How It Is (1961)

Henry ROTH (1906-1995) Criticism: post
Call It Sleep (1934)
does tell, dramatically for all its mass of detail, the true story if not the real one, of a newborn personality struggling desperately to salvage a place for itself and its dream out of the welter and squalor of the 'melting pot'. --H. W. Boynton

R. K. NARAYAN (1906-2001) Study: Reference: Criticism: post
The English Teacher (1945)
The Guide (1958)
The Vendor of Sweets (1967)

Leopold Sedar SENGHOR (1906-2001)
One star: Selected Poems (1977)

Jozsef ATTILA (1905-1937) Etext: Fan site
Works (1973)
Selected Poems and Texts (1973)
Perched on Nothing's Branch (1987)

John O'HARA (1905-1970) Criticism: James Wolcott review
One star: Appointment at Samarra (1934)
Butterfield 8 (1935)
One star: Collected Stories (1985)
O'Hara's stories are legion, and despite the flaws and cheapness, provide a panoramic view of East Coast American society which is proving more and more truthful as the lid comes off the USA. --Raphael and McLeish

Henry GREEN (Henry Vincent Yorke 1905-1974) Criticism: Brooke Allen review
Party Going (1939)
Loving (1945)
Nothing (1950)

Jean-Paul SARTRE (1905-1980) Criticism: post 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
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) Study: Heaven or Hell?
Existentialism (L'Existentialisme est un humanisme 1946, translated by Bernard Frechtman)
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
Existentialist biography of the criminal and playwright Jean Genet. Though long and analytico-rhetorical, it presents an interesting alternative to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of empirical biography. --Raphael and McLeish
Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960)
As with the 'Phenomenology' [of Hegel], everything is here, but now after we know we can know nothing in the way Marx and Freud wanted to know everything. --Duncan Kennedy
The Words (Les Mots 1964)
The Family Idiot (L'Idiot de la famille 1971–1972)

Kenneth REXROTH (1905-1982) Etext: Kenneth Rexroth Archive Criticism: Morgan Gibson poem
Classics Revisited (1968) Etext: Selections Reference: Table of Contents
More Classics Revisited (1989) Etext: Selections Reference: Table of Contents

Robert Penn WARREN (1905-1989) Criticism: post
Understanding Poetry (1938, with Cleanth BROOKS)
textbook by two of the brightest lights of the most important literary group in America this century-the Vanderbilt agrarians --The Intercollegiate Review
All the King's Men (1946)
It's a novel principally concerned with individuals and their pasts; and it too reveals how history defines (and often burdens) us in dealing with the present. But it's also a novel about politics, and few works of literature convey as clearly the elemental forces that politics can at times unleash. --Alan Brinkley
World Enough and Time (1950)
Selected Poems

Anthony POWELL (1905-2000) Criticism: Benjamin Schwarz review | Brooke Allen review
According to his memoirs, Powell rhymes with pole (not towel). --Wikipedia
A Dance to the Music of Time (12 vol., 1951-1975): A Question of Upbringing (1951)
Suggests that a life of reflection and observation is to be prized as much as a life of action and that life's meaning is to be found in the accumulation of small events and triumphs (often only dimly perceived) rather than in high moments of bombast and tangible riches. --James Hodgson

Pierre KLOSSOWSKI (1905-2001)
The Laws of Hospitality: The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1959); Roberte, ce soir (1954); Le Souffler (1960)
The Baphomet (1965)

Vladimir HOLAN (1905-1980)
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

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

Pablo NERUDA (1904-1973; born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto) Criticism: Lisa Gorton review | Tishani Doshi review | Stephen Schwartz review
One star: Canto General (1950)
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1969; 20 Poemas de amor y Cancion desperada 1924)
Selected Poems (1994)
Fully Empowered (2001)
Residence on Earth/Residencia en la Tierra (2004)

Alejo CARPENTIER (1904-1980)
One star: The Lost Steps (1953)
The Kingdom of This World (1957; El Reino de este Mundo 1949)
Explosion in a Cathedral (El siglo de las luces 1962)
Reasons of State (El Recurso del metodo 1974)

Isaac Bashevis SINGER (1904-1980) Reference: Criticism: post 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
Satan in Goray (1935)
One star: The Family Moskat (1950)
Gimpel the Fool & Other Stories (1957)
Marvellous, timeless blend of medieval and modern imagination: the human condition defined and described by a master story-teller, delighted by the teeming detail which makes up a moment. --Raphael and McLeish
The Magician of Lublin (1960)
In My Father's Court (1966)
A memoir of the author's childhood days in the home where his father, as rabbi, heard disputes and struggled for resolutions amid the daily lives of his community in Warsaw. The disputes become windows into the virtues and vices of individuals, the traumas solved by arbitrary rules, and the traumas created by them. --Martha Minow
The Manor (1967)
The Estate (1969)
Collected Stories (1982)
He tells us that it is natural to be good, and unholy to go astray. It is the inhuman, the antihuman, forces that are to blame for harms and sorrows. --Cynthia Ozick

Christopher ISHERWOOD (1904-1986)
One star: The Berlin Stories (1954)
The real human background of 'The Berlin Stories' is always Isherwood's own alienation from the England of the '20s and '30s, that slumbering pit in which Baldwin's pigs grunted in self-satisfaction and over which Chamberlain's umbrella rose like a forlorn tear. --Alfred Kazin
Christopher and His Kind (1977)

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

B. F. SKINNER (1904-1990)
Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
Swallowing whole the superstitions of modern scientism, this psychologist was convinced that the human psyche was nothing but a superstition. --The Intercollegiate Review

Roy FULLER (1904-1991)
Collected Poems: 1936-1961 (1962)
New and Collected Poems: 1934-1984 (1985)

Graham GREENE (1904-1991) Criticism: post
Brighton Rock (1938)
The Power and the Glory (1940)
One star: The Heart of the Matter (1948)

Clifton FADIMAN (1904-1999)
The Lifetime Reading Plan (1st edtition 1960)
The Lifetime Reading Plan (New Revised [2nd] Edition 1978)
A hundred classics introduced in the informal and informative style that has been Fadiman's trademark as one of America's most respected bookpeople. --Steven Gilbar
The Lifetime Reading Plan (3rd edition 1988) Reference: Table of Contents
The New Lifetime Reading Plan (4th edition 1997, with John S. MAJOR) Reference: Table of Contents

Richard EBERHART (1904-2005) Criticism: Sonia Scherr obituary
Collected Poems: 1930-1976 (1976)

Ernst MAYR (1904-2005) Criticism: Steve Bradt obituary
Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist (1942)
By defining the biological species in strong, vital language and connecting the process of species formation to genetics, Mayr opened a large part of natural history to a more scientific form of analysis. --Edward O. Wilson
The Growth of Biological Thought (1982)
Mayr notes that biology, unlike physics, deals more often with qualitative categories, rather than coninua. Thus, biology is a unique science that is not easily reduced to physical concepts. --Jerome Kagan

Raymond RADIGUET (1903-1923)
Count d'Orgel's Ball (1924)

Nathanael WEST (1903-1940)
Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)
'Miss Lonelyhearts' lampoons the bogus sympathy of newspapers for readers' agonies... . --Raphael and McLeish
A Cool Million (1934)
The Day of the Locust (1939)

George ORWELL (Eric Blair 1903-1950) Etext: The Complete Works of George Orwell Reference: The Orwell Prize Criticism: post 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
a vision of a totalitarian hell, created in this century by people who spoke publicly of their commitment to the improvement of human life. --D. Quinn Mills
Homage to Catalonia (1952)
The savagely incisive song of a great writer's disillusionment with the bloody inhumanity of the Left. --The Intercollegiate Review
Collected Essays (1968-1970) Etext: University of Adelaide Reference: Wikipedia 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
Every conservative's favorite liberal and every liberal's favorite conservative. This book has no enemies. --Florence King

Sadeq HEDAYAT (1903-1951)
The Blind Owl (1937)

Johann VON NEUMANN (1903-1957) Reference: History of Ecomonic Thought | Introduction to Buddhism
Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik 1932)
The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944, with O. MORGENSTERN, 1902-1976)
The first really profound mathematical treatise written about a subject at the crossroads of economics, sociology and psychology. --Howard Raiffa

Frank O'CONNOR (1903-1966)
Collected Stories (1981)

Evelyn WAUGH (1903-1966) Study: Reference: Criticism: post
Vile Bodies (1930)
Wodehouse's irrepressibly cheerful Noel Coward fox-trot had turned into Havel's 'La Valse' under Waugh's manic baton. --William Alfred
A Handful of Dust (1934)
One star: Scoop (1938)
Put Out More Flags (1942)
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
What he is saying in effect is that faith is a saving answer to anyone who has it or has had it, which could scarcely be called propaganda, though he will surely be charged with propaganda. --John K. Hutchens
The Loved One (1948)

Jean FOLLAIN (1903-1977)
Transparencies of the World: Poems (1969)

Marguerite YOURCENAR (1903-1987) Reference: Authors' Calendar
Coup de Grace (Le coup de grace 1939)
Memoirs of Hadrian (Memoires d'Hadrien 1951)
the narrative, at once intimate and austere, reconstitutes with its burnished images the empire of second-century Rome. --Sven Birkerts

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

Witold GOMBROWICZ (1904-1969)
Ferdydurke (1937)
Cosmos (Kosmos 1965)
Pornografia (1966)

Robert B. DOWNS (1903-1991) Criticism: New York Times obituary
Famous Books Since 1492 or Molders of the Modern Mind full title 'Molders of the Modern Mind: 111 Books that Shaped Western Civilization' (1961)
Famous Books, Ancient and Medieval (1964)

Luis CERNUDA (1902-1963)
Selected Poems (1977)

Nazim HIKMET (1902-1963)
Secilmis Siirler (Selected Poems (1954)

Langston HUGHES (1902-1967) Criticism: Gary Younge essay
The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1921)
The Big Sea (1940)
"Harlem" in Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
I Wonder as I Wander (1958)
One star: Selected Poems (1995)

John STEINBECK (1902-1968) Criticism: Anne Haas essay | Christopher Flannery review
Of Mice and Men (1937)
Two stars: The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Criticism: Keith Windschuttle review
It is a very long novel, the longest Steinbeck has written, and yet it reads as if it had been composed in a flash, ripped off the typewriter and delivered to the public as an ultimatum. --Peter Monro Jack
Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Stevie SMITH (1902-1971)
Collected Poems (1975)

Gyula ILLYES (1902-1983) Etext: A Sentence About Tyranny Study: eNotes Reference: Internet Movie Data Base
A Tribute to Byula Illyes (1968)

Christina STEAD (1902-1983) Criticism: Brooke Allen review
The Man Who Loved Children (1940)

G. G. SIMPSON (George Gaylord Simpson 1902-1984) Reference: Lefalophodon
Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944)

Fernand BRAUDEL (1902-1985)
One star: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (La Mediterranee et le Monde Mediterraneen a l'epoque de Philippe II 1949) (rev'd ed., 1959)
defines a region ecologically (from the southern limits of the date palm to the northern limits of the olive tree) and culturally (from the Arab east and south to the Catholic north and west), demonstrating in intricate detail the complex and fragile interaction of physical environment and human effort in one moment of time past. --John R. Stilgoe
Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries (1979, Civilisation materielle, economie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siecle 1967, 1979)
...Braudel uses paintings, literature and other surprising sources in a remarkable evocation of day-to-day life in the formative period of modern society. --Jeffrey Sachs
On History (1980, Ecrits sur l'Histoire 1969)

Carlos DRUMMOND de Andrade (1902-1987)
Traveling in the Family (1986)

Nicolas GUILLEN (Nicolas Cristobal Guillen Batista 1902-1987)
Man-Making Words: Selected Poems (1972)

Kay BOYLE (1902-1992)
Three Short Novels (1958): The Crazy Hunter; The Bridegroom's Body; Decision

Karl POPPER (1902-1994) Criticism: post
The Open Society and its Enemies (1950) An open society is characterized for Popper not just by the freedom of individuals to voice criticisms of government policies, but by the effectiveness of such criticism. A society is open if those in power welcome criticism and respond to it (though, of course, they're not obligated to respond exactly as the critics would like.) --Jeffrey L. Kasser, Philosophy of Science, Lecture 2: Popper and the Problem of Demarcation, The Teaching Company
The best work on political philosophy in the 20th century. Exposes totalitarianism's roots in Plato, Hegel, and Marx. --Arthur Herman
The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959; Logik der Forschung 1935) The translation contained new material, including numerous footnote references to work that had appeared in the intervening years, and though these were carefully asterisked, it still required no small amount of labor to separate out the old from the new. --Bruce Caldwell, Recovering Popper For the Left, Critical Review, Vol. 17 Nos. 1-2, p. 50 Pseudosciences are confirmed by almost everything and proved false by almost nothing. Genuine sciences, on the other hand, court refutation. So the mark of a genuinely scientific theory is what Popper calls falsifiability. --Jeffrey L. Kasser, Philosophy of Science, Lecture 2: Popper and the Problem of Demarcation, The Teaching Company

Eugen WIGNER (1902-1995) Criticism: Biographical Memoir
Group Theory and Its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra (Gruppentheorie und ihre Andendung auf die Quantenmechanik der Atomspektren 1931)

Rafael ALBERTI (1902-2000)
The Owl's Insomnia: Poems (1982)

Mortimer J. ADLER (1902-2001) Study: Western Theism Reference: Center for the Study of The Great Ideas | The Mortimer J. Adler Archive | David Levine caricature | Time cover Criticism: post
The main controversial issue, the English-speaking philosophical environment being what it is, is Adler's insistence that philosophy cannot be simply a second-order, critical or analytic activity... . It must be a first-order discipline with a subject matter of its own. --Anthony Quinton
How to Read a Book: The art of getting a liberal education (1940)
Scholasticism and Politics (with Jacques Maritain 1940)
Syntopicon to Great Books of the Western World (1952; 2nd ed. 1990)
How to Read a Book (Revised and Updated Edition 1972, with Charles Van Doren) Bookseller: Video Reference: Appendix A: A recommended reading list
it remedies, as well as it can, a defect in the earlier version, an inability to suggest rules for reading imaginative literature comparable to those given for philosopy and the sciences. --Clifton Fadiman
Great Treasury of Western Thought (1977 editor, with Charles Van Doren) Reference: Contents full title 'Great Treasury of Western Thought: A Compendium of Important Statements on Man and His Institutions by the Great Thinkers in Western History'
Massive collection of classic quotations from leading authors and thinkers of the Western tradition. --Raphael and McLeish
Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1988)

A. D. HOPE (1902-2000)
Collected Poems: 1930-1970 (1972)

Salvatore QUASIMODO (1901-1968) Reference: Authors' Calendar
Selected Writings (1960)

Nemeth LASZLO (1901-1975)
Guilt (1966)

Werner HEISENBERG (1901-1976) Criticism: post The Uncertainty Principle, the bedrock of quantum theory, implies that even if one had all the information there is to be had about a physical system, its future behavior cannot be predicted exactly, only probabilistically. --Stephen M. Barr, Faith and Quantum Theory, First Things, March 2007, p. 23 Is the world strictly determinant at the micro level as well as at the macro level? Heisenberg is saying no. --James Hall, Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason, Lecture 19: 'Normal Science' at Mid-century, The Teaching Company
The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory (1930) highly valued in its own time as a presentation of the current state of quantum theory by one of the great architects of its latest, most successful version. --Gerald Holton and Katherine Sopka, The Great Ideas Today 1979, p. 264
Philosophical Problems of Nuclear Science (1952)
Physics and Philosophy (1962)
Physics and Beyond (1971)

Andre MALRAUX (1901-1976) Criticism: John Sturrock review
The Conquerors (1928; Les Conquérants 1928)
The Royal Way or The Way of the Kings (1930; La Voie royale 1930)
One star: Man's Fate (1934; La Condition humaine 1933)
One star: Man's Hope (1938; L'Espoir 1937)
The Voices of Silence (1953; Les Voix du silence 1951)

Margaret MEAD (1901-1978) Reference: Centennial
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) The not-so-hidden agenda of Coming of Age in Samoa is less sexual liberation per se than a broader ideal that Mead calls 'education for choice.' --Christopher Shannon, Catholicism as the Other, First Things, January 2004
So amusing did the natives find the white woman's prurient questions that they told her the wildest tales-and she believed them! --The Intercollegiate Review

Jaroslav SEIFERT (1901-1986) Reference: Nobel Prize
The Plague Column (1979)
An Umbrella from Piccadilly (1981)
Selected Poetry (1986)

Francis PONGE (1901-1989) Criticism: Francois Almaleh essay
Things: Selected Writings (1986; Things 1971)

C. L. R. JAMES (1901-1989) Reference: The C.L.R. James Institute
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938)
The Future in the Present (1979)

Michel LEIRIS (1901-1990) Reference: Kicking Giants biography
Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility (1992)
African Art (1966, with Jacqueline DELANGE 1923-1991) Reference: National Gallery of Canada biography

Linus PAULING (1901-1994) Reference: Linus Pauling Institute Criticism: post
Introduction to Quantum Mechanics: with Application to Chemistry (1935, with E. Bright WILSON b. 1908)
The Nature of the Chemical Bond, and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals: An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry (1939)

Carl BARKS (1901-2000) Reference: Wikipedia Humor: The Ultimate Barks Collector
Duck Stories (1942-1990) Etext: Beru's Disney Comics Fan Page So when our walks in sun or shade pass graveyards filled by wars, It's nice to stop and read of ducks whose battles leave no scars. To read of ducks who parody our vain attempts at glory, They don't exist, but somehow leave us glad we bought their story. --concluding stanzas, 'Ode to the Disney Ducks' by Carl Barks (his last published work)

< 1876-1900 | 1926 on >



Revised September 26, 2010.

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