Kevin and Julie reading.
1 9 5 9-Top Ten Best Sellers
F I C T I O N
1. Exodus, Leon Uris
2. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
3. Hawaii, James Michener
4. Advise and Consent, Allen Drury
5. Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence
6. The Ugly American, William J. Lederer and Eugene L. Burdick
7. Dear and Glorious Physician, Taylor Caldwell
8. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
9. Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, Paul Gallico
10. Poor No More, Robert Ruark
How many have you read? How many have you heard of? (5 read for me, but these books were still popular in the next decade when I was old enough to read them). Never heard of 10.
Notice, no crime fiction (unless 10 is). That would rarely be the case today. At least two of these are great works of fiction (IMHO). Are we producing any books as great as 5 & 8?
32 comments:
Heard of 7, own 4, have read 0.
Read 2, 5, and 8, so not bad considering I'm Dutch and was still 15 years away from being born when that list came out.
I think great books are being written today just like then, there's just a lot more noise, which makes it harder to find them.
These lists are such a great snapshot of a certain time.
Have read Exodus, Hawaii (I think) and Lolita. Heard that Advice and Consent was good. Although I think that some books age better than others, like movies.
I've heard of all of them, read only two: DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and ADVISE AND CONSENT. POOR NO MORE isn't crime fiction but rather a financial soap opera, from what I recall reading about it. I've always thought of Ruark as a minor-league Hemingway (probably a patently unfair assessment) because he wrote a lot about hunting and fishing and African safaris.
I've read all but the bottom two, four of them are on the shelves (or in a box someplace).
Read one-Lolita- two or three times. Heard of 5. Flicked through Lady Chatterly for the dirty bits when I was a teen. Mrs 'arris goes to Paris ! What a great title!
Since I've read only one or two Dutch books (two if you count Anne Frank, the other The Assault, Harry Mullish) what can I say, Fleur. (I lived there for a year and read that in translation) Yes, I am sure Dear and Glorious Physician which I loved in my teens would not hold up well. I think I only saw the movie of Advise and Consent. I did read Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris and it was fun, but top ten? The older you are, the better chance you have read these.
The older you are, the better chance you have read these.
Keeping that in mind, I must admit that, yes, I am old, and I've read the first eight. I've heard of, but not read, Mrs. 'arris goes to Paris. (Wasn't that a TV movie with Angela Lansbury?) I've never heard of the last book.
I wonder if that was the expurgated version of Lady Chatterley. I thought it was not published (officially) in its uncensored form until the early 1960s.
I read a lot of Taylor Caldwell's books when I was in my teens. I'm sure I wouldn't find them quite so riveting today.
Hi Patti,
I turned 13 in 1959 and certainly by the time I finished high school in 1964, I read all but Chatterly, Lolita and Poor No More. Still haven't read them.
In high school I actually did a book report for World Lit on Dr. Zhivago, which I didn't particularly like but I'm sure was the least annoying (or shortest) book on the list that we were given.
I loved Exodus, Hawaii, (although you could never get away today with writing thousands of words on how the islands were formed as the beginning of the book) Advise and Consent, Dear and Glorious Physician, and Mrs. 'Arris.
I am sure that The Ugly American and all the books written by Dr. Tom Dooley (a medical missionary in SE Asia) helped form political opinions I still hold today.
Terrie
Exodus was such a big book, don't know if people realize that today. I was eleven that year and probably didn't read any of them until a few years later--although possibly Exodus. So true about THE UGLY AMERICAN-such a great impact on us.
I've heard of them all and read 6 1/4, the 1/4 being "Lady Chatterley's Lover". James Reasoner is pretty much on the money about Robert Ruark in general and "Poor No More" in particular. Ruark was pretty popular in the 50s and early 60s, his most famous novel being "Something of Value". I'd say nobody these days is writing novels as good as "Lolita". But neither is anyone writing popular fiction as entertaining as "Advise and Consent". Drury's right wing nuttiness took him off the deep end in subsequent novels, but nobody has written a better political novel in the 50 years since "Advise and Consent".
The closest would be Catch 22, I guess. A lot of these are middlebrow novels and they seemed to have disappeared: we have literary and genre fiction.
You hit the nail right on the head. There's no popular middle-brow fiction appealing to a broad part of the population. Say what you like about things like the Book of the Month Club, they really did enourage people to read a wide range of books.
I'm a mystery fan, so maybe I'm biased, but it seems to me that a lot of important social issues are now being tackled in mysteries. Perhaps they are the heirs to the middlebrow novels that were so popular until the about 25 years ago.
I think that's true, Deb. Oh there are a few writers--like Anna Quindlen, but not many.
Heard of 8, read 1. Own 0
I've heard of 5, and read 0.
I do think everyone should consider reading Lolita if they like crime novels. There is no more delusional pedophile in crime literature than Humbert Humbert. A perfect villain.
Or at least see the movie with James Mason. I can't imagine you won't think it to be worth your while.
When reading Lolita, just remember the phrase "unreliable narrator"!
" A lot of these are middlebrow novels and they seemed to have disappeared: we have literary and genre fiction." - Pattinaise
So Danielle Steel and her ilk aren't middle brow? Perhaps Low brow, or are you thinking romance genre?
I am thinking books like THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT. Books by John P. Marquand, that kind of thing.
I think Nabokov invented it, Deb .
What's happened to fiction in the last half century is similar to what happened to music. Everyone used to listen to pretty much the same stuff, but the audience has become segmented and everything is designed to appeal to a niche.The same thing has happened to readers, and most every popular book is designed to appeal to a niche audience. Crime novels, chick let, urban fantasy (which would include all those vampire novels), and romance, which is not quite the same thing as chick lit. Every now and then a genuinely good literary novel like Franzen's "The Corrections" or DeLillo's "Underworld" will catch a wave, but it's not often. The middlebrow novel of the sort represented so heavily on the 1959 list is mostly gone.
I've read five, including Advise and Consent, which won the Pulitzer. In those days no distinction was made between "literary" and "popular" fiction. Every book on that list was simply literature.
Heard of all, read 7, including POOR NO MORE. I was a sort of fan of Ruark's work back then and read a couple of his novels. UHURU was the one I liked best, as I recall.
Well, TV is the, "popular middle-brow fiction appealing to a broad part of the population," isn't it?
That's not a bad thing, it means literary novels have to aim high. And when they miss, they become middle-brow, just not popular.
Theres a huge amount of so-called literary fiction that's really just middle-brow, middle-class stuff. Often the stuff movies get based on.
Now, when it becomes an Oscar-winning movie it gets all this gravitas attatched.
I know people like stuff like American Beauty but I think as a novel it would be decidedly middle-brow.
"The closest would be Catch 22, I guess."
--Closest to what?
"A lot of these are middlebrow novels and they seemed to have disappeared: we have literary and genre fiction."
--Just trying to give me agita, eh?
Actually, we have popular and niche fiction. Someone like Jodi Picoult, to say nothing of Dan Brown or the last work of Kurt Vonnegut, tend to muddle your classes above.
I have tried to read ADVISE AND CONSENT, HAWAII, and kind of skimmed THE UGLY AMERICAN. I've read bits of CHATTERLY and ZHIVAGO and meant to get back to them, without great urgency. Read LOLITA, and Poe might have something to say about who introduced the unreliable narrator (as might Swift). I've heard of all the writers, though I've never read Ruark and will never again try Caldwell, who makes Drury (or perhaps even Ayn Rand) look utterly sane by comparison. Michener was just dull and lazy, in comparison (too lazy to write good fiction or good nonfiction).
And, yes, some writers are writing comparably to Nabokov and particularly Lawrence, whose novel wasn't really of 1959, eh?
LOLITA, as you note, can be classed as crime fiction...THE UGLY AMERICAN is a cousin to espionage fiction, as is ADVISE. EXODUS, HAWAII and ZHIVAGO are war fiction/sweeping sagas...
I see I echo, almost, MP w/o having read the second comment in the thread. Though it's not actually true that We All Listened to the Same Music Then--there was at least as much musical atomization of the country from the classical audience, a tv show in the '50s called OPERA VS. JAZZ as if that was a natural opposition, etc.
Most of these 1959 novels probably are not life-changers, where you or I haven't already found them not very good (Taylor Caldwell, I suspect, never wrote anything worth reading)...and CHATTERLY and LOLITA were suceesses due to scandal, rather than quality.
The only one I have read is Paul Gallico´s. Entertaining enough, but not that memorable.
Actually, Lady Murasaki's GENJI might have the oldest still-read example of an unreliable narrator, among novels, at least. The slowly grinding mind continues to buzz...
"Poor No More" is a rag-to-riches-to rags tale. Robert Ruark was better known for his stories of hunting big game in Africa and his tales of being raised by his grandfather in, "The Old Man and The Boy," which sold over 100,000 copies.
Ruark was a favorite of my dad's and I've read it a couple of times.
Doc
I can't believe that I have read seven of these books. However, I didn't read them all in 1959. Two nine month combat cruises in the South China Sea in the mid 60's courtesy of the U.S. Navy gave me plenty of time to read. I really liked Michener and read all of his South Pacific adventure stories. Even visited a couple of the places noted in his books.
I've read 7 of those Patti. Did it before I became a crime fiction addict obviously. Not back in 1959 though
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