Books read July 1962 through December 1963
| Author | Steinbeck, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | Viking Press |
| Copyright Date | 1939 |
| Number of Pages | 619 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Economic depression; United States |
| When Read | January 1963 |
This is the great National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the great depression in the U.S. when thousands of desperate people fled the dustbowl conditions in Oklahoma, Texas, and other states in hopes of finding life and work in California. They found rejection and violence.
The book made a great impression on me. The images in my head are from the movie with Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, but I can still remember being deeply moved by the plight of the Joad family and the many other "Okies", and deeply indignant at their treatment. The Grapes of Wrath opened my mind to a more complex understanding of American society. It was a significant step in my gradual radicalization that reached its height in the early 1970s in the struggle against the Vietnam War.
I had already read East of Eden and In Dubious Battle (of which I still have my paperback copy down in my basement library.) Steinbeck's ideas weren't new to me with this book. I was prepared for its message. Still, The Grapes of Wrath was a particularly powerful novel that influenced many American readers.
Steinbeck was still alive and around 60 years old when I read this classic. I thought of him as one of our contemporary writers.
| Author | Fitzgerald, F. Scott |
|---|---|
| Publication | Scribner's Sons |
| Copyright Date | 1920 |
| Number of Pages | 305 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1963 |
This was the 24 year old Fitzgerald's first published novel, said to have been written in order to impress the beautiful Zelda Sayre who, in fact, married him seven days after its publication.
I don't know what I made of this story of lost love, financial failure, alcoholism, and depression. I might have read this book just because it was by a famous American writer, though I don't know why I picked this rather than The Great Gatsby.
As I get older and my memory of long ago declines, I think my view of my youth becomes simpler and less accurate. By early 1963, if indeed I read this book in early 1963 (there are no dates in my little notepad of books read), I would have been 16 years old. I would already have met and pursued Marcia Epstein, the lovely girl that I married and still live with in 2019. I would already have been reading, or at least started reading, more sophisticated books. I would already, just, have come to the conclusion that God does not exist and have broken with religion. I was already, just I think, beginning to focus on the idea of a more adult life, more independent of my parents. Perhaps I selected this book because it was the only Fitzgerald on the library shelf one day when I was browsing, or perhaps I chose it on purpose to find out more about a writer who was, by 1963, known almost exclusively for a different book.
| Author | Wilde, Oscar |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1891 |
| Number of Pages | 140 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | February 1963 |
Handsome young Dorian Gray, looking at his portrait, wishes that he might stay young and his portrait age in his stead. He gets what he wishes for.
The novel made an impression on me. It was different. It showed a dark side of Victorian England. I remember being affected by the mood and tone of the story - the isolation of its character and perhaps also of its author. It was a book that didn't fit well into the set of books that I was mainly reading. I think I had already abandoned any interest, if I ever had an interest, in fantasy. But even though there was a fantastic story line (i.e., a story with supernatural events in it), it was primarily a book about character and value. The events of the story were there to make a point, not to convince the reader that any of this could be true.
| Author | Lee, Harper |
|---|---|
| Publication | Lippincott |
| Copyright Date | 1960 |
| Number of Pages | 296 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Racism |
| When Read | February 1963 |
Lawyer Atticus Finch defends a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman in the teeth of the racist, segregationist American South of the 1930's
I was brought up to believe that racism was wrong and that we must struggle against it. However I lived in white neighborhoods and had only limited experience with race relations. Lee's novel offered some history and explanation. Our understanding of race was changing rapidly in the 1950's, 60's and 70's. This novel showed one phase of the change.
Lots of people were reading this bestseller.
| Author | Orwell, George |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1945 |
| Number of Pages | 128 |
| Genres | Fiction; Satire |
| Keywords | Communism |
| When Read | March 1963 |
In Orwell's parody of Soviet society, the animals have taken over the farm. Decent, hard working horses worked themselves to death while voracious pigs occupied the commanding heights and lived off the fat of the land.
My thinking about communism and the Soviet Union started off by simply accepting the prevailing American view of the subject. Orwell's views fit that prevailing American view. Later, under the pressure of the War in Vietnam, I began to be attracted to socialism and to the Vietnamese, Cuban, Chinese, and grudgingly, the Soviet communist parties. After the end of the war and when I left the campus, my views began to turn the other way again.
The issues that Orwell raised were legitimate when he raised them and remain legitimate today. However now, after the return of a more powerful capitalist class in the age of Reagan, and its development in the age of Donald Trump, I think that there are no simple answers to the questions of capitalism vs. socialism. As Mao said (IIRC), life is complicated and our heads have to be complicated too.
I think I read this book as part of a school assignment. I wonder if it's still being read in schools now that communism is rapidly disappearing in the world and has been displaced by "Islamic extremism" as the principal American enemy.
| Author | Guthrie, A.B. (Alfred Bertram) |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1949 |
| Number of Pages | 340 |
| Extras | maps |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American frontier |
| When Read | March 1963 |
Various farmers from east of the Mississippi come together in 1845 to travel through the west to the storied land of Oregon. They hire Dick Summers in Missouri, a character from The Big Sky (see 1992-06.01) to guide them. It is a long, grueling journey for both people and animals facing hard terrain, Indians, weather, food insecurity, and the problems of a group of people who started out as strangers living together in the midst of these difficulties.
Although this book is appealing to young readers, it's not a simple book. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950.
I read the first book in Guthrie's western sagas 27 years ago in 1992 and remember it fairly well for a book read that long ago. My memory of this one, read some time around 56 years ago in 1963 is almost non-existent, though when I read the reviews of it my mind is stimulated to produce what are probably false memories.
In any case, Guthrie was a fine writer, filled with a deep appreciation of history and a deep desire to recall it to his readers in as truthful and clear manner as he can. He was a fine novelist.
| Author | Salinger, J.D. (Jerome David) |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little Brown |
| Copyright Date | 1951 |
| Number of Pages | 277 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Adolescence |
| When Read | April 1963 |
Sixteen year old Holden Caulfield awakens to the larger world in a brilliantly adolescent way.
I remember being deeply moved by this book. I was, after all, an adolescent facing the same awakening and experiencing some of the same feelings as Holden. It's possible that I read this book in 1964, in my freshman English class at the University of Pittsburgh. Maybe I read it twice, once on my own and once in class. Maybe I heard teachers with more years and experience than I had criticizing the book. Maybe there was no association with the University and I'm just making it up. I don't know. In any case, I was moved by the book then and am likely to be much less moved now by Holden's adolescent experience.
| Author | Aristophanes |
|---|---|
| Publication | Unknown, 414 BC |
| Number of Pages | 98 |
| Genres | Theater play |
| Keywords | Comedy |
| When Read | April 1963 |
I have no recollection of the play at this time. Later, I know that I read Lysistrata and The Clouds and liked them both. I still have some memory of each of them.
What a shame it is that so much of Greek philosophy, literature, and science, and most or all of their music, has been lost. I at least hope that, 2,000 years from now, and 2 million years from now, our contemporary culture and the culture of our ancestors that has survived until now, will all still be intact and accessible.
| Author | Rand, Ayn |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Random House |
| Copyright Date | 1957 |
| Number of Pages | 1168 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| Keywords | Politics; Society; Capitalism |
| When Read | May 1963 |
The major capitalists and the hard working, skilled workers of the United States have all withdrawn from the American economy and essentially gone on strike at the urging of the mysterious John Galt. The incompetent, socialistic, over regulating, incompetents who rule the country are at a loss without them and the economy and society collapse and a new order emerges in the United States.
It's difficult to say what my reactions were to the novel at the time I read it. I remember the huge paperback copy that I had and that I read for a long time before finishing. The book commanded my interest but I don't recall the extent to which I believed in the ideology it propounded. If I accepted it when I first read it, or if I considered it plausible, it wasn't long before I turned against it. Today, and at least for the last 50 years, I have considered it to be promoting a false narrative of economic relations in the U.S. and to be falsely praising the rich for being smart enough to become rich.
There are still many adherents of the book, most notably Paul Ryan, former Republican vice presidential candidate and Speaker of the House of Representatives.
| Author | Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Pantheon Books |
| Copyright Date | 1960 |
| Number of Pages | 191 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Middle Ages |
| When Read | May 1963 |
This is a "young adult" novel about a teenager in 6th century England after the reign of Arthur (assuming that there was an Arthur and he was a king.) The young fellow wants to be a sailor and he goes to sea.
I have no recollection of this novel. I think I read lots of historical adventure novels. This one was both a historical adventure and a sea adventure - making it doubly attractive to me at the time.
| Author | Post, Charles Johnson |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little Brown |
| Copyright Date | 1960 |
| Number of Pages | 340 |
| Extras | Illustrations by the author |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Autobiography |
| Keywords | Spanish American War |
| When Read | June 1963 |
Private Post enlisted in the army to fight the Spanish in Cuba in 1898. He made it to Cuba and fought in the brief battles, then suffered the epidemics of malaria and yellow fever that probably killed more Americans than the Spanish did. An artist, Post illustrated his work with his own painted images of army life and of Cuba.
This book made an impression on me. I still remember the illustrations of soldiers in blue uniforms and cavalry style hats, much as they must have appeared at or shortly after the Civil War. There were images of fighting but also images of sick men lying on the ground, suffering from disease.
Post lived until 1956, the book only being published four years after his death.
| Author | Buck, Pearl |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1931 |
| Number of Pages | 368 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | China |
| When Read | June 1963 |
This was the highly acclaimed world-wide best seller about a Chinese peasant family dealing with the ravages of poverty, bad weather, and a harsh society.
I think that the great majority of books I read in my teens were found by browsing the shelves at the library. However I'm pretty sure that I read this one after someone (my mother perhaps?) recommended it to me.
I don't remember the details of the novel but do remember the general picture of a backward, peasant society, the poverty and oppression of the family, and the courage and nobility of their struggle.
| Author | Benet, Stephen Vincent |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1928 |
| Number of Pages | 376 |
| Genres | Fiction; Poetry |
| Keywords | American Civil War |
| When Read | July 1963 |
The Pulitzer Prize winning epic poem about John Brown and the Civil War.
I read very little poetry but read much about the Civil War.
| Editor | Scientific American |
|---|---|
| Publication | Scientific American |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | Unknown |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Astronomy |
| When Read | July 1962 |
Scientific American occasionally published magazine format issues containing articles all pertaining to a single subject. I presume this was one of those publications. Searching the net, I found that one with this title was published in 1956, so that's what I put in the copyright date for these notes. I have no information about the authors and titles of the articles.
I would have been studying science in high school by this time and may have started borrowing Scientific American books and magazines at the library. Science was not my main interest at this time but I had friends whom I respected that were very interested in science. They may have played a role in stimulating my own interest. More likely I think, I was browsing library shelves, saw the book, read a few pages, and decided that I wanted to read it. Although there were subjects that definitely interested me I was open to others.
| Author | Faulkner, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | Random House |
| Copyright Date | 1938 |
| Number of Pages | 260 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Civil War |
| When Read | July 1963 |
Originally published as seven separate short stories, this novel was about the Sartoris family in Mississippi during and after the Civil War.
I certainly knew that Faulkner was a famous, Nobel Prize winning author who recently died, and that knowledge probably played a role in my choosing to read this book. This appears to be the first book I read by Faulkner. Its subject, the Civil War, would also have been a big attraction.
| Author | Kantor, MacKinlay |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1955 |
| Number of Pages | 768 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Civil War |
| When Read | August 1963 |
A story, mostly from the Union point of view, of the infamous Confederate prison in Georgia where thousands of Union prisoners died due to conditions in the camp.
I remember this one very well. It made a powerful impression on me. I remember the criminal gang of Union thugs who took over the camp stole everyone's food and beat or killed anyone who resisted. I remember the group of brave Union soldiers who convinced the camp commandant to arm them with clubs, and who then assaulted the criminal gang, killed those who had to be killed, and beat the rest into submission. I remember the 15 year old Rebel guard who was too young, too uneducated, too stupid to understand that killing a Union soldier in the camp was no kind of manly act. I remember the carefully built up Union soldier that he killed, a man of great depth, intelligence, and generosity.
It was a tragic book, worthy of the Pulitzer Prize that it won. It taught me things about the Civil War that I didn't know and needed to know in order to understand it. It led me to read Spirit Lake, another of Kantor's long and deep books.
| Author | Monsarrat, Nicholas |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf |
| Copyright Date | 1951 |
| Number of Pages | ix + 509 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II; Naval |
| When Read | August 1963 |
Monsarrat's story of the war at sea is based on his experience in a British corvette - a very small ship, the smallest and cheapest ship capable of battling U-boats on the Atlantic convoys. Although the book is fiction, there is a wealth of authentic detail about life and death on the sea, battling the enemy and the elements.
This was another powerful, moving story, the kind that stuck with me and other readers for many years. The book is still in print and, if Amazon reviews are a good measure of readership, still being read by a significant sized audience.
| Author | Huxley, Aldous |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper |
| Copyright Date | 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 335 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Utopia |
| When Read | September 1963 |
A remote and unknown Pacific island has developed a Utopian society unlike any other on earth. It is discovered, coveted, and threatened by larger forces in the world that are after the oil beneath the island's surface.
This was less of a story than most novels and more of a philosophical treatise. Nevertheless, the concepts were interesting to me and influenced my thinking about the nature of society.
I had heard of Brave New World and read it not long after finishing this book. It, of course, portrayed a society opposite to the one of Island. I imagined that Brave New World's dystopian, pessimistic vision was not the image of himself and his ideas that Huxley wanted to leave with the world. Perhaps this book was written to explain what he believed was a positive, though perhaps not optimistic, world view.
| Author | Sholokhov, Mikhail |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Stevens, H.C. |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf |
| Copyright Date | 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 309 |
| Genres | Fiction; Politics; Short stories |
| Keywords | USSR |
| When Read | September 1963 |
Written in the 1920's, these sixteen short stories are about the Civil War that raged from 1918-1921. The stories were written from the communist point of view, but most of them were written before Stalinism closed down all freedom of expression in the USSR.
I remember that I had heard of Sholokhov's most famous work, And Quiet Flows the Don, and I probably would have been able to get it at the public library, but I decided to read a book of Sholokhov's short stories so that if I didn't like them I could just quit in the middle without committing to a longer work. I had already established a habit of finishing almost every book that I started and I recognized that some books start off badly but get better and that they shouldn't be judged until I've read to the end.
I no longer remember the individual stories but, as it turned out, I had mixed feelings about them and didn't go on to read more. My political views were continuing to expand but Sholokhov was still a stretch for me and my balancing of story and theme was probably still on the story side. I don't know what I would have made of the stories ten years later or what I'd make of them today.
| Author | Taylor, Robert Lewis |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City, NY: Doubleday |
| Copyright Date | 1958 |
| Number of Pages | 544 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American frontier |
| When Read | October 1963 |
This was a coming of age type story of Jamie and his father making the long trek from the settled part of the U.S. to the gold rush in California. It was a best seller and won a Pulitzer Prize.
There was apparently an ABC TV series based on this book released in 1963. I don't remember whether I saw the series, or if so, whether I saw it before or after reading the book.
I gradually became more cosmopolitan as I grew older, but I think my deepest interest in childhood was probably the history of the United States. I read stories of colonial times on up through World War II.
| Author | Horgan, Paul |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy |
| Copyright Date | 1963 |
| Number of Pages | 629 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American frontier; American Indians |
| When Read | October 1963 |
A Western story of U.S. Cavalry and American Indians, but with capably constructed characters and story lines. It too won a Pulitzer Prize, the sixth book I list for this year that did so.
From this distance of 56 years, I remember nothing at all about this book. I don't remember if I was consciously choosing Pulitzer Prize winning books at the time or whether I picked this book in my usual way - starting at the 'A's in the fiction section of the local public library and reading all of the spines through to the end of the 'Z's. There was probably something of both. My guess now is that I liked the book and would probably like it again if I read it today. My literary tastes have evolved but I'm not sure that my interests have changed all that much.
| Author | Shakespeare, Willaim |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1597 |
| Number of Pages | 92 |
| Genres | Theater play |
| When Read | November 1963 |
This needs no abstract.
I think I read this for a high school class.
| Author | Huxley, Aldous |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1944 |
| Number of Pages | 280 |
| Extras | |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 1963 |
This was a complex book with a 17 year old character confronting issues of growing up, sex, poetry, family, religion, values, politics, spirituality, and much else besides.
The above abstract is my summary of the reviews I read for the purpose of writing these notes. I remember nothing about the book, and I see why. Although I was interested in abstract ideas, they weren't the main focus of my adolescent reading. I still wanted some concrete plot in my books. I'm sure that I read the entire book and I'm sure I got something from it but, although it probably re-oriented some neurons in my brain, no overall impression remains - nothing like the influence of Island.
| Author | Shakespeare, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1602 |
| Number of Pages | 108 |
| Genres | Theater play |
| When Read | November 1963 |
Again, no abstract required.
I've probably read and seen this more often than any others of Shakespeare's plays. It is a favorite. It's possible I read it for a high school English class.
| Author | Uris, Leon |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City, NY: Doubleday |
| Copyright Date | 1961 |
| Number of Pages | 539 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II; Holocaust; Warsaw ghetto |
| When Read | December 1963 |
After completing Exodus Uris wrote this book that focuses more tightly on the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. A wealthy Jew built himself a multi-room underground shelter deep under the house at Mila 18, a street in Warsaw. It was discovered by the resistance fighters who moved the man and his wife into just one room and used the rest as a shelter and a base for dozens of resistance fighters. They fought for weeks before finally being tracked down and forced out, the survivors escaping as best they could, through the sewers.
I don't need to read reviews to recall this book. If Time Must Have a Stop is an abstract book of ideas, Mila 18 is a concrete book of good and evil, life and death, and dirt and blood. It was a long book and my memory of details is necessarily limited, but I remember a lot, fighting in the street, hiding in the bunker, facing starvation and poison gas, stifling a baby to keep its crying from betraying their location in the sewers. The images were powerful.
Uris' book is not the only book about the Warsaw ghetto. 24 years after reading this one I read John Hersey's earlier The Wall. I also found something on the Internet known as The Stroop Report. Stroop was the commander of the Nazi troops charged with liquidating the ghetto and this document was his report to his superiors. One thing I learned from Stroop was that the loss of German and their allied troops was trivial compared to losses among the Jews, but another was that non-Jewish Polish communists attacked the Germans from outside the ghetto in order to support the uprising. It was a brave, sacrificial gesture that needs to be known about by more people.
If I remember correctly, always a question at my current age, I was sick and home from school when I read one of Uris' books. It may have been Exodus, or it may have been this one. I read from waking up until going to sleep, finishing 400 or so pages in one day. For a slow reader like me that was quite an achievement and indicated a deep involvement in the story. I don't think I've matched it since then.
| Author | Jones, James |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Scribner |
| Copyright Date | 1951 |
| Number of Pages | 861 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | December 1963 |
Set in Pearl Harbor in 1941, the novel tracks Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, a former welterweight boxer, who is assigned to an Army company run by Captain Holmes, a commander who is determined to have the best boxing company in the army. However there's a problem, Prewitt refuses to box. For the next ten or so months, until the attack that starts the war, Prewitt is physically and psychologically tortured by the commander to force him to box. It doesn't work. Prew is too strong and too stubborn to yield.
A very fine movie was made of this book starring Montgomery Clift as Prewitt, Burt Lancaster as the company First Sergeant, Frank Sinatra as a private soldier devoted to Prewitt, and many other fine actors and actresses.
I remember the story quite well, probably because I saw the movie on TV more than once, and because the first time I saw it the novel was fresh enough in my mind to judge that the movie, although it could hardly portray all 861 pages of the novel, was still a very accurate condensation of the story.
Like everyone else who read the book or watched the movie, I hated Captain Holmes, Sergeants Galovitch and Fatso Judson, and loved the First Sergeant and the two privates, who both cared more for their pride and dignity than for any harm that could be inflicted upon them.
Jones didn't get a Pulitzer for this book but he did win the National Book Award in 1952.