The following is my own list of the fifty most important and influential books published in the field of American literature since the end of World War II. Most of the giants of the first half of the twentieth century were either dead by then or had already produced the main corpus of their works. There were, however, three poets of enormous importance in the years before the war, who continued to publish books that have been so deeply influential that they must perforce lead the list. The three men I refer to are Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky. I place them at the head of the list, which is otherwise arranged in alphabetical order.
EZRA POUND The Pisan Cantos New Directions (New York, 1948). These form part of his major work, The Cantos, and are perhaps the strongest and most controversial section of the entire work.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS Paterson. This long poem was published separately in five parts, in successive volumes, by New Directions in 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, and 1958, and subsequently reprinted in 1963 in one volume that also contained unfinished fragments of a sixth section. The impact of Williams on new poets is becoming more widespread as the influence of Eliot declines. Williams’ first fame rested mainly on his miniature vignettes, but his main opus, Paterson, while an amalgam, is much more accessible to the general reader than are Pound’s Cantos or Zukofsky’s A.
LOUIS ZUKOFSKY A. Issued, like Pound’s and Williams’ long works, serially, over a period of years between 1959 and 1975 (A 1—12 Origin Press 1959; A 13—21 Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1969; A 24 Grossman Publishers, 1962; A 22—23 Grossman Publishers, 1975), the complete work was released in one volume by the University of California Press in 1979. Zukofsky, acknowledged as a peer by both Pound and Williams, is almost totally unknown to the general American and British public. However, his influence on the younger poets, particularly those of the Black Mountain School (Creeley, Duncan, Niedecker, et al.) is widely recognized and acknowledged. He is slowly but surely gaining a wider reading audience.
EDWARD ALBEE The Zoo Story, which first appeared in the March/ April 1960 issue of Evergreen Review, and had its first performance in Berlin, catapulted Albee into immediate fame and launched him on his meteoric career. He is now firmly established in the ranks of major American playwrights along with Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller.
JOHN ASHBERY Some Trees, which was Ashbery’s second book, and appeared in the Yale Younger Poets’ Series in 1956, remains Ashbery’s most accessible and appealing work. His recent receipt of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award confirms the promise of this early work.
JOHN BARTH The Sot-Weed Factor. Published in 1960 by Doubleday and Company, this was Barth’s third novel, and the one on which his fame mainly rests. He is not a ground breaker, but rather a revitalizer of the technique of digression upon digression within a single narrative framework, virtually abandoned in literature since the death of Laurence Sterne. For collectors, this particular book has the added bonus of a dust jacket that is one of the earliest published works of Edward Gorey, now feverishly collected in his own right.
JOHN BERRYMAN Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (illustrated by Ben Shahn; New York, 1956). One of the best poets to come out of the Kenyon College group, Berryman gained the Pulitzer Prize late in his career for his Dream Songs. However, his best work seems to me to belong to his earlier period. This is his fifth book.
ELIZABETH BISHOP Questions of Travel (New York, 1965). Miss Bishop was a meticulous worker, never rushing into print until each poem had been finely polished to a gemlike luster. As a result, she issued a book no more often than every few years, but made them so marvelous that it is virtually impossible to single out one as being better than another. However, this title contains much work that is representative of her very best.
JANE BOWLES Two Serious Ladies (New York, 1942). In her tragically short life Mrs. Bowles produced only three books—a play, a group of short stories, and this novel, which while not widely known has attained a cult status. Its artistry is self-evident; it is a book one returns to periodically with ever increasing admiration.
PAUL BOWLES The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (New York, 1950). Bowles has been producing splendid work for nearly three decades and may well be our most underrated author. He has long been a resident of Tangier, and most of his work has a Moroccan background. He is at his best in the short-story form. What is perhaps his best story, “Pages from Cold Point,” appears in this volume.
WILLIAM BURROUGHS The Naked Lunch (Paris, 1959). Burroughs’ impact on modern fiction technique is undoubtedly the most widespread of any postwar writer’s. His “cut-up” method, while far from accepted, has revolutionized narrative writing more than anything since the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses. This seminal work, his second book, was issued in Paris in the now famous Traveller’s Companion series of the Olympia Press.
TRUMAN CAPOTE The Grass Harp (New York, 1951). Capote, at the beginning of his career, was almost universally regarded as little more than a picturesque and slightly decadent aesthete. However, since the publication of In Cold Blood, the critics have acknowledged his gifts both as a consummate storyteller and as a fine stylist, probably the best we now have. The Grass Harp, both as a novel and in its later play version, illustrates Capote’s gifts superbly.
TRUMAN CAPOTE A Christmas Memory, which first appeared as a piece to fill out Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1958, was not widely known until its television adaptation gave it a life of its own, making it a serious competitor of Dickens’ Christmas classic. It is to my mind the finest piece of evocative writing produced in America since World War II.
GREGORY CORSO Gasoline (San Francisco, 1958). By now, the so-called Beat poets are not only here to stay, they have almost become establishment. Their works are being taught in university courses, and many of them have become part-time professors. Corso, who in his private life in many ways resembles Rimbaud, has not produced a great volume of work, but has gained the respect of his peers to an extraordinary degree. Allen Ginsberg once proclaimed that Corso was “the one true poet of us all.” Gasoline, his third publication, shows him at his strongest.
ROBERT CREELEY A Form of Women (New York, 1959). Creeley is one of the major poets of the now famous Black Mountain School, founded by Charles Olson. His work has been uniformly characterized by a spareness and terseness that no doubt reflect his New England upbringing and clearly follow his own personal speech rhythms. His recurrent theme is that of the love of women, and this book, from his mid-period, is thus far most representative.
DIANE DI PRIMA Memoirs of a Beatnik (New York, 1969). Beyond question the leading female member of the Beat group, di Prima is both a poet and a playwright of extreme sensitivity and perception, and one whose reputation is still growing. Despite the high quality of her poetry at its best, I have selected this volume of memoirs because of its overwhelming honesty, and also because it is the only book I have encountered that presents a totally accurate and at the same time moving account of the Beat period.
ROBERT DUNCAN Selected Poems (San Francisco, 1959). Along with Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov, Duncan is one of the triumvirate of Black Mountain poets who are the principal disciples of Charles Olson. Duncan is the most erudite of the group, and his work possesses a richness and density unequaled anywhere else in contemporary poetry. The body of his work is impressive, rendering a choice difficult. This early collection, however, shows him at his best.
WILLIAM EVERSON Known as Brother Antoninus during a long period as a Dominican friar, he has now returned to secular life and is producing work again under his original name. He actually started publishing before World War II, but the bulk of his poetry has been written in the period after it. The major influence on him has been Robinson Jeffers, and his The Poet Is Dead (San Francisco, 1964), a moving tribute to Jeffers, is his strongest and most impassioned book. Like Jeffers, his main preoccupation has been the conflict between man’s physical nature and his spiritual aspirations.
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI A Coney Island of the Mind (New York, 1958). Ferlinghetti is a first-rate poet whose work has been overshadowed by his importance as the original champion and first publisher of many young poets who are now among the best known in America. Operating from his City Lights Book Shop in San Francisco, he was a major factor in the San Francisco Renaissance, with his “Pocket Poets Series” bringing to public attention such figures as Duncan, Corso, Levertov, and most famous of all, Allen Ginsberg, whose epochal Howl first appeared in this series. A Coney Island of the Mind, Ferlinghetti’s second book, has been one of the best-selling books of poetry ever issued in the United States. In the twenty years since its publication it has never gone out of print.
ALLEN GINSBERG Howl (San Francisco, 1956). Without any doubt, Ginsberg is the figure in postwar poetry, both here and abroad. The publication of Howl marks a watershed in American poetry as definitely as did Leaves of Grass in 1855. Virtually every American poet now writing has been influenced by Ginsberg’s modern adaptation of the long, loose line of Whitman, whose spiritual and literary heir he is.
RANDALL JARRELL Little Friend, Little Friend (New York, 1945). Another of the Kenyon group, Jarrell’s comparatively early death robbed us of one of our best talents. He was both a superb poet and a critic of exquisite acumen, as well as a witty novelist. “The Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner,” one of Jarrell’s most famous poems and perhaps the best antiwar poem ever published, appears in this early volume.
RANDALL JARRELL Jarrell is another author who must be represented by two books. His only novel, Pictures from an Institution (New York, 1954), is based on his teaching experiences at Bennington College. For sheer wit and inventiveness, it has had no equal since Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson.
JAMES JONES From Here to Eternity (New York, 1951). While his later work tends to be repetitive and verbose, this first novel deserves its fame as the best American novel to come out of World War II.
LEROI JONES Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note (New York, 1961). Although somewhat sidetracked recently from poetry by his black nationalist activities, Jones (who now prefers to be known as Amiri Baraka) is a poet and playwright of exceptional qualities. This first book of poetry introduced him as the finest black poet since Langston Hughes.
JACK KEROUAC On the Road (New York, 1957). As with Ginsberg among the poets, Kerouac became the novelist of the immediate postwar world. This was his second novel, and it brought him instant and lasting fame. It became the vade mecum for the youth of all countries of the Western world, and has had probably a greater impact on its readers than any other work of fiction in this century.
GALWAY KINNELL Body Rags (Boston, 1968). Kinnell is a younger poet whose reputation is steadily increasing, whose technical accomplishments are staggering, and whose work continues to gain in strength and intensity. This volume contains two of his very best poems—“The Bear” and “The Porcupine.”
JOHN KNOWLES A Separate Peace (London, 1959). Published in 1960 in the United States, Knowles’ first novel bore the endorsement of both E. M. Forster and Truman Capote, the latter an author seldom given to praising the work of a potential competitor. The book deals with the aches and pains of adolescence and the loss of innocence, familiar themes, but in this case handled in a manner unmatched in recent years. To my mind, A Separate Peace is far superior to that other epic of adolescence, Catcher in the Rye.
JERZY KOSINSKI The Painted Bird (Boston, 1965). Polish-born Kosinski, now a naturalized American, writes in English, parallelling the practice of his compatriot Joseph Conrad. His first novel is a brilliant tour de force of terror and horror.
HARPER LEE To Kill a Mockingbird (Philadelphia, 1960). The author’s only book to date is one of the most poignant and moving evocations of childhood ever published. It has no peer in the latter half of this century. Interestingly, her childhood companion Truman Capote appears as a character in this book, as she did in his first book, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
DENISE LEVERTOV Here and Now (San Francisco, 1957). Some years back Kenneth Rexroth termed Denise Levertov “the finest female poet in America under the age of forty,” obviously meaning to except her elders, Marianne Moore and Louise Bogan, now both deceased. This is her second book, showing her clearly to be a major poet from the very beginning.
ROBERT LOWELL Life Studies (New York, 1959). Lowell, the acknowledged heir of T. S. Eliot, was the best known of the “academic” poets (as opposed to Beat poets). Much of his work betrays his personal inner conflict and turmoil. His fourth book represents an important stylistic departure from his earlier work, and probably strikes the best balance between his private agonies and his lyric gifts.
MICHAEL MCCLURE Dark Brown (San Francisco, 1961). McClure may be the most interesting of all the San Francisco poets because he dares more than any other. Of course, he is not always successful, but he is never dull, and improbable ventures often yield fresh delights. Dark Brown, an early collection, shows all of his best traits.
CARSON MCCULLERS The Member of the Wedding (Boston, 1946). Although the body of writing she left us at the time of her early death is relatively small, McCullers is assured a permanent position in American literature. This novel, later successfully transferred to the stage, is one of her best works.
NORMAN MAILER The Naked and the Dead (New York, 1948). In his first novel, before he became an instant expert on almost anything topical, Mailer displayed a new style with a telegraphically direct impact.
JAMES MERRILL Nights and Days (New York, 1966). Merrill is that rarest of all literary phenomena, the poet who starts out quietly and steadily improves and grows with each succeeding volume instead of thinning out as the years go by. A recent Pulitzer Prize elevated him to the forefront of American poets, a place he has honored by his unfailing accuracy of eye combined with an exceptional grace and felicity of style.
w. s. MERWIN The Miner’s Pale Children (New York, 1970). Merwin belongs to no school or group, making his own way in every sense of the word. He will not accept teaching jobs, believing that poetry should support the poet. Luckily, this has sometimes required him to turn to translating, and he has brought us superb versions of many works, particularly from the Spanish, that we would not otherwise have had. The book cited here is prose and appeared the same year as his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Carriers of Ladders. It is a book of parables and is for me his finest work. It will remain in your mind for the rest of your life.
ARTHUR MILLER Death of a Salesman (New York, 1949). For a man who is generally conceded to be one of the century’s leading playwrights, Miller’s output is relatively small. It is nonetheless excellent, and by general consensus this heartrending portrayal of the tragic defeat of a man is a modern classic.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lolita (Paris, 1955). An American by naturalization, Nabokov wrote in English during the latter half of his life. His fondness for puns and word games sometimes carried on in two or even three languages simultaneously are a never-ending challenge to readers. Lolita, with its sensational theme of adolescent sexuality, catapulted him into fame; but it is also an extremely clever, subtle, and profound commentary on American culture.
HOWARD NEMEROV Guide to the Ruins (New York, 1950). Nemerov is a man of multiple talents—a superb poet, a good novelist, an excellent short-story teller, and a knowledgeable critic. Of his several volumes of poetry, all of them excellent, I personally prefer the book cited, if only because it was the first I read and it therefore made the strongest impact upon me.
FRANK O’HARA Meditations in an Emergency (New York, 1957). O’Hara’s untimely death in a car accident robbed us of one of the best of the group known as the New York School of poets. He was one of the very few modern poets since Auden who could write good light verse that was not merely lightweight. Some of his best work appears in this book.
CHARLES OLSON The Maximus Poems. Appearing in installments in 1953, 1960, 1961, and 1969, The Maximus Poems are Olson’s ongoing long poem. He is the patriarch of postwar poetry, and his position in many respects parallels that of Pound between the two wars. He was the founder of the Black Mountain School, and as a critic propounded the projective verse theory of poetry. The figure of “Maximus” is Olson’s persona in this long work. It directly influenced many of the major poets now writing.
SYLVIA PLATH The Colossus, and Other Poems (London, 1960). The fact that Sylvia Plath has become the object of cult worship since her suicide in no way negates the fact that her poetry shows extraordinary power. Her first book of poems contains work of such emotional intensity that it is almost impossible to read more than one or two poems at a sitting.
SYLVIA PLATH The Bell Jar (London, 1963). Originally published under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas, this harrowing novel was tragically prophetic. It chronicles a young woman’s attempts, eventually successful, to commit suicide. The control Plath displays in this book is nothing short of marvelous.
JAMES PURDY Malcolm (New York, 1959). Purdy, never destined to be a popular writer like Updike, Roth, or O’Hara, may very likely endure much longer than the commercially successful novelists, despite the fact that the content of many of his books seems almost grotesque. The small-town characters who are his specialty are genuine, and his stories have the unmistakable ring of truth, disquieting and troubling as it may be. Malcolm is his third book, his first novel, and remains unsurpassed as yet in his work.
J. D. SALINGER Nine Stories (Boston, 1953). Despite the enormous popularity of Catcher in the Rye, I feel that his short stories are Salinger’s strongest claim to fame. In them, his depiction of a segment of middle-class American life has an accuracy that will rank him with Sherwood Anderson. Nine Stories, his second book, is incidentally also the scarcest of them all.
GARY SNYDER Regarding Wave (Iowa City, 1969). Snyder is one of the most controlled poets now practicing. A longtime Zen Buddhist, he spent many years in the monasteries of Kyoto. This left an indelible impression on his work, which combines in a unique manner the finest traditions of Japanese delicacy of phrasing with the vigor and directness of the American idiom. Regarding Wave—published first in a limited signed edition, and later available in a commercial edition—shows him at the height of his powers.
DIANE WAKOSKI The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems (New York, 1971). While not an active feminist, Wakoski in her work displays the best results of women’s liberation. She manages to convey women’s feelings accurately without being either maudlin or didactic, and her poems are vigorous and direct.
JOHN WIENERS Ace of Pentacles (New York, 1964). One of the Black Mountain poets, and direct disciple of both Olson and Duncan, Wieners enjoys the recognition of his peers to an extraordinary degree. His recent work has been marred by recurrent personal problems, but of this early book, his second, Denise Levertov remarked that it could be used to show visitors from another planet what the word “poetry” meant.
RICHARD WILBUR Things of This World (New York, 1956). Wilbur is a man of dazzling wit and brilliance, who in addition to being one of our very best poets is a skilled translator (especially of Molière), a successful Broadway songwriter (Candide), and a competent critic and editor. His multiple levels of meanings are absolutely astounding, and he has a verve and humor rarely seen in this or any age. This volume was his third, and won him the Pulitzer Prize.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS A Streetcar Named Desire (New York, 1947). Certainly one of the greatest dramatists of the twentieth century, Williams considers this play his own favorite. It ranks by all standards as one of the finest plays ever written by an American.