1938: Literature, American

Fiction.

It would be difficult to determine from a survey of the fiction of 1938 and of its reception at the hands of the American reading public what were that public's chief interests and predilections. The choice of subjects was of the utmost diversity; past and present were covered, and there was a disposition, whatever was treated, to treat it at length. In the most delicate yet mordant satire of the year, The Journey of Tapiola, Robert Nathan makes his hero, a terrier who attends literary teas under the sofa, declare that the consensus of opinion on such occasions was that success is impossible under a thousand pages. In this respect the influence of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind — Pulitzer prize winner of 1938 and still the most widely-read book in America — yet is strong, and the success of Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse yet remembered, though Mr. Allen's novel this year, Action at Aquila, was a comparatively brief evocation of the events and overtones of a typical Civil War battle.

The more significant of the short novels tended toward experimentalism in the discovery and expression of organic rhythms of contemporary life. The influence of the short story, which has for some time past been enjoying something like a renaissance in America, is already discernible in the work of younger writers; and it is even possible, without drawing too heavily upon prophecy, to say that this influence may be comparable to that exerted by the experimental theaters just before the War, which, by putting on programs of one-act plays, brought new blood and new life into the American theater.

The Nobel Prize for literature went in 1938 to an American author, Pearl Buck, who, in her novel for the year, This Proud Heart, turned for the first time to the American scene. The outstanding success of the season in American fiction was The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, a sympathetic study of a boy's growing-up in the Florida hammock country, which by its deep understanding of human nature won the affection of all ages. All This, and Heaven Too, by Rachel Field, was another popular favorite, based on the career of a French governess brought in real life to trial in a French murder case famous in 1847, marrying in America, and at length presiding over a Gramercy Park salon. Of long novels besides this, one may note Dynasty of Death, by Taylor Cald, well, about a munitions family; and the historical '. . . And Tell of Time,' by Laura Krey, about Reconstruction in Texas after the Civil War. Of novels concerned with social and family relations, mention must be made of Bow Down to Wood and Stone, by Josephine Lawrence, a study of the seamy side of sacrifice; The Great American Novel, by Clyde Brion Davis, a cross-section of the life of a man who wanted to write this much-mentioned work; Frost Flower, by Helen Hull, a domestic drama; The Daughter, by Bessie Breuer, a study of divorce: Concert Pitch, by Elliot Paul, and The Wrong World, by Louis Paul, musical novels; Hope of Heaven, John O'Hara's story of present-day California; Kindling, by Neville Shute, about a shipping town in the depression; Light of Other Days, by Elizabeth Corbett, concerning an Irish family in America; May Flavin, by Myron Brinig, tale of an Irish girl in Chicago and New York; Edna Ferber's ironic short stories of contemporary life, Nobody's in Town; These Bars of Flesh, by T. S. Stribling, a Southerner's experience when he comes North to get a degree; This Passion Never Dies, by Sophus Winther, about Danish immigrants in Nebraska; What People Said, by W. L. White, about a financial scandal in the Middle West; Young Man with a Horn, by Dorothy Baker, a jazz musician's life story remarkable for its command of a new technique; The Trial of Helen McLeod, by Alice Beal Parsons, a fictionized account of a famous case in real life; To the Market Place, by Berry Fleming, about young moderns who come to New York; Wisdom's Gate, by Margaret Ayer Barnes; and Mr. Despondency's Daughter, by Anne Parrish, studies of modern domestic problems; Little Steel, by Upton Sinclair, concerned with labor battles; The Summer Soldier, by Leane Zugsmith, in which liberals investigate a strike; Bricks without Straw, by Charles Norris, two generations of revolt against parental domination; Fox in the Cloak, by Harry Lee, a first novel of the struggles of a young artist; Young Doctor Galahad, by Elizabeth Seifert, which won the 'First Novel' prize with a study of medical ethics in a small town; and No Star is Loss, by James T. Farrell, a continuation of his series on Chicago tenement-house life.

Historical novels and studies of character against a background of the past were prominent in the year's book lists. The posthumous publication of Edith Wharton's Buccaneers was the most important event in this field, showing the first great invasion of English society by American wealth and beauty in the seventies; it was left unfinished at her death, but with it were her own careful notes from which a conclusion may be readily imagined. The Fathers, by the poet Allen Tate, showed the conflict of old and new ideals in a Southern family of the fifties; The General's Lady, by Esther Forbes, was the tragedy of a brilliant and possessive Tory beauty in post-Revolutionary New England; The Start of the Road, by John Erskine, was a fictional reconstruction of Walt Whitman's youth; The Single Hound, by May Sartain, recalled another great American poet; The Dark Command, by W. R. Burnett, depicted tragedy on the old Kansas frontier; Free Land, by Rose Wilder Lane, told the epic struggle of young settlers against the stress of life on a claim in Dakota; The Unvanquished, by William Faulkner, was laid in the latter days of the Civil War; The Handsome Road, by Gwen Bristow, described the same war as it reached the lives of two women; Three Women, by Hazel Hawthorne, was a story of New England during the Civil War; Mural for a Later Day, by Kathleen Pawle, was concerned with the early days of the Swedish colony on the Delaware; 'Farewell, Toinette,' by Bertita Harding, contributed a romantic episode in the early life of Marie Antoinette; Renown, by Frank O. Hough, was a novelized version of Benedict Arnold's career; and Stanley Vestal's Revolt on the Border was laid on the Santa Fe Trail in 1846.

The novel of fantasy was represented by Robert Nathan's graceful Winter in April, as well as by his shorter novel already noted; The Noise of Their Wings, by MacKinlay Kantor, a rich man's determination to bring back the nearly extinct wild dove; A Stranger Came to Port, by Max Miller, a business man's unexpected holiday: Dawn in Lyonesse, by Mary Ellen Chase, tragedy in Cornwall; and Branch Cabell's The King in His Counting House, a story of a mythical kingdom in Renaissance Italy.

The regional novel ranged from Cranberry Red, by Edward B. Garside, winter in the Cape Cod region, to Burro Alley, by Edwin Corle, a cafe in the Southwest; through Black Is My True Love's Hair, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts, in Kentucky; First the Blade, by May Merrick Miller, in the San Joaquin Valley, California; Millbrook, by Della Lutes, in the Middle West, The Windbreak, by Garreta Busey, in the Illinois frontier; Wait Till Spring, Bandini, by John Fante, a violently realistic presentation of Italian life in Colorado; and Uncle Tom's Children, by Richard Wright, distinguished stories of the Negro in a white man's civilization that won the author a prize in a Federal Writers' Project competition.

Important short stories of the year appeared in collections: Ernest Hemingway's The Fifth Column and 49 Stories, containing all his published stories and a play; William Saroyan's The Trouble with Tigers; John Steinbeck's The Long Valley; Bowleg Bill, by Jeremiah Digges; and the collection of Novellas, compiled by the editors of the magazine Story, called The Flving Yorkshireman, which included stories by American writers.

Biography.

In the biography of the year there have been noteworthy examples both of the type based on source material and meant for reference not only now but in time to come, and of the popularized life, intended for the immediate enlightenment of the general reader. There were even a few biographies, of which Carl Van Doren's Benjamin Franklin was the outstanding example, that qualified under both heads, and while earning widespread gratitude from the general reader will remain for the further enrichment of American scholarship. The Pulitzer Prize for biography was divided between Odell Shepard's Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott and Marquis James's Andrew Jackson, both of which were readable and reliable. There was an unusual supply of books by men and women yet living who have lived long enough and worked with such valuable results in some field of American civilization as to provide, by their autobiographies, an intimate history of the development of this civilization in these fields over a long period of years. Thus, Margaret Sanger; An Autobiography; Music Is My Faith, by David Mannes; Changing the Sky Line, by the architect Paul Starrett; The World Is My Garden, by David Fairchild of the Department of Agriculture and The Education of an American, by the veteran newspaper man Mark Sullivan, author of Our Times, are contributions to an understanding of America in the making rather than the expressions of purely personal reactions.

Another distinctive feature of the year was the number of eye-witness accounts of contemporary events, and the number of memories of living witnesses of events in the past; books difficult to classify as autobiographies, though in the first person, for they partake also of the nature of travel literature or of history. To the former group belongs the most distinguished piece of pure literature of our year, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's factual account of airline routing and its attendant emotions in Listen! the Wind. To the latter belong the many accounts of newspaper correspondents or other eye-witnesses of history in the making abroad, such as the record of service on two fronts, in Ethiopia and in Spain, that of H. L. Mathews of The New York Times in Two Wars and More to Come, and Janet Riesenberg's poignant Dancer in Spain. The call for such books was strong enough to bring out some too weak for survival, but others have at least a chance of it.

The biographies and personal memories of the year included Philip C. Jessup's authorized biography. Elihu Root; Goya, by Charles G. Poore: Sailor on Horseback, a romantic account of the life of Jack London, by Irving Stone; a fine critical biography of Emily Dickinson, George H. Whicher's This Was a Poet: Thomas Paine. Laberator, by Frank Smith; William Allen White's A Puritan in Babylon, a study of Calvin Coolidge that is also an economic history of his administration:; Young Longfellow, based on the poet's letters, by Lawrence Thompson; The Family of the Barrett, the result of exhaustive researches by Jeannette Marks into the Jamaica background of the Barretts and the Brownings; Katharine Anthony's Louisa May Alcott; Louise Ware's Jacob Riis;: Carl Crow's Master Kung, a life of Confucius; The Education of a Diplomat; Hugh Wilson's memoirs of foreign service; His Excellency George Clinton, by E. Wilder Spaulding; The House of Guise, by Henry Dwight Sedgwick; Dana and the New York Sun, by Candare Stone; Eagle Forgotten. Harry Barnard's life of Altgeld; My Father, by Paul Moody, intimate personal memories of the famous evangelist; Railroadman, by Chauncey Del French, the career of Henry Clay French as told to his son; Hermann Hagedorn's personal memories in Edwin Arlington Robinson; and Eunice Tietjens's The World at my Shoulder; Ludwig Bemelmans's vivacious Life Class; Behind the Ballots, the political memories of James A. Farley; The Market Place, by Alexander Dana Noyes, the memories of a financial editor; Unforgotten Years, by Logan Pearsall Smith; the Journals of Bronson Alcott, edited by Odell Shepard; the Letters of Henry Adams, 1892-1918, edited by Worthington C. Ford, and the Letters of Lincoln Steffens, edited by Ella Winter and Granville Hicks.

To these must be added the searching study of polar solitude and its effect on the human spirit so frankly set forth in Richard Byrd's Alone; and two reports on American life as seen from the outside, Stoyan Christowe's This Is My Country, the autobiographical record of a Bulgarian-born, American by choice, and the experiences in this country of Vera Brittain, author of Testament of Youth, as described in Thrice a Stranger.

An interesting sidelight on American reading habits is afforded by the fact that this year a separate classification could be made for books about doctors. It is apparently no longer necessary for a physician's memories to deal with a fashionable clientele or a farflung travel experience; one of the most popular biographies of the year was The Horse and Buggy Doctor of A. E. Herzler. In fiction, too, the Hippocratic Oath determined the course of more than one plot, the leading novel in this field being the already mentioned winner of the opulent 'First Novel' prize.

History.

The Pulitzer prize for history was awarded in 1938 to Road to Reaction, by Paul Herman Buck. Several important contributions to the documentation of American history were made, notably the fourth volume of The Colonial Period of American History, by Charles McLean Andrews, continuing a distinguished work and dealing with England's commercial and colonial policies; the complete and unexpurgated Diary of the French Revolution kept by Gouverneur Morris: The Anatomy of Revolution, by Crane Brinton, a search for common factors in the American Revolution, the French, the Russian, and the English Revolution; Democracy in the Making, by Hugh Russell Fraser, on the clash of principles and privilege in the Jackson Tyler era; The Senate of the United States: Its History and Practice, by George H. Haynes; Flight into Oblivion, by A. J. Hanna, tracing the flight of the Confederate Cabinet after the fall of Richmond; Semmes of the Alabama, by W. Adolph Roberts, an historical biography; Fort Samter, by DuBose Heyward and Herbert Sass; and The Story of Reconstruction, by Robert Selph Henry; and America Goes to War by Charles C. Tansill.

The surveys of American history in the light of some special subject were headed by Roger Burlingame's March of the Iron Men, American history as shaped by inventions: Revolt U. S. A., by Lamar Middleton, our past risings in armed resistance: The Politicos, by Matthew Josephson, professional polities from 1865 to the twentieth century; Flint Spears, the story of the rodeo, by Will James; Holy Old Mackinate, Stewart Holbrook's history of the American lumberjack; Drivers Up, by Dwight Akers, a history of American harness racing; and Indian Cavalcade, by Clark Wissler, a picture of the old-time Indian, his culture and his arts. A History of Mexico by Henry B. Parkes extends from earliest times to 1938: Latin America by F. A. Kirkpatrick, from Columbus to the Conference of 1936.

The Rivers of America series, which combines history and vivid narrative, this year received valuable additions in Powder River, by Struthers Burt; Suwannee River by Cecile Hulse Matchat; and Kennebce by Robert P. T. Coffin. The Pursuit of Happiness, by Herbert Agar, was a history of the Democratic party. We had The Evolation of Finance Capitalism by George W. Edwards; the History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott, brought out its second and third volumes, 1850-1885; and Herbert Asbury's Sucker's Progress spread for us a panoramic view of the history of gambling in America, from the Colonies to Canfield…

Seeing America first seemed to start off in a southwesterly direction; we had Westward; High, Low, and Dry, by Dorothy Hogner, New England artists 15,000 miles in a flivver through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California; and Cactus Forest, by Zephine Humphrey, in which a New England author winters in an Arizona desert camp. An important source book for the student of overland travel narratives and Southwestern history, Wah to Yah and the Taos Trail, by Lewis Hector Garrard, with added biographical and historical data, was brought back to print after years of retirement.

Essays.

This has not been a year to encourage contemplation or the publication of books for its encouragement, and the essay has been but slightly represented.

Philosopher's Holiday, by Irwin Edman, one of the few such books gathered the memories and comments of a college professor on life in the world and the university. A vivid volume of Profiles from the New Yorker gave some twenty character sketches, as much essay as biography, of famous or funny folk. John Mason Brown embodied ten years' experience in playgoing in Two on the Aisle. ... Maule's Curse by Yvor Winters, essays on classic American literature, evaluated earlier writers. The humorous essays included Frank Suilivan's A Pearl in Every Oyster, Cornelia Otis Skinner's Dithers and Jitters, Robert Benddey's After 1903 — What? and My Sister Eileen, by Ruth McKenney, which might be included in the fiction section as well.

Drama.

Without impinging upon the subject of drama in America it may be permissible to call attention to the entrance of the contemporary stage into literature through the publication — now sometimes so swift as almost to coincide with production — of the play in book form. It is now possible for readers out of the range of actual theater going to get the full text and stage directions, often with photographs of scenes, of almost any play in production on Broadway. Some of the American plays published this year have been: The Cradle Will Rock, an experimental play by Marc Blitzstein: Susan and God, by Rachel Crothers; The Ghost of Yankee Doodle, by Sydney Howard; Golden Boy, by Clifford Odets; the dramatization of Lawrence Edward Watkin's novel On Borrowed Time, by Paul Osborn; the remarkably successful experiment in stage production, Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, which won the Pulitzer drama prize; the blank verse play Robin Landing, by Stanley Young; a robust treatment of the life and death of Jesse James in Missouri Legend by Elizabeth Ginty; Wine of Choice, by S. N. Behrman; and the play of Ernest Hemingway already noted. W. J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. edited a valuable reference collection. The Complete Greek Drama; Margaret Mayorga. The Best One-Act Plays of 1937; and Burns Mantle, in his annual volume of Best Plays, brought scenes from leading stage successes and fully-informed year-books of production.

Poetry.

The dramatic narrative poem At Midnight on the 31st of March, by Josephine Young Case, struck a responsive chord in the American heart by reason of timely subject and appropriate treatment. A feature of the year was the publication of so many 'collected poems' by writers whose work had become well known through single volumes. The Complete Collected Poems of William Carlas Williams; … Selected Poetry, by Robinson Jeffers, edited by Una Jeffers; Collected Poems, by E. E. Cummings; Selected Poems, by John Gould Fletcher; Collected Poems, by Genevieve Taggard, by their significance led this movement.

Of single volumes, Robert P. Tristram Coffin's Maine Ballads. Lindley Hulbell's Winter-burnings Gates, a group of sensitive religious poems by Sister Mary Madeleva, leading Catholic lyrist of this country: Ezra Pound's continuation of his work in The Fifth Decad of Cantos; Holene Mullins's Streams from the Source; Marina Wister's Mexican scenes in Fantasy and Fugue; Name of Life, by Marjoric Alien Seiffert; M. one thousand autobiographical sonnets by Merrill Moore; The Five Fold Mesh, by Ben Belitt; A Glad Day, the first book of poems by the novelist Kay Boyles Donald Davidson's Lee in the Mountains, poems of the Civil War; Dead Reckoning, by Kenneth Fearing; and the characteristically humorous, satiric verse of Ogden Nash in I'm a Stranger Here Myself, stand out among the year's publications.

Children's Books.

Children's books, long taken more seriously in the United States than elsewhere, in 1938 reached a peak of production amazing as to numbers, and showing in general a level of excellence highly to be commended. The long cooperation of editors, publishers, librarians, and practically all cultural activities concerning children, in the annual observance of Children's Book Week in November, has been for two years past reinforced by the Children's Spring Book Festival conducted by the New York Herald-Tribune in May, to spread the publication of children's books over the year, encouraging this by two prizes for the best books for younger and for older children published in the spring. The award of the important Newbery Medal this year was to The White Stag, by Kate Seredy, a sympathetic presentation of the great drive of the Huns into Europe, in which Attila was represented as culture-hero. The new Caldecott Medal for the best picture-book, also presented by Frederic Melcher, was awarded to Dorothy Lathrop's ingratiating Animals of the Bible, whose text was taken from the Scriptures by Helen Fish. The Herald Tribune Spring Festival prizes were won by The Hobbit, a fantasy for younger children by J. R. Tolkien, a famous authority on Anglo-Saxon in Oxford University, and Iron Duke, a college story for older boys by John B. Tunis. The Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation Prize went to 'Hello, the Boat!' an historical story of Ohio River trade by Phyllis Crawford.

The most striking characteristics of children's books for the year were the amount and quality of humor, the excellence of the biography for younger readers, a type which has in America arrived at a technique of its own well worth attention by those writing for beginners of any age, and the development of the last sort of child's story read by children before they take altogether to adult fiction, the vocational novel.

The popularity of child stars in the moving-picture world caused a rush to children's literature, both classic and contemporary, for material to be used in scripts; and the two characters most popular with all ages the country over were without doubt both taken from children's books: Snow White, from Grimm's Fairy Tales, and the non-combatant bull, hero of Munro Leaf's spectacular success of last year, Ferdinand. Mr. Leaf's contributions to this year's gayety included Wee Gillis, which, like Ferdinand, was illustrated by Robert Lawson, and Manners Can Be Fun, with his own drawings. Other children's books that adults also found amusing included: Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard and Florence Atwater: Young Settler, by Phil Strong; and Mrs. Peregrine and the Yak, by Esther Burns.

The outstanding biographies for young people were Jeannette Eaton's Leader by Destiny, a stimulating and thorough-going life of Washington; a full-length portrait of Penn, by Janet Grey; and Hildegarde Hawthorne's The Happy Autocrat, a life of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The career stories that the United States now produces and consumes in such numbers cover by this time most of the fields of human activity. The best this year were both about nursing: Sue Barton: Visiting Nurse, by Helen Dore Boylston and Penny Marsh, Public Health Nurse, by Dorothy Deming, both from experience. The picture book of Mexican children and their pets, The Forest Pool, was a distinguished addition to illustrated books for younger children; and Elizabeth Enright's Thimble Summer, to the books for children around ten. The first book to present current events and their background in history to an audience of high school age. Windows on the World, by Kenneth Gould, proved to be both sound in statements and inspiring in tone. A more varied collection of books for young people than those offered to them in the United States this year would be hard to find.