Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

First posted 6/16/2020; updated 7/6/2020.

The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton

First Publication: 1920 Category: novel Sales: ?

Accolades:

About the Book: “The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s twelfth novel, initially serialized in four parts in the Pictorial Review magazine in 1920, and later released by D. Appleton and Company as a book in New York and in London. It…[was] the first novel written by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.” AZ “The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s.” AZ It is a “masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.” BN “This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life – or mercilessly destroy it.” BN Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon BN Barnes & Noble

First posted 6/16/2020.

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: 1918-2020

Pulitzer.org explains that the prize is given “for distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.” It is one of seven Pulitzer prizes given annually. The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, now for Fiction, was one of the inaugural awards when established in 1917. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2020: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) 2019: The Overstory by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton) 2018: Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company) 2017: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) 2016: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press) 2015: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner) 2014: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown) 2013: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (Random House) 2012: no award given 2011: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A.. Knopf) 2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press) 2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House) 2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books) 2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf) 2006: March by Geraldine Brooks (Viking) 2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar) 2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad/ HarperCollins) 2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar) 2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Alfred A. Knopf) 2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (Random House) 2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin) 1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin) 1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (Crown) 1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford (Alfred A. Knopf) 1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (Viking) 1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Charles Scribner's Sons) 1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (Henry Holt) 1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (Alfred A. Knopf) 1991: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (Alfred A. Knopf) 1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (Farrar) 1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf) 1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf) 1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (Alfred A. Knopf) 1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) 1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (Random House) 1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy (Viking) 1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Harcourt Brace) 1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (Knopf) 1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Louisiana State U. Press) 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (Little) 1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (Knopf) 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (Atlantic Monthly Press) 1977: no award given 1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (Viking) 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (McKay) 1974: no award given 1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (Random) 1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (Doubleday) 1971: no award given 1970: Collected Stories by Jean Stafford (Farrar) 1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (Harper) 1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (Random) 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (Farrar) 1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter (Harcourt) 1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (Random) 1964: no award given 1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner (Random) 1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (Little) 1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Lippincott) 1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (Doubleday) 1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (Doubleday) 1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee (McDowell, Obolensky) 1957: no award given 1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (World) 1955: A Fable by William Faulkner (Random) 1954: no award given 1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner) 1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (Doubleday) 1951: The Town by Conrad Richter (Knopf) 1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie (Sloane) 1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (Harcourt) 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (Macmillan) Pulitzer Prize for the Novel 1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (Harcourt) 1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (Knopf) 1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (Harper) 1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (Viking) 1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (Harcourt) 1941: no award given 1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Viking) 1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Scribner) 1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (Little) 1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (Macmillan) 1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (Harper) 1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (Simon & Schuster) 1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller (Harper) 1933: The Store by T. S. Stribling (Doubleday) 1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (John Day) 1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (Houghton) 1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge (Houghton) 1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (Bobbs) 1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (Boni) 1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (Stokes) 1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (Harcourt) 1925: So Big by Edna Ferber (Doubleday) 1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (Harper) 1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather (Knopf) 1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (Doubleday) 1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (Appleton) 1920: no award given 1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (Doubleday) 1918: His Family by Ernest Poole (Macmillan) Resources and Related Links: The Pulitzer Prizes: “Fiction” (1948-present) The Pulitzer Prizes: “Novel” (1918-1947) Wikipedia: “Pulitzer Prize for Fiction”

Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea published 50 years ago today

First posted 6/16/2020; updated 7/5/2020.

The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway

First Publication: September 1, 1952 Category: literary fiction Sales: 13 million

Accolades:

About the Book: “The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most enduring works.” AZ He wrote it in Cuba in 1951. WK “This hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world.” AZ It was the last major work of fiction published during his lifetime. WK “Told in language of great simplicity and power,” AZ “it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman,” WK “down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal – a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin” AZ “far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.” WK “Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss.” AZ It “served to reinvigorate Hemingway’s literary reputation and prompted a reexamination of his entire body of work…It restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author.” WK “Many critics favorably compared it with such works as William Faulkner’s short story The Bear and Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick.” WK “It was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon WK Wikipedia

Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind published 50 years ago today

First posted 6/16/2020; last updated 7/5/2020.

Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell

First Publication: June 30, 1936 Category: historical fiction Sales: 33 million

Accolades:

About the Book: “The most popular romance novel of all time was the basis for the most popular movie of all time (in today’s dollars).” LC Gone with the Wind “has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel.” AZ A 2014 Harris poll ranked it second only to the Bible as American readers’ favorite book. WK The title is taken from a poem by Ernest Dowson. WK “A sweeping story of tangled passion and courage,” AZ “Mitchell identified the primary theme as survival.” WK The story “vividly depicts the drama of the Civil War and Reconstruction.” AZ The story follows “the struggles of young Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty following Sherman’s destructive ‘March to the Sea.’” WK “This selfish, but gutsy heroine idealises the unattainable Ashley before realising her love for her third husband, Rhett, who dismisses her with, ‘My dear, I don't give a damn.’” TG “Often remembered for its epic film version, Gone with the Wind explores the depth of human passions with an intensity as bold as its setting in the red hills of Georgia. A superb piece of storytelling.” AZ Its portrayal of slavery and African Americans has been considered controversial” WK in light of “charges that its author had a blind eye regarding the horrors of slavery.” LC “However, the novel has become a reference point for subsequent writers about the South, both black and white.” WK “She was often asked what became of her lovers, Rhett and Scarlett. She replied, ‘For all I know, Rhett may have found someone else who was less difficult.’ Two sequels authorized by Mitchell’s estate were published more than a half century later. A parody was also produced.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon LC Library of Congress (2012). “Books That Shaped America” TG Telegraph: The Perfect Library WK Wikipedia

Alice Walker's The Color Purple published this year

First posted 6/16/2020; updated 7/5/2020.

The Color Purple Alice Walker

First Publication: 1982 Category: novel about race Sales: ?

Accolades:

About the Book: “This is the story of two sisters – one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife living in the South – who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time, distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this classic novel of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life.” AZ “Published to unprecedented acclaim, The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in modern fiction.” AZ The San Francisco Chronicle called it “a work to stand beside literature of any time and place.” AZ The Nation wrote that it “places Walker in the company of Faulkner.” AZ and the New York Times Book Review called her “a lavishly gifted writer.” AZ In his New York Times review, Mel Watkins said, “The cumulative effect is a novel that is convincing because of the authenticity of its folk voice…a striking and consummately well-written novel. Alice Walker’s choice and effective handling of the epistolary style has enabled her to tell a poignant tale of women's struggle for equality and independence.” BN The book was adapted into a film and musical of the same name. WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon BN Barnes & Noble WK Wikipedia

Thomas Pynchon's Gravity’s Rainbow published this year

First posted 6/17/2020; last updated 7/6/2020.

Gravity’s Rainbow Thomas Pynchon

First Publication: 1973 Category: fiction – postmodern epic Sales: ?

Accolades:

About the Book: “Considered by many critics to be one of the greatest American novels ever written,” WK “Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first.” AZ “Lengthy, complex, and featuring a large cast of characters,” WK “its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.” AZ “The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II, and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the ‘Schwarzgerät’ (‘black device’), slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number ‘00000.’” WK The book was selected for the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction by a three-member jury, but rejected by the 14-member board, who described the novel as “‘unreadable,’ ‘turgid,’ ‘overwritten,’ and in parts ‘obscene.’” NY No Pulitzer Prize was awarded for fiction that year. Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon NY New York Times (5/8/1974). “Pulitzer Jurors Dismayed on Pynchon” by Peter Kihss WK Wikipedia