Fiction in Limbo

FICTION IN LIMBO

Literary Lions

The quarter century after World War II had been an innovative and exciting period for American writing. Authors such as John Cheever, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, John Barth, Bernard Malamud, Jerzy Kosinski, Joseph Heller, Donald Barthelme, and Philip Roth had expanded the possibilities of the modern novel. By the 1960s experimentation had reached new levels, with novelists using improvisation, journalistic technique, black humor, and self-commentary in their works. By the 1970s the expansive possibilities in American literature seemed to collapse. The writers of the postwar era, once hailed as innovators, became lions of the literary world, that is, the new establishment. Some declared that after so many experiments the novel was dead as an art form. Clearly, new blood was needed to invigorate American fiction. As the 1970s progressed, critics and readers alike looked to minority writers for that new energy.

Black Authors

The 1960s had seen a new renaissance in poetry and fiction, with strong works from James Baldwin, John A. Williams, and Lance Jeffers, among others. A black literary press and network of black essayists and critics unified their efforts through publications such as Black World. This unity eroded in the 1970s. Although several new male writers gained prominence in the 1970s, most notably Leon Forrest (There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden, The Bloodworth Orphans ), Ernest J. Gaines (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, In My Father's House ), Albert Murray (Train Whistle Guitar ), and James Alan McPherson (Elbow Room), the decade's most memorable black novels were written by women. Toni Morrison emerged as a powerful writer with The Bluest Eye (1970), whose black protagonist dreams of having the features of a white girl. In Sula (1974) the main character breaks away from her family in order to discover herself, damning herself in the eyes of her community. Morrison's strongest work was Song of Solomon (1977), a complex study of black family life and the search for love and meaning in family history. Alice Walker's Meridian (1976) presented its heroine's search for self as a struggle for racial and gender identity. In A Hero Ain't No thin But a Sandwich (1973) Alice Childress presented urban ghetto life with (like Morrison and Walker) a strong sense of social commitment.

"LA COTE BASQUE" SCANDAL

Shortly after the success of his influential "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood in 1966, Truman Capote began publicizing his next project, a novel about modern society that he promised would make all his previous works look like mere child's play.

That novel, Answered Prayers, was originally contracted for publication in 1971, but Capote continually missed his deadline: he was apparently too busy basking in his celebrity status and partying with his high-society friends. It seemed he might never write the great novel he had so long promised to deliver.

Finally, in the fall of 1975, parts of his unfinished manuscript appeared as an excerpt in New York magazine. Instantly, Capote's jet-set world was set on its collective ear. Titled "La Cote Basque," the story was a vicious caricature of Capote's closest society chums, including Babe Paley and Slim Hayward.

As the chapter progressed, thinly disguised versions of several dozen illustrious public figures were dissected, exposed, harpooned, and discarded. Paley and Hayward were livid; both refused to speak to Capote—their long-beloved companion and confidant—ever again. The author protested, claiming artistic license, but nobody backed down. Capote was ostracized.

In 1976 two additional chapters were published, and the furor died away. For Capote, however, the pieces formed almost an epitaph, socially and creatively. Although he published a story collection in 1980, Capote never finished Answered Prayers, the book he had long prayed would seal his reputation as a writer of genius. Sadly, the allusion of the title—that more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones—turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Source:

Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (New York: Ballantinc, 1988).

Feminist Fiction

The 1970s produced an unprecedented number of major novels on feminist themes. Erica Jong's novel Fear of Flying (1973) was revolutionary in its explict handling of a female character's sexual adventures and equally frank about her family and career conflicts. The heroine seeks liberation from her safe but dull marriage but ultimately finds no ideal solution. The protagonist of Judith Rossner's Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1975) also cannot reconcile her ambitions, her sense of suffocation within her family, and her attraction to sexual danger. The wives in Marge Piercy's Small Changes (1973) and Marilyn French's The Women's Room (1977) feel oppressed by their domineering husbands and eventually leave to explore the possibilities of self-reliance. Both novels, as well as Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976), postulate female friendship and lesbian relationships as alternatives to traditional marriage. Rita Mae Brown's Ruby fruit Jungle presented a lesbian heroine who unabashedly challenges a hostile world to love her. Lois Gould's Such Good Friends (1970) presents the betrayal of both a husband and a woman's closest friends that leaves the heroine no other choice but to start a new life from scratch. Other novels on feminist themes include Sarah Davidson's Loose Change (1977) and Piercy's Women on the Edge of Time (1976).

Hispanic Writers

Many critics in the 1970s hailed the works of Latin American writers for providing a distinctive new energy to a turgid decade. Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges had in the 1950s and 1960s become the first Latin American writer to achieve an international reputation. Following his footsteps into the 1970s were Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Fuentes explored the Mexican narrative tradition in the historical novel Terra Nostra (1975), using elements of mystery, myth, and ritual to create a layered sense of time and character. Marquez's reputation was made with the 1970 English translation of his 1967 Colombian novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, which eventually became the best-selling Latin American novel in the United States. Like Fuentes, Marquez infused his stories, such as The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), with a lyric sense of ancestry and mystical possibility. Llosa's works reflected a stronger political sense, but also a broad humor, as in Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973), his most popular novel.

New Voices

Several new American novelists received serious critical attention. Although experiments seemed difficult in the 1970s, E. L. Doctorow created an interesting mix of imagined characters and historical figures in Ragtime (1975). His lyrical prose style suggested a musical comedy in the form of a novel. In 1976 Ragtime became the first winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. John living's The World According to Garp (1978) adopted a witty and irreverent style and an episodic narrative that advanced from three nonlinear points of view. Most readers and critics found Irving's humor refreshing. Both novels touched on some of the decade's most repeated fictional themes—the illusory nature of reality, the malaise and indifference of the American culture, and the confusion of unresolved personal issues.

Lions Roar

Throughout the decade, and especially at its close, many of the previous generation's major novelists roared back with strong works. Pynchon contributed Gravity's Rainbow (1973), hailed by many as the American Ulysses. Bellow received the Pulitzer and the Nobel prizes for Humboldt's Gift (1976). Cheever seemed to be everywhere in the late 1970s, first with Falconer (1977) and the following year with his prize-winning collection The Stories of John Cheever. In 1979 several major novels were published, including Roth's The Ghost Writer, Malamud's Dubin's Lives, William Styron's Sophie's Choice, and Mailer's The Executioner's Song, which was publicized as a "nonfiction novel." It appeared that after a decade of being in limbo, the American novel might be making a comeback in the 1980s.

Best-sellers

American best-sellers thrived during the 1970s. American readers could not seem to get enough of steamy sex, corporate greed, fabulous wealth, and global intrigue depicted in blockbusters such as Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline (1978) and Harold Robbins' The Betsy (1971). Horror fiction (William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Stephen King's Carrie [1974] and The Shining [1977]), historical sagas (Herman Wouk's The Winds of War [1971], James Michener's Centennial, John Jakes's American Bicentennial Series [1974], and James Clavell's Shogun [1975]), and romance novels (Erich Segal's Love Story [1970] and Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds [1977]) proved to be big sellers, too. As the 1970s saw more big novels becoming big movies (The Godfather, Jaws ) and television miniseries (with Irwin Shaw's Rich Matty Poor Man [1970] and Alex Haley's Roots [1976] kicking off the trend), fiction sales revved up to unprecedented levels. Sheldon negotiated a $7.5 million deal for five books, and Irving Wallace $2.2 million for three. After the blockbuster success of Scruples (1978), Judith Krantz was paid an unheard-of $400,000 for just the outline of her next book, Princess Daisy (1980), and wound up with a record advance payment of more than $3 million. The paperback rights to Mario Puzo's Fools Die were sold for a record $2.5 million. In 1978 Peter Benchley earned an unprecedented $2.15 million for the movie rights to his unfinished novel The Island. By the late 1970s new books by best-selling authors were being planned simultaneously as hardcovers, paper-backs, and movies or miniseries. Perhaps inevitably, the book-to-movie process began to reverse itself, with novelizations of blockbuster films (The Omen [1976], Close Encounters of the Third Kind [1977]) becoming best-sellers after the success of the movies.

Sources:

"Bestsellers: A Lusty Tale of Power, Money, and Ambition," Newsweek, 92 (28 August 1978): 84-87;

Jeffrey Helterman and Richard Layman, eds., American Novelists Since World War II (Detroit: Gale, 1978);

Frederick R. Karl, American Fictions 1940-1980: A Comprehensive History and Critical Evaluation (New York: Harper 6c Row, 1983);

Leonard S. Klein, ed., Latin American Literature in the 20th Century: A Guide (New York: Ungar, 1986);

Richard A. Long and Eugenia W. Colliers, eds., Afro-American Writing: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985);

Catherine Rainwater and William j. Scheik, eds., Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985).