Good morning,
This is the third in a series of reviews of the most evocative and important books (in my opinion, of course) in each decade. Here are my picks of the best of the 1960s.
The Sixties was the first decade of Boomer social engagement that matured into the force that has dominated American politics over the past nearly half century. When Kennedy said, “the torch has been passed to a new generation,” he may not have fully realized just how much things were going to change as that torch was passed. All preconceptions were challenged and reconsidered. Like any decade, its delineation doesn’t fit neatly into a ten year period. To me, the 60s began with Kennedy’s inauguration and continued until the 1972 election.
The decade saw considerable tensions, including three major political assassinations—a phenomenon I fear may begin to emerge in this generation. They also were the years of escalations in Vietnam, the Great Society, the Civil Rights act, the expansion of the social safety net (under both Johnson and Nixon), the first Earth Day, and the race to the moon. I have avoided books dealing directly with the politics and strife of the times. Rather, I mostly went mostly for novels that were popular at the time—and a few other examples from different genres thrown in. Joan Didion appears as representative of the new journalism of extended essays that captured the zeitgeist of the time. The literature mirrors the anxiety, hope, and despair of the decade.
THE SIXTIES
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. The Pulitzer Prize winner gave birth to the Gregory Peck film, images of which still are in my mind. “Miss Jean Louse, stand up. Your father’s passing.” Few lines can ever top the emotions expressed by those words uttered in the courtroom, when Atticus Finch defines greatness in the face of insurmountable odds.
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. Other Heinlein books of “future history” and worlds far from our own resonated with me more as a young reader. This one, great and silly, giving us the world the term “grok” and the sheer audacity of it, make it a seminal novel.
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. Science fiction and the devastation of war, published during the Vietnam War. Great. “So it goes…”
Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth. There is so much better by Roth. This one…Crude. Ridiculous. Not even sure I really liked it.
Slouching Toward Bethlehem (one of the many brilliant volumes of Joan Didion). Essays that define an era, unemotionally and unabashedly. Journalistic essays that are of a type that brings many of us to The New Yorker every week…
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey. A penetrating commentary on the often irrational and unfeeling actions of institutions and modern psychiatry. Still creepy.
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. A short story that every child of the 1970s read in their anthologies. Surgery on a mentally ill patient leads to brilliance. Eventually, he reverts to his janitorial position and sub-par intelligence. In ways, it seems a precursor to A Beautiful Mind.
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury. One of the definitive authors of my youth. Some will put The Martian Chronicles or Dandelion Wine above this. But this book is so evocative of the private fears of the mysterious, in this case, the carnival coming to town, with all its eerie and other-worldly qualities. The story of a boy, his friend and his father, set against the story of the “night people” and what they bring out in the people of the town, is a classic.
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke. A story of the limits of science and exploration and a meditation of the vast emptiness and unknowns of the universe. Importantly, one of the first books/movies to explore the potentials and dangers of artificial intelligence. Remember that the letters of the name of supercomputer “HAL” are just one letter off from “IBM.” I may never fully understand its ending but I loved the book and the movie. I’m still waiting for that PanAm airplane with regularly scheduled trips to the moon.
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. The beginnings of the women’s liberation movement.
The Whole Earth Catalog, the do-it-yourself catalog of all things, the early bible of the “preppers” (before they even had that name). A big, boisterous, kooky compendium that continued publishing into the 70s.
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. Before the docudramas on TV today was the story of quadruple murders in Kansas. An in-depth mixture of journalism, story-telling and social commentary.
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. The great antiwar novel on the absurdity of war and characters playing out their time in a dysfunctional military. And, of course, there is the neologism, “Catch-22,” arguably better known than the novel.
The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton. Science, plague, and extraterrestrial micro-organisms. Among Crichton’s best. Crichton wrote about science from a place of knowledge, having earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. This familiarity with medicine informs the quality of the search to explain the strain. Crichton went on to create the TV show ER and write many science-based science fiction novels, including Jurassic Park.
Dune, by Frank Herbert. World and epic building, before the first (largely panned) adaptation and last year’s triumphant adaptation.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl. Despite his antisemitism and questionable statements and politics, the author of this classic and others, like James and the Giant Peach, entertained generations of children. This book is harsh in its judgment of selfish children, meting out consequences for bad behaviors.
Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger. Better, in my opinion, than Catcher in the Rye. Two stories of a brother and sister confronting social norms, religion, angst, family, inauthenticity and spirituality.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carre. This is one of his best and a great example of the morally ambiguous world of espionage that le Carre created. As good as this is, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Smiley’s People may even be better. In the context of the genre, no one compares to le Carre.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, captures the zeitgeist of the 60s in the same way as On the Road spoke to the beat generation. It’s hard to argue with that; although Mr. Wolfe appears in my list of books in the 70s and 80s. He is a master of capturing a time and a type.
The Godfather, by Mario Puzo. Published in 1969, it really is a creature of the 1970s, when the great two Godfather movies came out. Still, the movies were better but the book was a cultural phenomenon.
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. Still makes me tear up. And to think he also wrote for Playboy.
Have a great day,
Glenn
That’s a damn good list.