The Turning Point of American Literature

The period in time from the end of World War II up until, roughly, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw to the publication of some of the most popular works in American history. The last few of the more realistic Modernists along with the wildly Romantic Beatniks largely dominated the period, while the direct respondents to America’s involvement in World War II contributed in their notable influence.

Though born in Canada, Chicago-raised Saul Bellow would become the most influential novelist in America in the decades following World War II. In works like The Adventures of Augie March and Henderson the Rain King, Bellow painted vivid portraits of the American city and the distinctive characters peopling it. Bellow went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

From J.D. Salinger’s "Nine Stories" and "The Catcher in the Rye" to Sylvia Plath’s "The Bell Jar", America’s madness was placed to the forefront of the nation’s literary expression. Émigré Authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, with "Lolita", forged on with the theme, and, at almost the same time, the Beatniks took a concerted step away from their Lost Generation predecessors.

Regarding the war novel specifically, there was a literary explosion in America during the post-World War II era. Some of the most well known of the works produced included Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" (1948), Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969). "MacBird", written by Barbara Garson, was another well-received work exposing the absurdity of war.

In contrast, John Updike showcased what could be called the more idyllic side of American life, approaching it from a quiet, but subversive writing style. His 1960 book Rabbit, Run broke new ground on its release by its characterization and detail of the American middle class. It is also credited as one of the first novels to ever use the present tense in its narration.

Ralph Ellison's 1953 novel Invisible Man was instantly recognized as among the most powerful and sensational works of the immediate post-war years. The story of a black man in the urban north, the novel laid bare the often repressed racial tension still prevailing in the nation while also succeeding as an existential character study.
Flannery O'Connor (b. March 25, 1925 in Georgia – d. August 3, 1964 in Georgia) also explored and developed the theme of 'the South' in American literature that was dear to Mark Twain and other leading authors of American literary history ("Wise Blood" 1952; "The Violent Bear It Away" 1960; "Everything That Rises Must Converge" - her best known short story, and an eponymous collection published posthumously in 1965).

2. The New Criticism in America.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, New Criticism became a critical force in the United States. It was the most powerful perspective in American literary criticism. The representatives were John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren. "The influential critical methods these poet-professors developed emphasized the sharpening of close reading skills. New Criticism privileged the evaluation of poetry as the justification of literary scholarship". "Brooks and Warren’s Understanding Poetry" (1938) became one of the most influential college poetry textbooks of the 1930s and continued to be revised and reprinted well into the 1970s" (Morrisson: 29).

New Criticism showed itself in such works as Eliot’s and Yeats’ poems. "Poetry that best fit the aesthetic criteria of the New Critics was emphasized in important classroom teaching anthologies" (Morrisson: 29).T. S. Eliot redefined tradition in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". He formulated such critical concepts as "objective correlative", and rethought the literary canon in his elevation of Jacobean drama and metaphysical poetry. His work had a fundamental influence on New Criticism in America.

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