If the best fiction writers could be trusted, life was at worst a dreadful and at best an ironic business. Doubt, violence and cynicism hardly left shelf space for the few novels that tried to stress values; yet there were a few that took a stand for the more attractive sides of man, and their ringing success may be a straw in the wind.
The U.S. businessman continued to be more hero than villain (although a little confused) in such novels as Cameron Hawley's Cash McCall and Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. It was perhaps significant of the relative absence of satire that so gentle a writer as J. P. Marquand emerged with the year's best American satirical novel. Sincerely, Willis Wayde, the derisive and sympathetic portrait of an eager-beaver businessman who so hotly wooed success that he unwittingly lost his decency during the courtship.
The Black Prince, by Shirley Ann Grau, was the year's best book of short stories by a new writer. The Southern setting, the emotional range from violence to tenderness, the measure of black man and white man, were uncommonly well managed by an author of only 25.
Mother and Son, by Ivy Compton-Burnett, showed the aging (63) British novelist near the top of her brilliant form. She dealt with the tyranny of Momism, English upper-class variety, with the simple, brilliant device that has served her during 15 novels: human speech.
The Recognitions, by William Gaddis, gave U.S. 20th century values a long (956 pages) flaying, went remorselessly after Bohemian phonies, savagely attacked the spiritual and moral bankruptcy Gaddis' tortured hero found everywhere. Alternatingly brilliant and dull, it was a virtuoso performance for a first novelist. Some critics uneasily and unjustly ignored it.
The Cypresses Believe in God, by José Maria Gironella, was the first part of an attempt, in the grand manner, to tell the story of tortured Spain from 1931 to the present. Using a single town as a testing ground, Gironella, a former Franco soldier, succeeded remarkably well in explaining how the civil war came about, without deserting his avowed objectivity.
Something of Value, by Robert Ruark, was probably the most tastelessly written book of the year (unless it was Norman Mailer's The Deer Park). Around a hackneyed story, and leaning heavily on the writings of others about the Mau Mau troubles in Kenya, Columnist Ruark turned a determinedly lurid story into a top bestseller.
Not Honour More, by Joyce Gary, wound up a notable trilogy by one of the finest living novelists. Like most of Gary's books, this story of political morality coupled with an astonishing love story failed to get the readers Gary deserves.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor, was not just another book of short stories about Southern brutality. For a woman in her 20s, Author O'Connor proved herself a sardonic connoisseur of unexpected sources of evil.