The best-kept secret of the curious world of American publishing is that this country is in the middle of a modest literary boom. It is not a renaissance; the ages preceding this one have not been shamefully dark. Nor is there now any blinding coruscation of genius. But there is a gentle swell of hope and good prose.
With Hemingway and Faulkner dead, this is not a time of giants. The public is too easily preoccupied with giantism—an understandable result both of the publishers' belief that bestsellers sell best, and of the wistful ache of uncertain readers to be in the mode. But literature has never been a procession of giants. Nor do they arise, like occasional Poseidons, from a featureless sea. Rather, they form part of a moving and sustaining stream of literature, which is and must be fed by tributaries. Minor writers are needed to produce major ones.
The U.S. now has an impressive roster of novelists of proven excellence. If it is still necessary to use the label minor, pending future performance, it is also necessary to remember that even such a writer as Melville seemed minor to his own age.
What follows is a recommended reading list of American novelists whose first work has appeared within the last few years. A few are widely read, but none is read widely enough. A few are almost unread, which is their unreaders' loss. This is not exclusively a list of young novelists; youth in novelists is not an asset but a liability which is occasionally overcome. Also, the list omits such excellent writers as J. D. Salinger, Truman Capote, William Styron and Saul Bellow, merely because their first books appeared longer ago than the last few years. The writers:
Walker Percy, 46, was an intern in the pathology department of Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital 20 years ago when tuberculosis forced him to give up medicine. A private income permitted him the luxury of pleasing only himself, and he began to write. His first two novels pleased no one and were not published. His third, The Moviegoer, was warmly praised by a few reviewers, ignored by many others (TIME, May 16, 1961), and widely unread. It was a blow that puffers of giantism accepted with much bad grace when The Moviegoer won last year's National Book Award.