Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1940

Read the Hemingway as a teen, think my main concern at the time was thinking him "a bit right wing" and thus happy surprise that the protagonist is fighting on the "good" side. Can't really tell you much beyond that.

Joe Dante mentions "The Ox Bow Incident" as a book his parents kept trying to get him to read.

Couple curios:

Captain Ladurner (German: Hauptmann Ladurner) is a 1940 German adventure novel by the South Tyrol mountaineer Luis Trenker. It portrays a group of First World War veterans who conspire to overthrow the Weimar Republic, portrayed as corrupt.[1]

It was released by Trenker following his film The Fire Devil which had apparently displeased Adolf Hitler with his glorification of popular revolts.[2]

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Timur and His Squad (Timur I yevo komanda, Тимур и его команда) is a short novel by Arkady Gaidar, written and first published in 1940. The book, telling the story of a gang of village kids who sneak around secretly doing good deeds, protecting families whose fathers and husbands are in the Red Army, and doing battle against nasty hooligans had a huge impact upon the young Soviet audiences. Timurite movement (Timurovtsy), involving thousands of children, became a massive phenomenon all over the country. Timur and His Squad remained part of the curriculum in every Soviet school even up into the 1990s.

The Man Who Loved Children for me. Big, garrulous beast of a book.

Oxbow incident is a story about a posse going crazy and hanging the wrong people and the consequences of those actions. There's a film of it from sometime over the next decade I think. Which i think I've seen at least once and is still turning up in the afternoons on movie channels and things.TCM like.

Yeah, with Henry Fonda in it. iirc it even starts with a bookshelf, like Disney movies that are adapted from classic literature. Or maybe it's just that Henry Fonda pimps the book in the trailer? Anyway, thought it strange that a young Joe Dante would be so allergic to a western novel.

lol at Whomst

Hemingway narrowly over Native Son

The Bride Wore Black is probably the best of Woolrich's insane noir melodramas

I know it turned up in one of those Noirsh collections of 4 novels I was looking at in the 80s. NOt sure what with or if I read through it all.

The Invention Of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

This has been on my 'to read' list for ages, but I kind of want to read some Ocampo first.

Anyway, this is pretty easily The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter for me.

Of the three or so I've read, The Man who Loved Children by a mile, though it's not an easy read - nor has it stuck in my mind as much as I thought or hoped it might.

I've only read McCullers, Koestler, and Casares, but damn this looks like a strong year for novels. I voted Koestler.

The Koestler book acutely describes a particular species of political extremity that is both batshit crazy and so minutely rationalized that it looks almost sane. Each time I've read it, I was gobsmacked by it. Beyond that, I've also read the Hemingway (long ago) and Cather (recently).

But, as much as I'd have a hard time calling it a 'favorite', I will vote for Native Son. That's a book that was torn straight from the heart.

Adolfo Bioy Casares turns up as a character in Borges' story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", so he gets the nod over Chandler (the only other one on the list I've read) just for that.

Wa

Wait, which Bioy? Morel? Okay, then.

xp I too will go for Native Son, which goes so deep into the mind of Bigger Thomas, showing you the world from his point of view without tearjerking reduction/overselling: it's eloquent and lucid without making him seem intellectual, or articulate in the outer world---helps that it's in third person, though reminds me in effect of the killer's narration in The Postman Always Rings Twice, just a bit.
Fortunately, I neglected to read it 'til the restored Library of America edition came out in 1991. He was forced to make (awkward at best) changes to get it accepted by the Book Of The Month Club, which was a huge deal in 1940, and that's the only version available for the next 40 years, apparently.
The only prob I had w The Heart... was mopey and misleading title (also trade pb w poster child pic of young McC.): this small town saga-cycle of character development over the years, ending (and finished) with the beginnings of World War flickering over just over the horizon (and Depression making something of a comeback as FDR starts to take deficit hawks seriously, although this is set in the Deep South, and never that well off anyway, so hey) has quite an emotional range, incl. humor, though never joeky. Can seem anecdotal, even, but it all connects and builds;
Don't remember The Hamlet that well, but got me hooked on Faulkner.
The Man Who Loved Children is very large, but I've got it and hope to read it; Scott Seward endorsed it several times on ilx (didn't he start ILB?)

Native Son imo.

I keep meaning to read The Man Who Loved Children

Yes to the last few things typed by dow.

The Man Who Loved Children is the best novel ever written.

xxp "making him seem...articulate"---period, really: Wright doesn't bother with italicized thoughts etc., just describes what he sees and hears in there.

making these choices is getting more traumatic.

"only version available for the next *51* years, apparently"!

What a year! I think I'm voting for the Koestler, though I read The Strangers in the House this summer and liked it a lot.

Randall Jarrell has a great essay about The Man Who Loved Children. I couldn't make it all the way through the book as it was just too oppressively unpleasant and made me feel sick, but I have a lot of respect for it.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers -- unimpeachable

Slan by A.E. Van Vogt -- theoretically English prose, absolutely terrible

The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich -- entertaining batshit

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler -- his other best book

Sapphira And The Slave Girl by Willa Cather -- minor Cather is still fucking awesome

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead -- utter masterpiece, still wish her editor hadn't made her de-Australianise it

Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler -- grim as fuck, brilliant, shame he was a rapist

Journey Into Fear by Eric Ambler -- another top-tier Ambler, his 30s/40s books were pretty amazing

The Naughtiest Girl In The School by Enid Blyton -- Blyton was a narc

The Power And The Glory by Graham Greene -- even though the Catholic stuff threatens to overwhelm it, still a brilliant book

Kallocain by Karin Boye -- tremendous weird SF novel of global totalitarianism, brainwashing and drugs; Huxley wishes he'd been this good

The Invention Of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares -- another tremendous SF novel, one of my favourite books

The Strangers In The House by Georges Simenon -- creepy going-to-seed man caught up in intergenerational shenanigans crime novel, really really good

The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati -- nothing much happens, but it's a brilliant book

Great movie too.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Can I mention that one of the "missed connections" in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is between a 14-year-old who wants a mature man and a middle aged man who is an ephebophile? Which, okay, nothing ever happens, but also, that is some dangerous territory.

There’s a bunch I have read (Hemmingway, Greene, Trease) and remember stuff all about.

The only one I’m really familiar with is Fame is the Spur and than through a 70s radio play starring Ian McKellan as ur-melt Hamer Shawcross. I should probably read the book.

There’s a bunch I have read (Hemmingway, Greene, Trease) and remember stuff all about.

The only one I’m really familiar with is Fame is the Spur and than through a 70s radio play starring Ian McKellan as ur-melt Hamer Shawcross. I should probably read the book.

I've reada couple of Koestler's biographies of people, not sure if they were fictionalised accounts or novelised. They tied in with a history of Science module I did at University possibly to other courses too. I liked his writing.
Have meant to read more.
Wasn't aware of rape thing.

McCullers. Quite like to read The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead and don't care for Casares

I've only read The Power and the Glory, which is probably due for a re-read since I don't remember it very well.

Slan by A.E. Van Vogt -- theoretically English prose, absolutely terrible

Van Vogt was a strange person. He had a mechanical, almost Oulipian technique for writing. He didn't seem to understand what literature was.

I have never read the repulsive Slan and never will. But the penumbra around it is the very stuff of literature.

These lists are wonderful for including the likes of Slan with the likes of For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Yes. Where are these lists coming from again? Daniel is making them up or...?

wikipedia has per-year pages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1940_novels

but it's not that simple

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

All right, what joker cast the vote for Slan?

Yeah, I select from the wikipedia per year pages, trying to give particular emphasis to non-US/UK stuff (which nonetheless always dominates). I also try to fit in as many curios as possible and hit a good balance between literary and genre fiction, but it's getting harder as the number of books listed per year starts to pile up and tons of hugely canonical works show up in one year.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1941