From Native Son to King's Men: The Literary Landscape of 1940s America(Contemporary American Literature)

On the heels of the Great Depression and staring into the abyss of a global war, American writers took fiction and literature in a new direction that addressed the chaos that the nation—and the world—was facing. These authors spoke to the human condition in traumatic times, and their works reflected the dreams, aspirations, values, and hopes of people living in the World War II era. In FromNative Son to King’s Men: The Literary Landscape of 1940s America, Robert McParland examines notable works published throughout the decade. Among the authors covered are James Baldwin, Pearl S. Buck, James Gould Cozzens, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Hersey, Norman Mailer, Ann Petry, Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright. McParland explores how popular novels, literary fiction, and even short stories by these authors represented this pivotal period in American culture. By examining the creative output of these authors, this book reveals how the literature of the 1940s not only offered a pathway for that era’s readers but also provides a way of understanding the past and our own times. From Native Son to King’s Men will appeal to anyone interested in the cultural climate of the 1940s and how this period was depicted in American literature.

About the Author :
Robert McParland is professor of English and chair of the Department of English at Felician College. His books include Charles Dickens’s American Audience (Lexington, 2010); Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); and Citizen Steinbeck: Giving Voice to the People (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

Review :
McParland skillfully analyzes a wide range of American writers and their works and how they collectively displayed ‘the dreams, hopes, anxieties, and cultural imagination’ of the 1940s. Combining biography and criticism, McParland shows how American literature written between the Great Depression and the Cold War depicted a general age of ‘transition, recovery, and expectation’ but also addressed issues such as ‘war, the problem with racism, the struggles and dreams of daily life in a changing world.’ The heart of the book is five chapters covering authors and novels by theme: accounts of war by writers including Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck; a look at ‘home’ in the South by William Faulkner and Carson McCullers; depictions of American racial strife by Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, and Richard Wright; novels of WWII by Normal Mailer and John Hersey; and studies of developing domestic issues by a new cadre of postwar writers such as Saul Bellow and John O’Hara. He also examines such books as Richard Wright’s Native Son (‘We still have Bigger Thomas among us… [he] could not easily embrace the American dream’). McParland delivers an insightful look at writers who help shape a decade.