Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1944

A Bell For Adano by John Hersey

I looked up and down this list double-checking that I hadn't read anything on it, and every time I read this as 'A Bell For Adorno'.

Lol. I never read that but remember it because it’s what my friends in the other Honors English class read.

Okay, while it may seem as if I’ve outed myself as a guy whose reading peaked in High School English, akin to the professor in the David Lodge book who confesses to never having read Hamlet, my actual peak was a little bit later.

I found Kaputt fascinating at the beginning but never finished it because I found Malaparte so detestable as a narrator (and I read the afterword that mentioned that he rewrote the book once it was clear that the Nazis were losing in order to make himself look less sympathetic to them).

Okay, I’ve read two of these and seen the films made from another two.

Not much here I've read, but I was happy to see The Horse's Mouth among them and I have no qualms in voting for it.

Of the few I know, I'll go with Maugham over Bellow.

A few years later Kenneth Millar started publishing as Ross Macdonald, perhaps because of the success of the mysteries written by his wife, Margaret Millar. The Dark Tunnel is okay but not up to his later work.

Still want to read that book of letters he exchanged with Eudora Welty.

Dangling Man is about waiting to be drafted, unwilling to flee or go Conscientious Objector or plead gay or psycho etc.---not in WWII! Yet he's alienated, can see how both sides brought it to this, so soon after The Great War, and on the heels of the Depression and feverish cures for that---he's a rigid twerp, but somehow elicts sympathy, in his dry little way (sort of a charming charmlessness, also it's short enough that I didn't get sick of him, unlike some of Bellow's later twerps)
Nevertheless, the listed novel I remember best is The Horse's Mouth vivid and lucid and w plenty of pungent momentum, benefitting from Cary's own early time as a painter, but imagining the whole life of an artist who can't do nothin' but art, and what it takes to manipulate others into providing the next art opp. not that he doesn't also land in jail for a while, and not that he isn't manipulative for other ends. Don't know if it's great, but so damn good. (Think it's the last volume of a trilogy, with prev. from the POV of very different characters who also figure in this one.)

Those two are the ones I’ve actually read.

Dangling Man by Saul Bellow -- I actually really loved this, I think I like my Bellow narrators at shorter, less exhausting length

The Dark Tunnel by Kenneth Millar -- have NOT read this but I want to; gay novel by the guy who would soon be excellent crime writer Ross Macdonald

The Lost Weekend by Charles R. Jackson -- excellent rambly drunkard's journey

Fair Stood The Wind For France by H.E. Bates -- I think I may be the only person still alive who reads and rates HE Bates (except for the Larkin books which are not my thing), and this is one of his best ones

The Dwarf by Par Lagerkvist -- really good, grotty, grimy Medieval novel narrated by malignant court dwarf

Dangling Man by Saul Bellow -- I actually really loved this, I think I like my Bellow narrators at shorter, less exhausting length

Something about the uneasy mix of wise guys, zaftig shiksas and philosophical poaching doesn’t sit well with me for some reason, sorry.

This article looks good:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/06/finding-augie-march

This is my other fave Bellow read: his (only?) play, "The Last Analysis"--description of production of this comedy, even w/o Zero Mostel, certainly goes with promise of script: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/23/specials/bellow-playanalysis.html

The Dwarf.

Anna and the King of Siam is a lot later than i would have assumed though i guess its probably currently best known as the source of the musical had assumed it was a memoir from about 20 years earlier. but obviously not read it.
I think I have a copy of the Family Von Trapp still unread after a decade possibly 2 too.

Or maybe it's a novelisation of an 1870 memoir . possibly.

lol trying to imagine what reading "late" upton sinclair is like
probably pretty fun if you are lit af

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Huh. Never even heard of Joyce Cary.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1945

Then you probably didn't know that Joyce Cary was a man, baby!

There’s a funny or O_o story about Forever Amber. Artie Shaw saw Ava Gardner reading it, gave her grief for reading such trash and then not long afterwards was married to its author.