It was the 1950’s. Gas was 29¢ a gallon, cigarettes 25¢ a pack, a hospital stay was $35 a day. The Franklin National Bank in New York issued the first credit card, and the World’s first shopping mall in the U.S. – Seattle’s Northgate Mall was built. The First Grammy Awards happened, RCA’s Color Television sets hit the market, and the films, On the Waterfront, All About Eve and An American in Paris were released.
Marilyn Monroe and her husbands Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller were pretty big. So were Peanuts, Mad Magazine, Jonas Salk, James Dean, Fidel Castro, Rosa Parks, Billy Graham, the Korean War, and Israel invading the Sinai Peninsula.
In the decade of blazers, bermuda shorts, saddle shoes, and sack dresses, writers like James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lillian Hellman, William Burroughs, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, Maria Irene Fornes, Gary Snyder, J.D. Salinger, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, and Dylan Thomas were all doing their thing.
People change and grow. Countries have lives and spirits that change and grow. Would you say America is still in its adolescence?
You can tell a lot about a person by the books they read. You can also tell a lot about a culture. In the 1950’s, here’s what America was reading.
1 9 5 0 ‘ s – B E S T S E L L E R S
F I C T I O N
- From Here to Eternity, James Jones
- Return to Paradise, James A. Michener
- The Silver Chalice, Thomas B. Costain
- East of Eden, John Steinbeck
- Giant, Edna Ferber
- The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
- The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas
- Désirée, Annemarie Selinko
- Battle Cry, Leon M. Uris
- Love Is Eternal, Irving Stone
- The Egyptian, Mika Waltari
- No Time for Sergeants, Mac Hyman
- Auntie Mame, Patrick Dennis
- Andersonville, MacKinlay Kantor
- Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan
- Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
- Eloise, Kay Thompson
- The Tribe That Lost Its Head, Nicholas Monsarrat
- The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir
- Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, Max Shulman
- Blue Camellia, Frances Parkinson Keyes
- The Scapegoat, Daphne du Maurier
- On the Beach, Nevil Shute
- Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
- Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
- Exodus, Leon Uris
- Poor No More, Robert Ruark
- The Ugly American, William J. Lederer and Eugene L. Burdick
- Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence
1 9 5 0 ‘ s – B E S T S E L L E R S
N O N F I C T I O N
- Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book; Betty Crocker’s Good & Easy Cook Book
- How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, Frank Bettger
- Look Younger, Live Longer, Gayelord Hauser
- Washington Confidential, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer
- Better Homes and Gardens Handyman’s Book; Diet Book; Barbecue Book; Decorating Book; Flower Book
- The Sea Around Us, Rachel L. Carson
- The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version
- U.S.A. Confidential, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer
- Tallulah, Tallulah Bankhead
- The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale
- Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Alfred C. Kinsey, et al.
- Angel Unaware, Dale Evans Rogers
- This I Believe, Edward P. Morgan, editor; Edward R. Murrow, foreword
- How to Play Your Best Golf, Tommy Armour
- The Saturday Evening Post Treasury, Roger Butterfield, editor
- Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
- The Family of Man, Edward Steichen
- How to Live 365 Days a Year, John A. Schindler
- The Secret of Happiness, Billy Graham
- Why Johnny Can’t Read, Rudolf Flesch
- Inside Africa, John Gunther
- Year of Decisions, Harry S Truman
- Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, concise ed., David B. Guralnik
- Etiquette, Frances Benton
- Love or Perish, Smiley Blanton, M.D.
- The Nun’s Story, Kathryn Hulme
- Kids Say the Darndest Things!, Art Linkletter
- The FBI Story, Don Whitehead
- Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing, Robert Paul Smith
- Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Jean Kerr
- The Day Christ Died, Jim Bishop
- ‘Twixt Twelve and Twenty, Pat Boone
- Masters of Deceit, Edgar Hoover
- The New Testament in Modern English, J. P. Phillips, trans.
- Dear Abby, Abigail Van Buren
- Inside Russia Today, John Gunter
- Folk Medicine, D. C. Jarvis
- Charley Weaver’s Letters from Mamma, Cliff Arquette
- The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
- Only in America, Harry Golden
-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
-Resources: 1950’s Bestsellers List from Cader Books, The Literature and Culture of the American 1950’s
-related to posts: The 1960’s — What Was America Reading?, The 1970’s — What Was America Reading?
I go to these lists every now and then and start reading the names of the books. The nonfiction list is especially interesting. I will keep coming back to this list and wonder what these books were about. Especially, Where Did You Go? Out? What Did You Do? Nothing. My first thought is that book is a treatise on why it’s better to stay at home with one’s family versus going out all the time.
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I was caught by that title, too. But I never did look it up to see what the book was about. I had the same idea – or else it really was about going out all the time and doing exactly that – nothing. Maybe it’s a beatnik thing? Remember in Another Country when they’d go out to parties and really do nothing – well, come to think of it, I did that, too.
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I forgot to mention, did you notice this one – #30. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence? It’s cool to look back and see when writers like Lawrence were hitting it big. Pretty risqué for the time.
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Yes, I noticed that one, too. We should read a D.H. Lawrence book next.
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“Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing” was a book of nostalgic reminiscence of Robert Paul Smith’s childhood. It emphasized the value of the time spent by children in solitary, unprogrammed activities, free from adult supervision.
The title is supposed to be recognized as one of the standard conversations between adult and child.
The book implicitly criticized the overscheduled, overorganized world of the fifties suburbs, in which children played “games” supervised by an adult in which “the rules are written down in a book. In my neighborhood, the rules were written down in kids,” but mostly was a genial, poetic description of Smith’s childhood world.
The activities–like the thing of seeing whether you could walk on the icy crust on top of snow without breaking it–didn’t have names and were seemingly purposeless, hence they were “nothing.”
It makes the case for allowing children space and privacy.
It closes: “I guess what I am saying is that people who don’t have nightmares don’t have dreams. If you will excuse me, I have an appointment with myself to sit on the front steps and watch some grass growing.”
The title was a byword for some years. Someone called it “the only original Zen koan to come out of the United States.” It helped create a vogue for long titles.
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Wow, I wonder how applicable it would be today. If they thought the 50s were bad, geez, you should see the typical schedule of a child nowadays. I’ll have to see if I can check out a copy at the library. You got me interested.
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Dan, thanks for that eloquent comment about Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. When I originally saw that book on the list, I wondered (especially because of the title) what in the world it was about.
Your description of the book and its relationship to kids brings up a lot of points about whether kids these days (or even adults for that matter) are really taking any down time to just sit and do nothing – to walk on ice or watch the grass grow.
It seems like in the past, summers were for just that purpose. But these days, I notice that kids’ summers are just as scheduled as the rest of the year. When do they rest?
I wonder what this means for future generations of writers. How are they even getting the space to sit and ponder and reflect as writers need to do?
Thanks again for your comment. Especially the connection to the title and the Zen koan. Very rich.
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