AWARD WINNERS OF 1965 PART ONE

 

This weekend I will bring you some mini reviews of books that won the big prizes in 1965. Above is a 1965 Mustang, possibly the hottest car of the year, just to give you a bit of lore. For My Big Fat Reading Project, I always read the award winning novels of the year. These days there are over 20 such awards and it is impossible to keep up. In 1965 there were just 8 on the list. Below are the first four.

The Pulitzer Prize:

The Keepers of the House, Shirley Ann Grau, Alfred A Knopf, 1964, 239 pp

The winners are usually published during the year before the prize is awarded. This was a family saga spanning generations of the Howland clan from the days of Andrew Jackson to the 1960s. Abigail Howland is a seventh generation daughter. Her grandfather, also a central character, is an eccentric who still maintains the family's wealth and standing in his Deep South community.

It is extremely well written yet for all its literary quality is a page turner. Civil rights have become law in the nation but as we all know, that law does not penetrate into southern towns much, even to this day.

While William Howland is a fascinating character, his granddaughter Abigail was more interesting because of her increasing awareness as a woman, as a white woman, and ultimately as a fierce warrior for her own rights. How hard it is for people who have viewed life in a certain way for centuries to change those views!

The novel is a look at changing race relations from the white point of view. The entire gambit, from descendants of slavery to the violent men who join the Ku Klux Klan while carrying on with Black women to the "genteel" society white women must navigate is braided together in a gripping tale.

The Newbery Medal:

Shadow of a Bull, Maia Wojciechowska, Atheneum Books, 1964, 155 pp

The first of two major awards for children's books is the Newbery Medal, for books meant for kids aged 8-12. This is a wonderful story about bullfighting. Though it is not a sport I would ever want to attend, bullfighting is an integral part of the culture in Spain. 

Monolo Oliver is the son of the greatest bullfighter in all of Spain, who lost his life in the ring. It is expected that Monolo will repeat his father's success but the boy definitely does not feel any urge to fight bulls.

Still he tries to find his courage. Some of his father's friends teach him the sport and the day comes when he must face his first bull.

In a vibrant coming of age tale, Manolo figures out how to deal with the pressure and find his own way in the world. Wonderful writing and plot. Lots of info on bullfighting, including a glossary. Immersion into the culture surrounding the sport. 

The Caldecott Medal:

May I Bring A Friend?, Beatrice Schenk De Regniers, Atheneum Books, 1964, 48 pp

The Caldecott Medal is an illustrator's award for picture books meant for younger children. 

In this colorful story, a young boy is invited to tea by the King and Queen. He asks if he may bring a friend and they say of course! He brings a giraffe. A lovely time is had by all.

Next he is invited for six more days in a row and brings a different animal, or three, each time. The royal figures love every one.

The illustrations by Beni Montressor, exhibit a color scheme of many shades of purple, yellow, red and orange. A true feast for the eyes!

The National Book Award:

Herzog, Saul Bellow, Viking Press, 1964, 371 pp

Saul Bellow's winning novel was also #3 on the 1964 bestseller list. I reviewed it here and enjoyed it probably the most of the 1965 award winners.

I will be back soon with the remaining awarded books of 1965.

Have you read any of these books? In their own ways each one gives a feel for the mid 1960s.

THE ECHO MAKER

The Echo Maker, Richard Powers, Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2006, 451 pp

 

This was the fourth Richard Powers novel I read. After being so impressed by The Overstory last year, I decided to read one of his novels every month in reverse order of publication. I usually read an  author in order of publication so doing Powers's books this way is giving me the weird sensation of experiencing an author devolving. In fact, so far I have liked each novel just a tiny bit less while remaining in awe of how he ties science and/or the arts to stuff that happens in real life. 

 

Powers won the National Book Award for this one and it was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Mark Schluter lives in a remote Nebraska town. He has been a slacker most of his life but due to his first steady job in a meatpacking facility, he has managed to purchase a mobile home at the age of 27. Though he spends most of his off time getting drunk and stoned with his buddies, he feels he has got something pretty close to his dream life.

Then he has a near fatal car accident in the middle of the night while driving his pickup truck on a deserted road, leaving him in a coma from a severe head injury. Enter his older sister Karin, who has always been his protector. She moves into his mobile home and spends her days by his bedside. When Mark finally comes out of the coma, he is convinced that this woman, who looks and talks and sounds just like his sister, is an imposter. 

He remembers very little about his accident but a mysterious note left by an unknown person seems to him to be the key to recovering his memory and finding out what happened.

Karin, who despite having only bad luck with men, is an intelligent person. Not satisfied with the doctors on Mark's case she does her research and contacts a famous cognitive neurologist, Gerald Weber. This man comes from New England to take a look and diagnoses Mark with Capgras syndrome; the delusion that people in one's life are doubles standing in for the real person.

After this the story gets stranger by the page. Gerald Weber is having a midlife career crisis. Karin takes up with an old friend who is involved in a green initiative to save the local river basin from business investors. The basin is a stopping off place in the migration path of sandhill cranes. Karin's old boyfriend is involved with the investors. Mark falls in love with one of his nurses, but Weber is convinced he has met her somewhere before in his life.

I read this while I had the flu so in some ways the convoluted plot fit in with my semi-delirious state. Richard Powers has stated in an interview that his intention was "to put forward...a glimpse of the solid, continuous, stable, perfect story we try to fashion about ourselves, while at the same time to lift the rug and glimpse the amorphous, improvised, messy, crack-strewn, gaping thing underneath all that narration."

Well, yes he did that at the same time the flu was doing that to me. So I don't know. Maybe it was the best time for me to read The Echo Maker. Everything gets worked out by the end of the book, except that none of the main characters remain the same as they used to be. Kind of the way I felt when I got better.

THE CENTAUR

The Centaur, John Updike, Alfred A Knopf, 1963, 299 pp

 

 

I thought I was done with Greece for a while but it turned out, not exactly. The Centaur is John Updike's third novel, it won the National Book Award in 1964, and is a loose retelling of the Greek myth of Chiron, noblest of all Centaurs.

 

George Caldwell is Chiron. It is 1947 and George is unhappily though gratefully employed as a high school teacher in the small Pennsylvania town where some of Updike's novels are set. The story takes place over a few winter days in the life of George, his wife and his son.

In the myth, Chiron was wounded by a poison arrow. The wound never healed, the pain never lessened. As a Centaur he was immortal but, longing for death, he traded his immortality as atonement for Prometheus, who defied the gods by stealing fire and giving it to mankind. Prometheus plays a large part in Circe, the novel I read a few weeks ago.

This novel probably follows the myth more closely than I was willing to work for. I was content to enjoy Updike's tale while I noted that sometimes George appeared as a Centaur but most times as a man. He consistently appeared as an emotionally wounded man.

 

The chapters alternate between George and the first person voice of his teenage son. That son has dreams of being a painter, is frustrated beyond endurance by his father, and yet tries to understand him. 

I love John Updike's writing. Whether in description, dialogue or action, every word contributes to creating his tale. Therefore, even though the connection to the myth was tenuous for me, I was thoroughly absorbed in this novel about a husband and father who knew he was flawed but gave all he had to his family.

(The Centaur is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)