Judging from features in most book sections and magazines, now is the time for readers to gear up for the summer superficiality season. So-called “beach books” are in the ascendancy, and novels seem to be judged more by weight than quality since it is essential that the volume you take with you last through the week. Some papers include brief interviews in which writers list favorite books. Aside from “best” lists, however, the general assumption seems to be that if you spend time lying on a beach or playing golf, your mind will have gone on vacation too.
Publishers encourage this sort of thing by running full-page ads touting the latest phenom and in general save their literary heavyweights for fall. For this reason, writers dread the idea of being published in July or August, though established authors like Philip Roth, John Updike and Cynthia Ozick seem able to make their way through the sunscreen to an audience.
There is nothing wrong with this, really. Readers, like everyone else, deserve an occasional break from gravity. In fact, authors like Roth have in the past poked fun at high seriousness by having teenage girls in their novels attempt “War and Peace” every summer religiously. But putting literary pretension aside, there are plenty of novels that are worth reading but have been neglected in the consuming passion for the new. The fact is that even popular novelists were somehow more literary in the past than they are now, better educated in the classics, maybe even smarter. Of course, then people thought of reading as an activity of choice that you enjoyed rather than a chore that took you away from cable or the Internet.
But, OK, it’s summer and no one needs a lecture on the decline of civilization. Consider instead these examples of middlebrow writing that will provide hours of enjoyment and sometimes make you think.
First off is that distinctly American genre, the tough-guy detective novel, which made its debut in the depths of the Great Depression when people needed hard-hitting role models. Most readers have heard of the big three in this area, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. Less well known is Cornell Woolrich, whose “black” series was not only classic Americana but also gave rise in part to the French film noir movement. Francois Truffaut made film adaptations of “The Bride Wore Black” and “Shoot the Piano Player,” which is based on David Goodis’ nearly forgotten noir classic, “Down There.” Similarly, James M. Cain’s classic “Double Indemnity” and Patricia Highsmith’s “Strangers on a Train,” which morphed into the famous Hitchcock thriller, will keep anyone busy while working on a tan.
My favorite writer in this genre, however, has to be Jim Thompson, author of such books as “The Grifters” and “The Getaway,” which made it to the screen through the agency of directors Stephen Frears and Sam Peckinpaugh, respectively. Thompson’s prose is sharp enough to cut glass and his ruthless critique of American society is both thought-provoking and exacting. In terms of page-turners, any of these writers make contemporary writers pale in comparison, whether they’re on the beach or not.
But say you don’t like thrillers or mysteries. Fair enough. One class of books that’s been unfairly ignored in recent years is what I’d call stylish junk, the kind of novel that was the staple of the garden club in years gone by and still makes for a good guilty read. I’m not thinking here of such writers as Jacqueline Susann, Irving Wallace or Arthur Hailey, but rather someone like John O’Hara, whose “Appointment in Samara” remains one of the most chilling short novels I’ve ever read. James Gould Cozzens was a best-selling writer in the ’50s and ’60s and is virtually forgotten today. But “By Love Possessed” retains the narrative power it had back when it was a Book of the Month Club selection and topped the best-seller lists.
If we jump the pond, we can turn to Somerset Maugham, author of, among other books, “Of Human Bondage” and “The Razor’s Edge.” John Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize in the ’20s, but even fans of “Masterpiece Theatre” have likely forgotten his masterpiece, “The Forsyte Saga,” which carries forward the story of one family through six volumes. One unexpected advantage of these books is that they lend themselves to interruptions, which are common during vacations. In fact, you tend to welcome interruptions since you’ve always got something to go back to and, let’s face it, the Forsytes aren’t going anywhere.
Back in America, those who are sick of Robert Ludlum could pick up a novel by Allan Drury, one of his predecessors, who went from a newspaper career to writing novels like “Advise and Consent” about political intrigue in Washington. And there are always Edwin O’Connor’s “The Last Hurrah” and Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men.”
If politics doesn’t do it for you, pick up something by Irwin Shaw or James Jones, whose novels of World War II went a long way toward defining a generation before Tom Brokaw ever thought of doing it. If you have a shorter attention span, Shaw’s stories, including such classics as “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses” and “The Eighty-Yard Run” are high-class examples of a vanishing art. Also worth reading are Edna Ferber’s “So Big” and “Giant,” which starred James Dean in the film version, and Sloan Wilson’s business thriller “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.”
Travel is often undertaken during the summer months, but even if you’re not going any farther than the comfortable chair in the living room, Bruce Chatwin’s masterful “In Patagonia” and Paul Theroux’s “The Great Railway Bazaar” will take you far, far away. And don’t forget Anne Tyler’s wonderful “The Accidental Tourist,” though it’s not really a travel book, with its insightful dissection of family relationships.
Most people these days don’t turn to poetry for leisure reading but in the past many readers did, though it’s best to avoid Edgar Guest and Rod McKuen. A few books worth checking out are James Dickey’s “Buckdancer’s Choice,” which includes the mesmerizing “The Firebombers,” perhaps the most visually evocative war poem ever written; Robert Penn Warren’s “Audubon, A Vision”; and George Keithley’s “The Donner Party.” All three have strong narrative lines that will keep you reading long after the sun has reached its apex.
Most of these books are available in the library if not at your neighborhood bookstore. All are readable in the extreme and none is taxing in the way some people seem to think Faulkner and Doestoevsky can be. Reading has fallen off but literature and readers will survive far beyond the summer months. In the meantime, there’s much to value in the popular literature of the past. A cursory look at some of these titles is likely to make you wonder why publishers assume that such things as characterization and a competent prose style will not interest readers nowadays.
Finally, as mentioned above many of the noir thrillers were adapted by some of the finest directors of the past century and virtually all the movies are available on DVD. When night falls you can combine reading with your own private film festival. Whatever you choose to read this summer, however, remember that literature, like fashion, tends to run in cycles and often repeats itself. Or to put it another way: To truly look forward, it might be necessary to look back.
David Milofsky is a Denver novelist and professor of English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
