ReZoom

These American novelists primed our thoughts, told our stories and expanded our consciousness...

Citing a severely limited list of the authors who most influenced our generation seemed like an impossible task, requiring the most intellectual heavy-lifting of all the ReZoom "legacy lists." So we had to impose a selective criteria that made it manageable.

We decided to focus on post-war novelists whose major works were published after the birth of the oldest of our generation. Lions like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Steinbeck set the stage for the following modern writers, but for this reason are not included on the list.

Many will carp (hopefully) about the impact of the likes of Herman Hesse, Albert Camus or Gabriel Garcia Marquez missing from the names below, but we decided that we would have to save these for a possible follow-up list that features international authors. Of necessity, we are focusing on the legacy of American writers or émigrés writing in America -- which, if you're scoring at home, sadly nixes George Orwell, as well.

And given that "New Journalism" was invented and enjoyed its greatest impact during our generation's formative years, it's likely your first major contention will arise over the fact there are no journalists on the list, eliminating groundbreaking non-fiction novelists like Truman Capote (In Cold Blood), Tom Wolfe (The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test) and, most regrettably, the late Dr. Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

Again, please inform us regarding our inevitable shortsightedness. Here's a list of more writers we didn't include to help you get started: Norman Mailer, Robert Pirsig, Gloria Steinem, Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Salman Rushdie, J.R.R. Tolkien, Phillip Roth, John Irving, Saul Bellow, Marilyn French ...

This, then, is our list of post-war, writing in America (in English) novelists that influenced and reflected our generation:

Vladmir Nabokov (1899-1977)
Lolita (1955)
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Cambridge-schooled Nabokov never forgave having to give up writing in his native Russian for what he considered second-rate English, devoid of all the nuances found in well-aged languages. But it's unarguable that his best work was done after his American incarnation. Nabokov's mastery of English, as well as inference (and even proper manners), made tenable the publication of what if penned by a lesser writer could have been considered a fantastic work of smut, not the modern masterpiece that is Lolita. This encouraged a baby boomer generation to expand the boundaries of the very meaning of good taste.

Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)
Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Like many famous writers of her day (Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Huxley), Rand took largely unsuccessful work as a screenwriter in Hollywood, but her perennial best-sellers Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead (1943) sparked nothing less than a full-fledged movement. Rand flipped traditional Judeo-Christian ethic with her allegorical stories touting egoism and genius over timid traditionalism and social conformism, promoting selfishness as a virtue and altruism as a vice. Roundly criticized for detailing her Objectivist philosophical opinions in fiction rather than in peer-reviewed academic papers, Rand nevertheless struck a chord with fleets of young boomer intellectual libertarian-conservatives.

J. D. Salinger (1919 - )
The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
An historic recluse, Salinger's only published novel, The Catcher in the Rye (though he has published several esteemed books of short stories), defined and continues to define adolescence caught in the difficult transition between notions of innocent childhood and corrupting adulthood. With an unreliable confessional style, a critical cynicism about others coupled with a dubious self-examination, and an obsession with the "phoniness" all around him, particularly among adults, Salinger's Holden Caulfield has captured and adolescent frame of mind with both the valid and invalid insights it offers that has become a touchstone for teens, parents, and teachers since it was published. Because of language and the forthright exposition of the sexual concerns of teenagers, not to mention Caulfield's "delinquency," Catcher has been one of the most banned books in America. Nevertheless, it is still the second most read book in high school English curriculums because prescribing "adults" continue to recognize how valuable this work is in connecting with teens and helping them negotiate the shoals to worthy adulthood.

Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969)
On the Road (1957)
The spontaneous prose in On the Road shocked conventional writers much as the drippings of his contemporary Jackson Pollack did for the art world. But like Pollack's breakthrough brilliance, Kerouac's book instantly drew public attention upon publication (though it took eight years for that to happen). Kerouac's work exposed a widespread subterranean culture of poets, folksingers, hipsters and eccentrics to America and inspired a rucksack revolution of hitchhikers throughout the '60s who went looking for "life," liberation and meaning. His fact-based fictional coverage of neo-bohemianism shaped the philosophical perspective of pop-culture icons from Jerry Garcia to Tom Waits.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007)
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Vonnegut's blend of satire, black comedy and science fiction won literary awards and legions of fans. Viewed by conventionalists as anti-authoritarian, Vonnegut never lost his acute critical perspective on the tragedies wrought by those that society considered just and honorable – a perspective best captured in the pages of Slaughterhouse-Five where he recounts the allied forces' horrific shelling of Dresden in World War II. With a body of work that includes God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) and Cat's Cradle (1963) that exposes much of our conventional thinking as absurd and/or hypocritical, Vonnegut influenced a generation of boomers and boomer writers like Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe) who placed conflicted quirky characters in circumstances untethered by time and space.

Joseph Heller (1923 – 1999)
Catch-22 (1961)
A satirical novelist and playwright, Heller was a deft and equal contemporary to the far more visible Vonnegut. Like his friend Vonnegut, Heller got his view of the idiocy of human reasoning from his service during World War II. To realize how influential Heller has been, ask yourself, when's the last time you or someone else referred to a "Catch-22" when referring to idiotic policies put in place by institutions? Heller's novel coined the term that resonated so deeply with boomers who were confronting the implacable forces that got us into Vietnam and resisted extending equality to women and African Americans. Though lesser known, Heller's later work including Something Happened (1974) and God Knows (1984) continued to display some of the finest post-War satire in publication, and shaped the dry, absurdist wit that boomers would make a standard in future years.

James Baldwin (1924 - 1987)
Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
Widely acknowledged as the forerunner for contemporary literary figures such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Amiri Baraka, Baldwin, whose work ranks with Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison as a spokesman for his generation of black writers, took as his recurrent theme the largest looming conflict of 1960s America – evolving race relations. Fed up with America's rampant racial injustice, Baldwin initially left the country in 1948 for Paris. But the Harlem-born writer returned to help pave the way for artists and writers to take an active participation in the civil-rights struggle when he joined the fight in 1957. In his most powerful civil-rights statement, he said blacks and whites must persevere for a future together or face destruction.

John Updike (1932 - )
Rabbit, Run (1960)
Thanks to Updike's careful craftsmanship, the writer's unapologetic and open exploration of sex, faith and death and their inter-relationships managed to shock us without being gratuitous. Two of his reputation-making, five-volume Rabbit series won Pulitzers for their honest investigation of what Updike called "the American small town, Protestant middle class." In the vein of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Updike has been one of the last American novelists that appealed to the general populace as well as intellectual elites. Pulling aside the veil on the great American middle class, his influence on the children of the '60s became palpable.

Ken Kesey (1935 - 2001)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
Kesey is paradoxically much less famous for his novels than his role in pop culture, a role captured by new journalist Tom Wolfe in The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test (1968). As a counter-cultural figure, Kesey is the linchpin that connected the beat generation in the '50s to the "hippies" in the '60s. But his fiction, particularly One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is nonetheless widely influential for its gripping detail and early objective coverage of the effects of the government's use of psychotropic drugs in mental facilities. And if you haven't had the pleasure of living inside his Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) about logging families in Oregon, than you've missed what critics have called "the Northwest's Moby Dick."

Erica Jong (1942 - )
Fear of Flying (1973)
Millions found Jong's radical manifesto liberating, with its message that women should actually want and enjoy sex, and that on equal footing with men, adultery may be necessary. Her sensationalist frank treatment of a woman's sexual desires was an immense success and a major motivator among the women's liberation movement in the '70s. Jong created a new type of heroine in Fear of Flying, using the main character's affair as a plot vehicle for self-discovery as opposed to the presiding parochial and patriarchal convention as a road to ruin. Though other writer's like Marilyn French (The Women's Room – 1977) may have presented the feminist view with more heft, Jong was able to cross the gender divide by luring even young male boomers into confronting the issues.

BONUS (STRETCHING OUR CRITERIA):

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Brave New World (1932)
Settling in Los Angeles, Aldous Huxley was one of the seminal figures of 20th century literature. An intellectual leader of modern thought, his humanist leanings produced one of the most influential tomes of the time, but it was the Brit's gravitation near the end of his life towards more spiritual subjects that solidified his place in pop culture. After he died of cancer, his books were rediscovered by baby boomers drawn to his principled pacifism, utopian dreams and pharmacological experimentalism, hence Jim Morrison's homage, naming The Doors after a Huxley essay. Brave New World (yes a pre-WWII novel) is included here because of its prescient view that so resonated with coming-of-age boomers about an individual confronting an overwhelming conformist "World State" (capitalist or communist) with enforced social stratification and thought control (rather than thought liberation) maintained by drug-induced euphoria. Anti-authoritarian boomers have naturally identified with John Savage's attempt to be "free," and to "free" others from such insidious societal restraints on self-realization.