These techniques, developed by
European writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Günter Grass, were an
inspiration to the new generation of
South American authors, who were
establishing a distinctive style.
Among them were Julio Cortázar,
whose experimental “antinovel”
Hopscotch subverted many literary
conventions, and Gabriel García
Márquez, who popularized the style
known as magic realism, inspired
by the surreal short stories of
Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges.
New literary movements were
also emerging elsewhere, as many
countries—especially in Africa—
achieved national independence
from European colonial control.
Foremost among these countries
was Nigeria, where Chinua Achebe
provided an indigenous voice to
a people rebuilding their nation.In the US, too, writers continued
to assert their identity. As the civil
rights movement gathered
momentum in the 1950s and 1960s,
African-American authors such as
Ralph Ellison described how black
people were marginalized, while
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
looked at race from the perspective
of someone from the Deep South.
Social issues of all types also
provided the subject matter for
New Journalism, the blend of fact
and fiction pioneered by Lee’s
friend Truman Capote.Youth culture
Perhaps the most vociferous
manifestation of postwar culture
came with the younger generation,
and was most noticeable in the US.
An anti-establishment youth
culture emerged as a reactionagainst the older generation that
had taken them into two world
wars and had continued on an
aggressive path with military
involvement in Korea and Vietnam.
These young people also reacted to
cold war uncertainties and the
nuclear threat with hedonistic
dissent. J. D. Salinger was one of
the first to describe teenage angst
and rebellion, followed by the writers
of the beat generation, whose work
was inspired by the freedom of
modern jazz and the brashness of
rock ‘n’ roll. Experimental writing by
Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and
William S. Burroughs pushed the
boundaries not only of form, but
also of content: their sometimes
explicitly sexual material resulted
in legal action and bans on books
in some places, before the more
relaxed attitudes of the 1960s. ■POSTWAR WRITING 249
1959 1961 1963 1966
As the US becomes
increasingly involved in
the conflict in Vietnam,
Joseph Heller finishes
his darkly satirical
World War II novel
Catch-22.Martin Luther King, Jr.,
delivers his “I Have a
Dream” speech about
racial injustice from the
Lincoln Memorial in
Washington, DC.In Cold Blood, a
true crime novel
by Truman Capote,
details the murders
in 1959 of the
Clutter family
in Kansas.In Günter Grass’s
The Tin Drum, the
story unfolds from
the memoirs of Oskar
Matzerath, written
in an institution for
the mentally ill.1960 1962 1963 1967
The Cuban missile crisis,
a 13-day US–Soviet
standoff in October 1962
over ballistic missiles deployed
in Cuba, takes the world to
the brink of nuclear war.Julio Cortázar’s antinovel
Hopscotch has a Table
of Instructions about
different sequences in
which the 155 chapters
can be read.Gabriel García
Márquez recounts the
history of the fictional
Colombian Buendía
family in One Hundred
Years of Solitude.In To Kill a Mockingbird,
Harper Lee describes
through a child’s
eyes small-town
life in America’s
Deep South.US_248-249_Ch6_Intro.indd 249 08/10/2015 13:08