Fiction in the '70s brought a return to
old-fashioned storytelling, especially with
Erich Segal's Love Story. The seventies also
saw the decline of previously well-respected writers, such as
Saul Bellow and
Peter De Vries, who both released poorly
received novels at the start of the decade. Racism remained a key
literary subject.
John Updike emerged as
a major literary figure. Reflections of the 1960s experience also
found roots in the literature of the decade through the works of
Joyce Carol Oates and
Morris Wright. With the rising cost of
hard-cover books and the increasing readership of "
genre fiction", the
paperback became a popular medium. Criminal
non-fiction also became a popular topic. Irreverence and satire,
typified in
Kurt Vonnegut's
Breakfast of
Champions, were common literary elements. The horror genre
also emerged, and by the late seventies
Stephen King had become one of the most popular
genre novelists.
In nonfiction, several books related to Nixon and the
Watergate scandal topped the best-selling
lists. 1977 brought many high-profile biographical works of
literary figures, such as those of
Virginia Woolf,
Agatha Christie, and
J. R.
R. Tolkien. Books discussing sex such as
Everything
You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask were
popular as authors took advantage of the lifted censorship laws on
literature in the sixties. Exposés such as
All the President's Men were
also popular. Self-help and diet books replaced the cookbooks and
home fix-it manuals that topped the sixties's charts.
Fiction
After the experimentation and sexual subject matter that
exemplified some of the sixties' most definitive works of
literature, the early '70s brought a return to old-fashioned
storytelling.
Erich Segal's Love Story was a tender romance
that captured America, topping best-seller lists for the better
part of the year and producing a successful film adaptation by the
end of 1970.
The seventies also saw the decline of previously well-respected
writers, such as
Saul Bellow and
Peter De Vries, who both released
poorly received novels at the start of the decade. Meanwhile,
Islands in the
Stream, a posthumously released
Ernest Hemingway novel, was released. While
Hemingway's classic style showed through, it was criticized as
overwrought.
Racism remained a key subject in literature throughout the early
seventies. While
Madison Jones' A
Cry of Absence and
Ernest J.
Gaines'
The Autobiography of Miss
Jane Pittman studied racism in the past, works like that
of
Nadine Gordimer and
Bernard Malamud studied race relations in
South Africa and New York respectively.
In the early seventies,
John Updike
emerged as a major literary figure with the release of
Bech: A
Book, a semi-autobiographical look at a Jewish novelist, the
continuing Rabbit series (including 1971's popular
Rabbit
Redux), and his numerous subtle, relevant stories. Reflections
of the 1960s experience also found roots in the literature of the
decade through the works of
Joyce
Carol Oates and
Morris Wright.
Books like
Looking for Mr. Goodbar by
Judith Rossner explored sex,
single-parenthood, and the singles life in fresh, intriguing, and
even unsettling light.
With the rising cost of hard-cover books and the increasing
readership of "
genre fiction," the
paperback became a popular medium through
the popular fiction of
Peter Benchley
and
Thomas Pynchon.
Criminal non-fiction
also became a popular topic with works such as The Onion Field, written by Los Angeles
policeman Joseph
Wambaugh, and the narrative Helter Skelter, about the
infamous Charles Manson killings,
written by Vincent Bugliosi and
Curt Gentry.
1975 brought the popular
Watership
Down by
Richard
Adams, a juvenile novel about a family of rabbits which found a
home in mainstream literary circles.
Joseph Heller's middle-age dramatic novel
Something Happened brought the author one of his
best-received novels since
Catch-22.
James
A. Michener
also returned to prominence in the seventies, first with
Chesapeake, a story of
four families interwoven throughout their interactions in the
Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland
, and later
with Centennial, a
historical novel about a family living in Colorado in the time of
the 1870s. In 1976,
Centennial was adapted to a
popular television
miniseries.
John Jakes would release a Bicentennial series of
novels himself, which helped launch his writing career and were
nearly as popular as Michener's book.
E. L.
Doctorow's
Ragtime became one of the most popular
books of 1976 with its unconventional style and satiric nature.
Saul Bellow returned with the
Pulitzer
Prize-winning
Humboldt's Gift, about a failed poet and
a rising playwright. The same year
Alex
Haley released his immensely popular
Roots: The Saga of an
American Family, which followed Haley's ancestry back to
the kidnapping of a young black man named
Kunta Kinte, who was sold into slavery in the
south.
By the
late seventies, a former English teacher from Maine
had become
one of the most popular genre novelists with his tales of horror
and suspense. Stephen King's
1974 novel,
Carrie, became a
best seller and spawned a popular 1976 film. He followed
Carrie with
Salem's
Lot, a vampire tale;
The Shining, a spooky romp set in a
deserted hotel;
The Stand, a
post-apocalyptic shocker; and
The Dead Zone, about a comatose
man who awakens with psychic abilities. King also released a
collection of short stories and two novels under the pseudonym
Richard Bachman.
Notable works such as
William
Styron's Holocaust epic,
Sophie's Choice, rounded out
the decade.
Kurt Vonnegut's
Jailbird reflected the comic results of the Watergate
scandal while
Nadine Gordimer
continued to write in favor of an end to
Apartheid. By decade's end,
Tom Wolfe topped the best-seller lists with
The Right Stuff,
which celebrated the early NASA test pilots and astronauts.
After two decades of cookbooks, historical novels and inspirational
religious fiction topping the bestseller charts, literature in the
seventies took a new turn. The independence and freedom themes of
the sixties showed up in early seventies literature, with a 1970
fiction top ten bestseller,
The French Lieutenant's
Woman by
John Fowles. Fowles
tells a story about a woman choosing to raise a child on her own in
an artists world, as opposed to marrying into money and high
society.
As the picture books and inspirational religious fiction of the
sixties disappeared, irreverence and satire became the norm. In
Breakfast of
Champions,
Kurt Vonnegut in
1973 maintained with humorous analogy an extensive satirical
discussion of American society, revealing his views on such topics
as marketing, government and the environment. Richard Adams in
Watership Down commented on
the environment and the land development industry, speaking through
a society of rabbits. In 1972,
Richard
Bach made an avatar out of a bird in
Jonathan Livingston
Seagull, and by 1977 made a savior out of a car mechanic
in
Illusions:
Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.
Vonnegut ended the decade with
Jailbird, a satire on the innocent unknown
faces, the guilty known ones, and the born again Christians that
spent time in prison because of Richard Nixon and the Watergate
scandal.
The newest genre to start in the seventies was the horror genre,
beginning in 1971 with
The
Exorcist by
William P.
Blatty, and again with the
sensational
Amityville
Horror by
Jay Anson in 1977. In
1979,
Stephen King first made the
fiction top ten with
The Dead
Zone, a fitting end to seventies literature, and along
with
Vonnegut,
Bach,
the diet books and the self help manuals on the lists in 1979, gave
a good indication of what American society would be reading in the
future, and how much the seventies impacted and helped to change
American culture.
Fictionally, in the Harry Potter series, the so-called "First
Wizarding War" between Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters versus
the Ministry of Magic with the assistance of the Order of the
Phoenix took place in the Wizarding world of the United Kingdom
between 1970 and 1981.
Nonfiction
Carl Bernstein and
Robert Woodward, writers from the
Washington Post, published
The Final Days in 1976. The
best-selling book documented the downfall of President
Richard Nixon, and their involvement in his
resignation, he was not impeached. Throughout this period many
other books related to Nixon and the
Watergate scandal topped the best-selling
lists. The same year,
Alice Walker
published
Meridian, about
the
Civil Rights Movement, and
Renata Adler released the feminist
classic,
Speedboat.
1977 brought many high-profile biographical works of literary
figures, such as those of
Virginia
Woolf,
Agatha Christie, and
J. R. R.
Tolkien. The world of fiction saw a
return of the
muckraker.
Books by John Blair and Robert
Engler warned of the problems caused by America's
dependence on oil while Sidney Lens' The Day Before Doomsday
warned of nuclear annihilation. Mario
Puzo's much-awaited follow-up to
The Godfather,
Fools Die, was released in 1978 and instantly
became a best seller.
By 1975, the independence and freedom themes evolved into the
swinging singles scene, with
Looking for Mr. Goodbar by
Judith Rossner at number four on the
fiction top ten list. Sex hit the top of the non-fiction charts in
1970, with authors taking advantage of the lifted censorship laws
on literature in the sixties.
Everything
You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask by
David Reuben, M.D. took the
number one spot, winning out over The
New English Bible at number two, a
book just as controversial. The
New English Bible completely
abandoned the conservative interpretation and traditional Bible
phrasing for contemporary wording and modern analogy.
The exposé became a popular bestseller tool, hitting its high point
with the 1974 number two non-fiction best seller,
All the President's Men by
Carl Bernstein and
Bob Woodward, two journalists that exposed
Richard Nixon and the Watergate
scandal. Interestingly enough, at number one was
The Total Woman by
Marabel Morgan, which marked the beginning of
the conservative right’s counterattack on the sixties liberation
and the seventies retreat from traditional values. The exposés
throughout the seventies unveiled much of American society's
secrets, including the treatment of
Native Americans, the
corporate world, and baseball, to name a few. A revealing exposé in
1979 finally reached the most esteemed rooms of the country, with
The Brethren:
Inside the Supreme Court by
Bob
Woodward and
Scott
Armstrong.
Self-help and diet books replaced the cookbooks and home fix-it
manuals that topped the sixties's charts, and starting in 1972
there were at least two self help books on every non-fiction top
ten list through 1979, starting with
I'm OK, You're OK, by
Thomas Anthony Harris and ending with
How to
Prosper During the Coming Bad Years by
Howard J. Ruff.
Dr. Atkins' Diet
Revolution started the bestseller health craze in 1972,
with multiple diet and exercise books throughout the decade, ending
with
The Complete Book
of Running by
James Fixx in
1978, and
The
Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet in 1979.
Literature by year
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