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Newspapers and magazines did not have computerized sales figures on which to base their bestseller lists in 1946. The New York Times Best Seller list was compiled from reports from “leading booksellers” in 22 cities. The newspaper formerly had published a chart that showed the standings in each of the cities surveyed, a format still used by the paper's chief Sunday rival, the Herald Tribune, but by 1946 The Times had consolidated the reports into a single list. The result was not entirely scientific. For one, it excluded book club sales, which accounted for a significant part of overall book sales. although the monthly selection of the major clubs almost always made the upper reaches of the bookstore list. Major department stores also accounted for a significant portion of book sales as did mail order sales outside of major metropolitan areas.
Unlike today, all, or almost all, of the titles on the NYT best seller list this week had been reviewed by the newspaper. The critics did not especially like some of the pulpier titles but the newspaper did not ignore them either. Many had been reviewed both in the Sunday Book Review section and in the daily paper.
Erich Maria Remarque' s Arch of Triumph was in the number one position. It was a well-reviewed, melodramatic tale of refugees from Nazi Germany living without papers in France on the eve of World War Two. It had been a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Historical romances dominated the fiction best-seller list and one of them, Daphne du Maurier's The King's General, was the main rival for dominance. It was a Literary Guild selection.
The crime and mystery novels that now dominate the bestseller list seldom were not often the big sellers in hardback in the mid-1940s. They were widely read but readers tended to rent them from stores that operated much like video stores used to rather than buy them. Perhaps when they did buy them, they bought them at outlets that were not included in The Times survey. Paperbacks were just beginning to take off with genre titles being especially popular. Grown ups did not read Young Adult novels about vampires and wizards back then.
Among the more literary titles that made the list were Theodore Dreiser's disappointing, posthumously published novel about a Quaker family, The Bulwark; Evelyn Waugh' s tale of the British aristocracy Brideshead Revisited and Edmund Wilson's controversial depiction of upper middle class suburbia and Manhattan, Memoirs of Hecate County, soon to be banned in New York City.
ARCH OF TRIUMPH
Erich Maria Remarque
This was a generally well-reviewed tale of the desperate lives of illegal refugees in Paris just before the start of the Second World War from an established writer best known for All Quiet on the Western Front. The protagonist is a German surgeon who has fled the Nazi and is living underground in Paris without papers, subsisting by secretly performing operations for less skilled practitioners. The love interest is a Romanian refugee, an actress and singer living a dissolute life of despair.
Remarque, himself a refugee from Germany, was living in much better circumstances in New York in 1946 and was a fixture at the haunts of cafe society, often with an actress or model at his side. He had a huge international success in 1929 with the now classic All Quiet on the Western Front. He had become a celebrity in Wiemar Berlin but the Nazis, who were gathering steam by then. had vehemently disapproved of his critical view of German society. When they came to power, they banned and burned his books and stripped him of his citizenship. During the war, his sister in Germany was beheaded for "defeatism" after confiding to a friend in a moment of depression that she thought Germany would lose the war.
All Quiet on the Western Front, which was adapted for the screen, becoming one of the first blockbuster talkies. With All Quiet, Remarque had that rare achievement: a bestseller that was also taken seriously by the literary establishment. His subsequent novels sold well enough and all had been made into movies by Hollywood and serialized by popular magazines but they were dismissed as pop fiction by the German intellectuals whose favor he sought. Arch of Triumph was the closest he came to repeating his two-pronged success.
Most of the mainstream media praised Arch of Triumph. It ended up on several end of the year best books lists. Hollywood bought it for a movie: Ingrid Bergman, the biggest female star of the day, had been cast to play the novel’s doomed heroine and Charles Boyer would play the protagonist. It was a Book-of-the-Month selection. But the critical praise was not universal. Some conservative critics found the milieu of Arch of Triumph too sordid with its prostitutes and abortionists; the Catholic Digest reviewer went as far as calling it atheistic. The modernist high culture crowd thought the story too overly melodramatic to be taken seriously. Some sensitive souls cringed at the medical scenes. Other reviewers found the melancholic tone wearying. Wolcott Gibbs wrote a hilarious parody for The New Yorker in which the hero was a screenwriter hiding out from the Hollywood studio heads, forced to work as a substitute teacher at a girl's school . While some critics praised Remarque's vivid depiction of Paris as it was just before the war, other critics complained he presented a cliche-riddled, tourist guidebook portrait of the city. Remarque had experienced the city at this time as part of Marlene Dietrich's entourage and a celebrity in his own right. Some readers saw hints of Dietrich in Remarque's heroine.
Remarque has recently gained renewed critical respect, particularly in Germany. The novel is in print today and available as an e-book.
The Critics on "Arch of Triumph"
THE KING’S GENERAL
Daphne du Maurier
Several other bestseller lists had du Maurier's latest historical romance in first place, including the Herald Tribune. Du Maurier had become a blockbuster machine and was following up on the huge success of Rebecca, Jamaica Inn and Frenchmen’s Creek, among others, with this historical romance set in Cornwall at the time of the English Civil War. Alexander Korda had recently acquired the movie rights (although the film adaptation was never made). Like Rebecca , which was a big hit as a movie, The King's General was inspired by Menabilly, the Elizabethan manor house in Cornwall restored and leased for many years by du Maurier. In this case, the genesis of the plot was the reputed grisly discovery during a 19th-century renovation of Menabilly of a skeleton in cavalier uniform interred in a long-forgotten secret chamber within the walls of the house. Like several of du Maurier's earlier novels, The King's General was a Literary Guild selection.
Critics then as now tended to dismiss du Maurier as a literary lightweight, but granted that she was a master of suspense and a damned good storyteller. Her greatest strength was her ability to create atmosphere. Even her period pieces were dark and foreboding. The King's General is told by its heroine, confined to a makeshift wheelchair after her legs are crushed in a riding accident just before her intended wedding. Fifteen years later she again encounters the cruel, egotistical but dashing military man she was to marry. He is now the leader of the Royalist forces in Cornwall defending the west country from the rebellious supporters of Parliament. Their passion is reignited. Also in the mix are the general's manipulative, self-centered sister and his unloved teenage son. Menabilly plays a central role with its hidden passages, a secret chamber and a tragic history. The story comes to life in the scenes played out there, getting a bit bogged down in military history elsewhere.
Du Maurier rejected characterization as a romance novelist. Her interest, she declared, was not romance but the power struggle between the sexes. Although some critics complained that the author's characters spoke and behaved anachronistically and the novel's plot had the implausibility of a Technicolor movie, others noted that her depiction of historical events was more accurate than was usual in period pieces. True to the historical romance genre conventions, du Maurier's apparent sympathies, along with those of her heroine, are with the aristocratic cavaliers fighting for the absolute monarchy against the supporters of elected government, although she noted cruelty on both sides.
Although generally regarded as one of the author's lesser works, du Maurier's fans have kept this book in print. It is also available as an e-book.
Historical fiction was the dominant genre on the fiction bestseller list.
FOREVER AMBER was in its third year on the list. This novel by Kathleen Winsor was a bawdy tale of a headstrong young woman in Restoration England, it scandalized some and provided a template for many subsequent historical romances. A movie adaptation was being filmed at this time but running into trouble. It would soon change director and the title role would be recast.
A list veteran, Anya Seton, had a hit with THE TURQUOISE a historical romance set in Santa Fe and New York City during the Gilded Age. A prior Seton blockbuster, Dragonwyck, had been made into a film that had recently opened to boffo business.
Another list veteran, Thomas B. Costain, was represented this week with an adventure tale THE BLACK ROSE that took its brave hero from 13th Century England to China.
Frank Yerby made his first of many appearances on the bestseller lists with THE FOXES OF HARROW, which he later admitted included every cliche about the antebellum South he could think of. An African-American, Yerby had not been able to find a publisher for an earlier work on race relations.
Margaret Campbell Barnes whose novels about British royalty are still read today made the Herald Tribune list with MY LADY OF CLEVES, about the unloved wife of Henry VIII who escaped the bloody fate of some of Henry’s wives by agreeing amicably to an annulment and becoming a friend and confidante to the monarch. Lloyd C. Douglas’ 1942 blockbuster about the aftermath of the crucifixion,
THE ROBE benefited from Easter season promotion, appearing this week on the Herald Tribune chart as well.
One hit wonders on the list this week included Gladys Schmitt, whose DAVID THE KING was about the biblical hero, notable for daring to depict the relationship with Jonathan as homoerotic.
Elizabeth Metzger Howard had won a prize from Doubleday and MGM with BEFORE THE SUN GOES DOWN, the chronicle of a 19th century Pennsylvania mining town. Prize winner or not, the majority of critics found it amateurishly written.
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, Evelyn Waugh’s now classic novel about a glamorous decadent family of British aristocrats who find redemption through the Catholic church was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and was selling particularly well in upscale stores like Brentano’s that catered to the carriage trade. Considered now one of the important books of the 20th Century, some of the leading critics of the day faulted it for an unconvincing ending. It is perhaps most widely known these days for the popular BBC/PBS 1981 miniseries and a less well received 2008 movie.
MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY lit a firestorm that would lead to it being banned that summer. It was a collection of short stories and a novella exposing the lives of New York's literati in Manhattan and their bucolic suburban weekend retreats written by Edmund Wilson, the esteemed book critic for The New Yorker. The clique he satirized was not amused but it was the guardians of morality who got the book banned for a depiction of oral sex in the novella. The authorities raided bookstores and even confiscated the copies owned by the New York Public Library. It did not appear in print again until 1959.
THE BULWARK was of great interest as the first novel in 20 years from Theodore Dreiser, one of the literary giants of the early 20th century. Dreiser had died in December and the novel was published posthumously. The protagonist was a Quaker businessman who comes to realize that his great success in the world of finance cam,e at the betrayal of his moral values. Most critics found the book aa disappointment that fell far short of Dreiser's classics like Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. But the far left touted it as an insightful indictment of the Protestant Ethic and Capitalism. The Communist Party claimed him as a deathbed convert. The left-leaning Book Find Club had made it a selection. Meanwhile Brentano's advertised a Memorial edition of An American Tragedy this week in the New York Times Book Review.
Popular magazine writer, memoirist and novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes had a success this week with THE RIVER ROAD, one of her many bestsellers of the mid-20th century. It was the tale of a Louisiana sugar plantation between the two World Wars. Critics found her work meticulously detailed but ponderous and old-fashioned. She was the widow of a former US Senator and a prominent convert to Catholicism, which figured largely in her work
Ann Petry's novel THE STREET about a single mother struggling to raise her son amid the crime and poverty of Harlem had made the Herald Tribune and Daily News bestseller lists this week and would soon climb high on The New York Times list as well without benefit of a book club tie-in. Petry had been awarded a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. Petry was an African-American journalist and social worker. Race relations, or "The Negro Problem" as they often said then, would be a major topic of discussion in the postwar years. The city's African American population had swelled since the beginning of the century with the mass northward migration from the Deep South. The issue would drive a wedge in the city's traditional Democratic coalition. Some critics of today believe this harrowing novel still deserves readers today. It is available in print and as an ebook. SEE HERE for the Petry interview that ran in this week's Sunday Herald Tribune.
Ayn Rand's 1943 novel THE FOUNTAINHEAD was on the Herald Tribune list this week. Its success came largely from word of mouth. The critics had dismissed it as a badly written potboiler but a legion of devoted disciples promoted it over the decades. Rand’s touting of "every man for himself" egoism stood in stark contrast to the collective “we’re all in this together” attitude that prevailed during the Depression and the War. It particularly appealed to post adolescents who dreamed of soaring like eagles over the the turkeys and conventions that held them down.
Bestsellers of the day in print and available as ebooks today: Arch of Triumph,The King’s General, Brideshead Revisited, The Fountainhead, The Street, The Black Rose, The Turquoise, Forever Amber, The Robe and My Lady of Cleves. Memoirs of Hecate County is in print.
Other New York Times bestsellers of the week now out of print:
WASTELAND by Jo Sinclair, the pen name of Ruth Seid, was the winner of the Harper Prize. It tells of a young man who turns to psychiatry to resolve his conflict over his identity as a Jew. Notably, the book included a sympathetically portrayed lesbian character. Seid is still of interest to students of feminism, civil rights. Jewish life and gay issues.
WRITTEN ON THE WIND by Robert Wilder, was a roman a clef remembered now mostly as the source of the juicy Douglas Sirk movie. Inspired by a scandal involving torch singer Libby Holman and an heir to the R.J. Reynolds fortune, the movie later turned the family into oil tycoons to avoid litigation. The book and movie were forerunners of the many family dynasty dramas that came to populate the TV screen in later years.
THE ZEBRA DERBY by Max Shulman was a humorous and timely account of a veteran’s attempt to return to civilian life. Shulman would become best known later for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and the play The Tender Trap.
MRS. PALMER'S HONEY by Fannie Cook was about the trials and triumphs of an African-American domestic who becomes a labor organizer and civil rights activist. It was the winner of Doubleday’s George Washington Carver Award. Cook was herself a social activist in St. Louis and a prominent member of the city’s Jewish community. Critics found the book earnest but didactic.
Additional titles that appeared on the Herald Tribune chart:
I LOVE YOU MISS TILLI BEAN was light fiction about the experiences of an eight year-old Quaker girl who travels to Europe when her mother falls for an Italian spaghetti salesman. The author, Ilka Chase, was an actress, socialite and radio personality whose mother was the longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue.
STAR OF THE UNBORN was an odd satirical science-fiction fantasy by Franz Werfel, the well-regarded Austrian refugee novelist best known in the US for The Song of Bernadette. Published posthumously, it was widely seen by the critics as a major disappointment from an important writer.
FORETASTE OF GLORY was about a small Kentucky town whose residents take a sighting of the aurora borealis as a sign of the Second Coming. Regionalist Jesse Stuart, best known today for his 1950 autobiography The Thread That Runs So True, had a best seller in 1943 with the novel Taps for Private Tussie. Also a poet, he won critical praise for his spare style. Stuart continues to have a following today and many of his books, including this one, are still in print.
MISS BUNTING by Angela Thirkell was a British comedy of manners in which an elderly governess finds the social order in a small English town upended near the end of the war with the arrival of a coarse business tycoon. Angela Thirkell was a prolific writer about upper class life in British country villages. Several of her other novels are still in print.
THE LIFE LINE by Phyllis Bottome was a spy adventure in which a British schoolmaster poses as a mental patient to work for the underground in Nazi Austria. Largely forgotten today, Anglo-American writer Phyllis Bottome published 33 novels in her career, including several bestsellers. Four of her books were made into movies. Her chief claim to fame was that she was among the first English-language novelists to recognize and write about the dangers posed by the Nazi movement, which she had observed first-hand as a resident in the 1920s and 1930s of Austria and Germany.
THE WHITE TOWER by James Ramsey Ullman was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and big bestseller in 1945. It was about a diverse group of mountain climbers who seek to conquer a mountain peak in neutral Switzerland during World War Two. It was made into a movie in 1950 starring Glenn Ford. Ullman was himself a mountaineer who wrote several novels on the subject as well as non-fiction accounts.
The New York Times and the Herald Tribune were not the only newspapers to run bestseller lists. The Journal American compiled a list based on sales reports from Doubleday's, Macy's, Womrath's and Bloomingdale's. It had The Bulwark as number one and Wasteland in second place, followed by The King's General, Arch of Triumph, David the King and Foxes of Harrow.
The Sunday News added A&S department store in Brooklyn, Brentano and Putnam to the above stores. It had the order as Arch of Triumph, David the King, The King's General, Wasteland and The Street.
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