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==Post-World War II fiction==

===Novel===
[[File:Normanmailer.jpg|thumb|200px|[[Norman Mailer]], photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948]]

The period in time from the end of World War II up until, roughly, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the publication of some of the most popular works in American history. The period was dominated by the last few of the more realistic [[modernist]]s along with the wildly Romantic [[beatnik]]s, This included the highly popular ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'' (1960) by [[Harper Lee]] that deals with racial inequality and novels that responded to America's involvement in World War II.

Though born in Canada, Chicago raised [[Saul Bellow]] would become one of the most influential novelists in America in the decades directly following World War II. In works like ''[[The Adventures of Augie March]]'' (1953) and ''[[Herzog (novel)|Herzog]]'',(1964) Bellow painted vivid portraits of the American city and the distinctive characters that peopled it. Bellow went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

World War II was the subject of several major novels: [[Norman Mailer]]'s ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' (1948), [[Joseph Heller]]'s ''[[Catch-22]]'' (1961) and [[Kurt Vonnegut Jr.]]'s ''[[Slaughterhouse-Five]]'' (1969). While the Korean war was a source of trauma for the protagonist of ''[[The Moviegoer]]'' (1962), by Southern author [[Walker Percy]], winner of the National Book Award; his attempt at exploring "the dislocation of man in the modern age."<ref name="NYT_Conversations">Kimball, Roger [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E5D81238F937A3575BC0A963948260 Existentialism, Semiotics and Iced Tea, Review of Conversations with Walker Percy] New York Times, August 4, 1985, Accessed September 24, 2006</ref>

Other noteworthy novels are [[J.D. Salinger]]'s  ''[[The Catcher in the Rye]]'' (1951), [[Sylvia Plath]]'s ''[[The Bell Jar]]'' (1963), and Russian-American [[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s ''[[Lolita]]'' (1955).

In the 1950s the poetry and fiction of the "[[Beat Generation]]" developed, initially from a New York circle of intellectuals and then established more officially later in San Francisco. The term ''Beat'' referred to the countercultural rhythm of the Jazz scene, to a sense of rebellion regarding the conservative stress of post-war society, and to an interest in new forms of spiritual experience through drugs, alcohol, philosophy, and religion (specifically [[Zen Buddhism]]). [[Allen Ginsberg]] set the tone with his Whitmanesque poem ''[[Howl]]'' (1956), a work that begins: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." Among the achievements of the Beats, in the novel, are [[Jack Kerouac]]'s ''[[On the Road]]'' (1957), the chronicle of a soul-searching travel through the continent, and [[William S. Burroughs]]'s ''[[Naked Lunch]]'' (1959), a more experimental work structured as a series of vignettes relating, among other things, the narrator's travels and experiments with [[hard drugs]].

[[File:John Updike with Bushes new.jpg|thumb|right|[[John Updike]]]]

In contrast, [[John Updike]] approached American life from a more reflective but no less subversive perspective. His 1960 novel ''[[Rabbit, Run]],'' the first of four chronicling the rising and falling fortunes of [[Rabbit Angstrom|Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom]] over the course of four decades against the backdrop of the major events of the second half of the 20th century, broke new ground on its release in its characterization and detail of the American middle class and frank discussion of [[taboo]] topics such as [[adultery]]. Notable among Updike's characteristic innovations was his use of present-tense narration, his rich, stylized language, and his attention to sensual detail. His work is also deeply imbued with [[Christianity|Christian]] themes. The two final installments of the Rabbit series, ''[[Rabbit is Rich]]'' (1981) and ''[[Rabbit at Rest]]'' (1990), were both awarded the [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction]]. Other notable works include the [[Henry Bech]] novels (1970–98), ''[[The Witches of Eastwick]]'' (1984), ''[[Roger's Version]]'' (1986) and ''[[In the Beauty of the Lilies]]'' (1996), which literary critic [[Michiko Kakutani]] called "arguably his finest."<ref name="kakutani">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/12/books/books-of-the-times-seeking-salvation-on-the-silver-screen.html|title=Seeking Salvation On the Silver Screen|last=Kakutani|first=Michiko|work=[[The New York Times]] Books|date=January 12, 1996|access-date=December 3, 2009}}</ref>

Frequently linked with Updike is the novelist [[Philip Roth]]. Roth vigorously explores [[Jewish identity]] in American society, especially in the postwar era and the early 21st century. Frequently set in [[Newark, New Jersey]], Roth's work is known to be highly autobiographical, and many of Roth's main characters, most famously the Jewish novelist [[Nathan Zuckerman]], are thought to be [[alter ego]]s of Roth. With these techniques, and armed with his articulate and fast-paced style, Roth explores the distinction between reality and fiction in literature while provocatively examining American culture. His most famous work includes the Zuckerman novels, the controversial ''[[Portnoy's Complaint]]'' (1969), and ''[[Goodbye, Columbus]]'' (1959). Among the most decorated American writers of his generation, he has won every major American literary award, including the Pulitzer Prize for his major novel ''[[American Pastoral]]'' (1997).

In the realm of African-American literature, [[Ralph Ellison]]'s 1952 novel ''[[Invisible Man]]'' was instantly recognized as among the most powerful and important works of the immediate post-war years. The story of a black [[Notes from Underground|Underground Man]] in the urban north, the novel laid bare the often repressed racial tension that still prevailed while also succeeding as an [[existentialism|existential]] character study. [[Richard Wright (author)|Richard Wright]] was catapulted to fame by the publication in subsequent years of his now widely studied short story, "[[The Man Who Was Almost a Man]]" (1939), and his controversial second novel, ''[[Native Son]]'' (1940), and his legacy was cemented by the 1945 publication of ''[[Black Boy]]'', a work in which Wright drew on his childhood and mostly [[autodidactic]] education in the segregated South, fictionalizing and exaggerating some elements as he saw fit. Because of its polemical themes and Wright's involvement with the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party]], the novel's final part, "American Hunger", was not published until 1977.

Perhaps the most ambitious and challenging post-war American novelist was [[William Gaddis]], whose uncompromising, satiric, and large novels, such as ''[[The Recognitions]]'' (1955) and ''[[J R]]'' (1975) are presented largely in terms of unattributed dialog that requires almost unexampled reader participation. Gaddis's primary themes include forgery, capitalism, religious zealotry, and the legal system, constituting a sustained polyphonic critique of modern American life. Gaddis's work, though largely ignored for years, anticipated and influenced the development of such ambitious "postmodern" fiction writers as [[Thomas Pynchon]], [[David Foster Wallace]], [[Joseph McElroy]], [[William H. Gass]], and [[Don DeLillo]]. Another neglected and challenging postwar American novelist, albeit one who wrote much shorter works, was [[John Hawkes (novelist)|John Hawkes]], whose surreal [[visionary fiction]] addresses themes of violence and eroticism and experiments audaciously with narrative voice and style. Among his most important works is the short nightmarish novel ''[[The Lime Twig]]'' (1961).

===Short fiction===

In the postwar period, the art of the short story again flourished. Among its most respected practitioners was [[Flannery O'Connor]], who developed a distinctive [[Southern gothic]] esthetic in which characters acted at one level as people and at another as symbols. A devout Catholic, O'Connor often imbued her stories, among them the widely studied "[[A Good Man is Hard to Find]]" and "[[Everything That Rises Must Converge]]", and two novels, ''[[Wise Blood]]'' (1952); ''[[The Violent Bear It Away]]'' (1960), with deeply religious themes, focusing particularly on the search for truth and religious skepticism against the backdrop of the nuclear age. Other important practitioners of the form include [[Katherine Anne Porter]], [[Eudora Welty]], [[John Cheever]], [[Raymond Carver]], [[Tobias Wolff]], and the more experimental [[Donald Barthelme]].