Postwar American Literature and Social Critiques: 1950s-1960s

Betty Friedan

Her 1963 bestseller, The Feminine Mystique, is considered a classic of feminist protest that ignited the modern women's movement by critiquing the 'stifling boredom' of suburban life.

David Riesman

In The Lonely Crowd (1950), he portrayed the postwar generation as 'conformists'.

John Kenneth Galbraith

A Harvard economist who wrote The Affluent Society (1958), highlighting the contrast between 'private opulence' and 'public squalor'.

Gunnar Myrdal

His book An American Dilemma (1944) exposed the contradiction between American ideals of liberty and the treatment of Black citizens.

Sloan Wilson and William H. Whyte

Their books The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955) and The Organization Man (1956) were cited as popular critiques of 'managerial capitalism'.

Norman Mailer

Wrote the realistic war novel The Naked and the Dead (1948).

James Jones

Author of the soldierly life novel From Here to Eternity (1951).

Joseph Heller

Wrote the 'savagely satirical' Catch-22 (1961), focused on airmen in the Mediterranean.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Known for the 'darkly comic' and complex Slaughterhouse Five (1969).

John Updike

Famous for the 'Rabbit' series and Couples (1968), which explored small-town life and suburban infidelity.

John Cheever

Referred to as the 'Chekhov of the exurbs,' he wrote The Wapshot Chronicle and the short story 'The Swimmer'.

Gore Vidal

Wrote historical novels and the iconoclastic Myra Breckinridge.

Robert Lowell

Helped start the 'confessional' style of poetry with Life Studies (1959).

Sylvia Plath

Author of the poetry collection Ariel and the autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963).

Tennessee Williams

Wrote dramas about 'psychological misfits,' including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Arthur Miller

Challenged the American dream in Death of a Salesman and used The Crucible as a parable about McCarthyism.

Lorraine Hansberry

Wrote A Raisin in the Sun (1959), a realistic portrait of African American struggles.

Edward Albee

Exposed the 'rapacious underside' of middle-class life in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

J. D. Salinger

His novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is the definitive portrait of adolescent 'angst' and 'rebellion'.

Ralph Ellison

Wrote Invisible Man (1952), exploring a Black man's 'tortured quest for personal identity'.

Saul Bellow

Author of The Adventures of Augie March (1953).

Harper Lee

Wrote the Southern Gothic classic To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).

Richard Wright

The first African American bestseller with Native Son (1940).

James Baldwin

Noted for his reflections on race in The Fire Next Time (1963).

LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)

A Black nationalist who wrote the play Dutchman.

William Faulkner

Led the 'Southern Renaissance' and received the Nobel Prize in 1950.

Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth

Leaders of a 'bountiful' harvest of Jewish literature.

Le Ly Hayslip

Provided a Vietnamese perspective on the war in her memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places.

Jack Kerouac

Wrote On the Road (1957) using a 'spontaneous prose' technique.

Allen Ginsberg

The spokesman for the Beats who wrote the epic poem 'Howl'.

William S. Burroughs

Wrote the 'disjointed' and satirical Naked Lunch (1962).