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Amor Towles' best-selling 2024 story collection, Table for Two, is now out in paperback. Below, the author of A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway shares six of the books he's enjoyed most during a recent immersion in American fiction of the 1950s.
'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
Seventy years later, Lolita remains refreshing, funny, sharp, and shocking. It is worth reading just for the humbling pleasure of witnessing what a late adopter of English can achieve with our language. Buy it here.
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'Seize the Day' by Saul Bellow (1956)
Only 100 pages or so long, Seize the Day is a moving portrayal of a man approaching his wit's end. The story, which takes place over half a day, is an intimate depiction of a middle-aged Manhattanite who, having lost his job and wife, is trying to find a foothold for a new beginning. The final sequence, in which our hero stumbles into a stranger's funeral, is Bellow at his best. Buy it here.
'My Face for the World to See' by Alfred Hayes (1958)
Hayes is an underappreciated master. I find his books reminiscent of the highly stylized and elusive novels that came out of mid-century France, but with a distinctively American tone. This novel opens with a jaded screenwriter witnessing a young woman wading into the Pacific with the apparent intention of drowning herself. When he pulls her from the surf, his life veers. Buy it here.
'A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories' by Flannery O'Connor (1955)
One of the greatest American short story collections, O'Connor's second book is an enthralling depiction of societal iniquity, familial dysfunction, individual idiosyncrasy, and moral chaos all set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South. Buy it here.
'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac (1957)
I suspect On the Road leaves many readers unsatisfied. It fails or chooses not to fulfill many of the expectations of the "traditional" novel. But it delivers a propulsive American voice, one which is always racing toward the next moment of experience. In its pages, you can still feel the energy released by casting off artistic and social mores. Buy it here.
'The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit' by Sloan Wilson (1955)
A best-seller in its time, this novel is an incisive depiction of a Manhattan media professional in the decade after World War II. Investigating the anonymity of the office, the emptiness of professional ambition, and the conformity of the suburbs, the book anticipated many of the themes addressed by Cheever and Updike. Buy it here.
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