Kata’s Progress – The 1940’s

Haunting, Beautiful. Still Relevant. Slow Moving. Hard to Get Into. Timeless. Ponderable. Boring. 

Above are some of the words that I repeatedly used in my blog to describe the Pulitzer winning books. With perhaps the exception of A Bell for Adano, the books require a fair amount of discipline and patience to read. To get a true sense of these books, most need to be read slowly.

Tales of the South Pacific marks a change in the Pulitzer winners. The award goes from being called the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel to being called the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Tales of the South Pacific is not so much a novel as a series of short stories. Needless to say, many of the books during the 1940’s were about World War II. As with many of the earlier Pulitzer winners, racism is often discussed in these stories.

• 1940 The Grapes of Wrath
• 1942 In This Our Life
• 1943 Dragon’s Teeth 
• 1944 Journey in the Dark
• 1945 A Bell for Adano
• 1947 All the King’s Men
• 1948 Tales of the South Pacific
• 1949 Guard of Honor