Fiction 1963

Cat's Cradle

With rave reviews including Graham Green, Kurt Vonnegut enters mainstream popularity with this parody on family, society and Ice Nine.

The Spy who Came in from the Cold

This controversial John le Carré mystery became the antithesis of Ian Flemming's James Bond series. Rather that a perfect spy working for a perfect system, le Carré equalizes the horror of East and West in the Cold War game. It is said to be the greatest spy novel ever written.

Caravans

Following his success in 1960 with Hawaii, James A. Michener has another best seller chronicling the history of Afghanistan.

The Collector

The first novel by English author John Fowles delving into love, sex and society through the story of a loser kidnapping and imprisoning a girl.

Pierre Boulle - Planet of the Apes

Charles M. Schulz - Happiness Is a Warm Puppy

Richard McKenna - The Sand Pebbles

Ian Fleming - On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Mary McCarthy - The Group

J. G. Ballard -The Four-Dimensional Nightmare

Walter Tevis - The Man Who Fell to Earth

Morris West - The Shoes of the Fisherman

Alistair MacLean - Ice Station Zebra
Anthony Burgess - Inside Mr. Enderby
Taylor Caldwell - Grandmother and the Priests
Morley Callaghan - That Summer in Paris
Len Deighton - Horse Under Water
August Derleth - Mr. George and Other Odd Persons
Daphne du Maurier - The Glass-Blowers
Jane Gaskell – The Serpent
John Hawkes - Second Skin
Georgette Heyer - False Colours
Robert E. Howard - The Dark Man and Others
Frank Belknap Long - The Horror from the Hills
Ruth Manning-Sanders - A Book of Giants
Emily Cheney Neville - It's Like This, Cat
John O'Hara - Elizabeth Appleton
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Thomas Pynchon - V.
John Rechy - City of Night
Susan Sontag - Benefactor
Rex Stout - The Mother Hunt
Boris and Arkady Strugatsky - Dalyokaya Raduga
Rosemary Sutcliff - Sword at Sunset
David Weiss - Naked Came I
Manly Wade Wellman - Who Fears the Devil?

More on each new book of 1963 at Wikipedia

1963 Tony Awards (theater)

Play - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Actor— Arthur Hill, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Actress—Uta Hagen, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Supporting or Featured Actor—Alan Arkin, Enter Laughing

Supporting or Featured Actress— Sandy Dennis, A Thousand Clowns
Director—Alan Schneider, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Literary News 1963

Aldous Huxley, most famous for his 1932 novel Brave New World and counterculture icon to such as The Beatles and The Doors. In 1955 he wrote of his LSD experiences in The Doors of Perception. On his death bed he asked his wife Laura Archera to inject him with LSD. She gave him two injections a few hours apart and he died pleasantly late in the afternoon of November 22nd. So this story never made it very far.

First United States printing of John Cleland's 1749 novel, Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure). The book is banned for obscenity, triggering a court case by its publisher.

Pulitzer prize for fiction awarded to William Faulkner for his book The Reivers

Pulitzer prize for non fiction awarded to Barbara W. Tuchman for her book The Guns of August

Non Fiction 1963

The Feminine Mystique

This book defined Betty Friedan as the founder of the feminist revolution. A harsh voice to the role of women as homemakers represented by June Cleaver. Friedan went on to co-found the U.S. National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 and the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) in 1969.

Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Martin Luther King, Jr wrote this letter from the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama as a response to the white Alabama clergy who said the battle against racial segregation should be fought in the courts not in the streets. The letter is the call to peaceful demonstrations to end Apartheid in the South. Quotable's:
"This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never'."
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"Justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity

H.P. Lovecraft (1890- 1937)

Though not recognized in his own time, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft was rediscovered in the early 1960's. A reclusive New England bachelor, sexist and racist who wrote horror in the Victorian styling of Edgar Allan Poe. He is most remembered for his Cthulhu Mythos of powerful evil Gods beyond human comprehension. He greatly influenced such writers as Stephen King and Clive Baker and rock bands Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, and Metallica.

Thomas B. Costain - William the Conqueror.
L. Sprague de Camp - The Ancient Engineers.
Richard P. Feynman - Six Easy Pieces.
Shelby Foote – The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol 2: Fredicksburg to Meridian. .
William H. McNeill - The Rise of the West.
E. P. Thompson – The Making of the English Working Class.

Comedy 1963

1963 Best Comedy Performance:
Hello Mudduh, Hello Faddah - Allan Sherman

Bill Cosby's first album, Bill Cosby is a very Funny Fellow wins the Grammy and begins his career as the leading comic of the1960's.

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