trust in chariots (13.348)

In a semi-annual tradition, a consortium of international literary bloggers gets together online to champion books published in a given year—this time for the class of 1961, a pivotal range that bridges the transition from relatively conformist writing of the 1950s and anticipate the coming counter-cultural movements of the decade ahead. Neglected Books features an array of titles from the club for one’s reading enjoyment and edification, but not the necessarily the timeless classics, which also might merit reevaluation and reflections through a fresh reading, like JD Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey,” Solaris by Stanislav Lem, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ No One Writes to the Colonel, etc, and rather the more obscure and forgotten ones, like the titular work by Thomas Savage, a later travelogue by acclaimed the acclaimed author of The Power of the Dog, whose prose was sadly only afforded the moment before consigned to obscurity to be revived as a belated cinematic adaptation—the story informed Annie Proulx’ Brokeback Mountain. Though not a part of the webring myself, if I were to nominate a title for the book club, maybe I would choose the novella The Curious Sofa by Edward Gorey (published under the anagrammatical pseudonym Ogdred Weary) and subtitled as “a pornographic illustrated story about furniture. Whilst portraying nothing explicit, there is a great deal of suggestive innuendo, in turn inspiring other fictions with a kernel of truth. The German translation was banned in Austria on the grounds that it promoted lustfulness and misleading sex-drive for youths. What titles would you recommend from 1961? More at the links above.