FICTION

If the best fiction writers could be trusted, life was at worst a dreadful and at best an ironic business. Doubt, violence and cynicism hardly left shelf space for the few novels that tried to stress values; yet there were a few that took a stand for the more attractive sides of man, and their ringing success may be a straw in the wind.

The U.S. businessman continued to be more hero than villain (although a little confused) in such novels as Cameron Hawley's Cash McCall and Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. It was perhaps significant of the relative absence of satire that so gentle a writer as J. P. Marquand emerged with the year's best American satirical novel. Sincerely, Willis Wayde, the derisive and sympathetic portrait of an eager-beaver businessman who so hotly wooed success that he unwittingly lost his decency during the courtship.

The Black Prince, by Shirley Ann Grau, was the year's best book of short stories by a new writer. The Southern setting, the emotional range from violence to tenderness, the measure of black man and white man, were uncommonly well managed by an author of only 25.

Mother and Son, by Ivy Compton-Burnett, showed the aging (63) British novelist near the top of her brilliant form. She dealt with the tyranny of Momism, English upper-class variety, with the simple, brilliant device that has served her during 15 novels: human speech.

The Recognitions, by William Gaddis, gave U.S. 20th century values a long (956 pages) flaying, went remorselessly after Bohemian phonies, savagely attacked the spiritual and moral bankruptcy Gaddis' tortured hero found everywhere. Alternatingly brilliant and dull, it was a virtuoso performance for a first novelist. Some critics uneasily and unjustly ignored it.

The Cypresses Believe in God, by Jose Maria Gironella, was the first part of an attempt, in the grand manner, to tell the story of tortured Spain from 1931 to the present. Using a single town as a testing ground, Gironella, a former Franco soldier, succeeded remarkably well in explaining how the civil war came about, without deserting his avowed objectivity.

Something of Value, by Robert Ruark, was probably the most tastelessly written book of the year (unless it was Norman Mailer's The Deer Park). Around a hackneyed story, and leaning heavily on the writings of others about the Mau Mau troubles in Kenya, Columnist Ruark turned a determinedly lurid story into a top bestseller.

Not Honour More, by Joyce Gary, wound up a notable trilogy by one of the finest living novelists. Like most of Gary's books, this story of political morality coupled with an astonishing love story failed to get the readers Gary deserves.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor, was not just another book of short stories about Southern brutality. For a woman in her 20s, Author O'Connor proved herself a sardonic connoisseur of unexpected sources of evil.

Officers and Gentlemen, by Evelyn Waugh, a satire on Englishmen in World War II, was very funny when it roasted spivs and fake heroes, but Tory Waugh was really a sad man when he wrote this fine book. It was about the impulses that make men rise to moral bigness, the disillusionment which comes in the discovery that sacrifices cannot do much to change other humans' natures. It was almost a dirge on the softening of England's national character.

The Collected Stories, by Isaac Babel, were the work of a little-known Eastern Jewish writer who disappeared, probably into a Russian concentration camp, in the late 1930s. An intellectual who fought as a cavalryman for the Bolsheviks, Babel wrote with extraordinary power and vividness about ghetto life and the brutality of revolution.

The Genius and the Goddess, by Aldous Huxley, discoursed with somewhat diminished brilliance on sexual infidelity at the genius level, grace and predestination in life, and the human limitations that accompany a very high I.Q.

Band of Angels, by Robert Penn Warren, one of the most critically overrated novels of the year, kept the Civil War pot boiling with blood, sex, sweat and crocodile tears.

Marjorie Morningstar, by Herman Wouk, again, as in The Caine Mutiny, put its author on the side of unfashionable literary virtues--this time, character and middle-class morality. Told as a love story about a stage-struck New York girl, Marjorie quickly became the nation's favorite novel.

Confessions of Felix Krull, by Thomas Mann, was the great writer's last book (he died at 80 before it was published), and certainly his most amusing. His picaresque hero, a life-charged confidence man, gave him a chance to poke fun at human folly, but with death so near, Mann had never shown such gusto for life.

Cards of Identity, by Nigel Dennis. This import from Britain was easily the most hilarious, mercilessly penetrating satire of the year. Its theme was badgered modern man looking for a self he can be content with, and the assorted phonies who are only too glad to bring him to couch.

Self Condemned, by Wyndham Lewis, showed England's most effective literary curmudgeon banging away at the shoddy thinking and sloppy living by which contemporary man is surrounded.

Auntie Mame, by Patrick Dennis, was the year's real sleeper. With each passing week this raffish, anecdotal description of life with a zany aunt had fresh thousands laughing, wound up as one of '55's biggest sellers.

Heritage, by Anthony West, not only explained the difficulties of growing up as the son of two unregenerate unmarried geniuses, but was a nice example of how a difficult subject may be handled with urbane intelligence.

Bonjour Tristesse, by Franc,oise Sagan, a French girl with an existentially sad face, had a trivial triangle plot, raised above itself by unerringly accurate writing--and by the reader's chilling realization that its worldly insights were achieved by a 17-year-old author. It was the most successful book from outside the English-speaking world. The Germans continued to disappoint (Gerhard Kramer's We Shall March Again, and Heinrich Buell's Adam, Where Art Thou?), but other countries contributed moving items:

A Ghost at Noon, by Alberto Moravia, found Italy's best writer at his old sport of recording the battle of the sexes. A lesser work, it was nevertheless a shrewd inquiry into the reasons why a man of wobbly character loses the regard of a seemingly simple wife who is all woman.

Nectar in a Sieve, by Kamala Markandaya, did more to explain ordinary life in India than most of the year's nonfiction books on the subject put together. It was a tale of hunger and suffering, wholly lacking in bitterness, and creating quick sympathy for its peasant characters.

Some Prefer Nettles, by Junichiro Tanizaki, gave U.S. readers the first real chance to sample the work of Japan's No. 1 living novelist. Delicate and skillful, it showed how traditional Japanese life became riddled by personal tensions after Western influences began to take hold.

The Honor of Gaston Le Torch, by Jacques Perret, was one of the most charming extravaganzas of the year, a pleasant escapist whimsy about a Gallic Walter Mitty.

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