About: Literature in the 1970s

Fiction in the 1970s brought a return of old-fashioned storytelling, especially with Erich Segal's Love Story. The early seventies also saw the decline of previously well-respected writers, such as Saul Bellow and Peter De Vries, both of whom released poorly received novels at the start of the decade, but rebounded critically as the decade wore on. Racism remained a key literary subject. John Updike emerged as a major literary figure with his 1971 novel Rabbit Redux. Reflections of the 1960s experience also found roots in the literature of the decade through the works of Joyce Carol Oates and Wright Morris. With the rising cost of hardcover books and the increasing readership of "genre fiction", the paperback became a popular medium. Criminal non-fiction also became a popular topic. Irreve