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Authors Who Wrote One Novel

  First Posted: 26/12/11 15:06   Updated: 28/12/11 09:26

There are a fair few authors who see their first novel published and think: “what shall I write next?” They come back for more, like addicts, publishing novel after novel - often saying broadly the same thing over and over again.

Worse still is the author who dispassionately selects disparate topics, say, 70s working class Brighton punks for their first novel, and then Dynasty-era Chinese farmers, who then still write the same novel.

There is a lot to be said for just writing one novel: it automatically credits you with a modicum of mystery, and of course there’s the tacit implication, that you basically nailed it with your first go.

Here's our round up of the best authors who followed the one novel route:

John Okada - No-No Boy
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Okada, a second generation Japanese American immigrant was inturned at the Miniloka War Relocation Centre following the bombing of Pearl Harbour. His novel No No Boy is considered to be the finest example of the Japanese American experience. Okada died in 1973, and the novel was translated into a stage play last year.
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There are a fair few authors who see their first novel published and think: “what shall I write next?” They come back for more, like addicts, publishing novel after novel - often saying broadly th...
There are a fair few authors who see their first novel published and think: “what shall I write next?” They come back for more, like addicts, publishing novel after novel - often saying broadly th...
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ecs7xa
5 Fans
16:55 on 02/01/2012
Don't you mean Connolly's "Enemies of Promise?"
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Londoner co uk
10 Fans
 
02:59 on 31/12/2011
I thought Omar Sharif wrote Doctor Zhivago!
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forestlady
506 Fans
15:11 on 27/12/2011
there are lots of errors here:
1) Salinger wrote several novels (Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenter and Franny and Zooey)
2) OSCAR WILDE wrote The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, not GREY as it says in the slideshow (Grey was one of Wilde's characters!)
3) the introduction is FULL of grammatical errors, do you really expect me to take this review seriously if the writer can't even speak decent English?
You need to correct this! Young people will read this and believe it's true and they will be wrong!
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Arkleson
103 Fans
16:38 on 27/12/2011
Write decent English, not speak, if you insist on pointing out another's supposedly bad English. Why do so many of your type insist in being grammatical bores? Your own grammar is far from perfect, as is the case with most people (myself included). I really don't see how one's ability to use perfect English is, in some way, a symbol of the veracity of anything ever written, let alone a light-hearted piece on authors who may or may not have written only one novel. I doubt whether young people, or old, will be much traumatised finding out that not everything that they learn in life is not necessarily true.
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forestlady
506 Fans
17:37 on 27/12/2011
I was an English teacher, I speak far better grammar than most. If we don't teach our young people factual information, this is how they end up looking very ignorant. Just because you don't think it's important, doesn't mean it isn't! Your lack of respect for facts is showing.
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IndependentGadfly
Oh dear, lost another fan ...
167 Fans
14:57 on 27/12/2011
Wuthering Heights sucked. Had to suffer through it and many other's like it in high school. They're the reason I became an engineer ... science, math, and engineer texts have pictures :-)
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Arkleson
103 Fans
16:41 on 27/12/2011
You made the mistake of reading the book when you should have listened to the record..."it's me Cathy, come home....so coooold, let me into your window" Well, maybe not.
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PerryLogan
We don't want your guns; we just want your women.
943 Fans
 
14:30 on 27/12/2011
Ralph Ellison, "The Invisible Man."
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KidSampson
234 Fans
14:13 on 27/12/2011
Oliver Goldsmith should be on the list.

Nikolai Gogol only published one novel, "Dead Souls." He did write a second volume, but burned the manuscript.
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hazyafternoonsunshine
Life's a ball, buster!
615 Fans
14:01 on 27/12/2011
The link that brought me here was "Literary One Hit Wonders" and the article headline is "Authors who wrote one novel" Those are two completely distinct and different ideas. One could never agree that a highly successful playwright like Oscar Wilde is a literary one hit wonder even though he may have written only one novel. And Pasternak, for pete's sake? By their dishonest criteria, they should have included Pushkin, but then I suppose they wouldn't dare. So what was their point anyway? To create a fake controversy? That is just dumb.
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Nicole Braden
33 Fans
14:10 on 27/12/2011
I agree. Sylvia Plath may have only written one novel per se, but she was a poetess, after all. She wrote countless volumes of poetry! Definitely not a one-hit-wonder and neither is Wilde. So many plays and also poetry! People need to get their facts straight.
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Trapped in Arizona
This, I believe* (*subject to change)
649 Fans
00:48 on 03/01/2012
It seem that HuffPo loves to do that -- lure readers in with a zany, salacious, or just plain misleading headline (on the front page, at least) -- and it is a constant complaint on the U.S. HuffPo. By contrast, I understand that, at the New York Times, for example, the editors actually agonize to formulate a succinct, accurate, and informative headline. Indeed, it is sometimes a contentious committee endeavor. Not so with HuffPo.
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ljc
4163 Fans
13:59 on 27/12/2011
Gone With the Wind?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
skybar
history repeats the old conceits
583 Fans
13:35 on 27/12/2011
"A Confederacy of Dunces," John Kennedy Toole.
Unless he wrote another one I'm forgetting.
Also, the guy who wrote "Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me." His name escapes me. He died in a motorcycle accident shortly after that book's publication, I believe.
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cw9580
53 Fans
13:31 on 27/12/2011
sorry - J.D. Salinger wrote Franny & Zoe as well.
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entropychic
gratitude is everything
114 Fans
14:32 on 27/12/2011
excellent as it is (i still reread it once a year), not considered a novel as it is two stories paired .... granted these huffpo headlines are misleading - salinger a one hit wonder? no way!
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forestlady
506 Fans
14:55 on 27/12/2011
J.D. also wrote "Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters".
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taf22
0 Fans
13:20 on 27/12/2011
The Sand Pebbles
Gone with the Wind
Ship of Fools...
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themidnightreview
Moderate blogger - TheMidnightReview.com
626 Fans
 
12:32 on 27/12/2011
How about the Bible?
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StinkyMoBub
390 Fans
12:52 on 27/12/2011
Too many authors...
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themidnightreview
Moderate blogger - TheMidnightReview.com
626 Fans
 
23:05 on 27/12/2011
Each book of the bible then...
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Ortho Stice
This is water
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12:11 on 27/12/2011
In graduate school, I had more than one prof who was convinced that Lee never wrote another novel because she didn't write the first. As the legend goes, TKAM was Truman Capote's gift to Lee for putting him up in her home when he was a starving young author. These profs could cite numerous stylistic similarities between TKAM and Capote's work, evidence that was fairly compelling. She would have been exposed as a fraud had she tried to write another novel. I don't know if I buy the theory. I think it is just as likely that she (along with Salinger and Ellison) became complacent because every September, royalty checks would flood her mailbox after every high school in the US placed its book orders.
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Sundae Driver
"The path to youth takes a whole life." (Picasso)
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12:32 on 27/12/2011
I don't buy it either. I don't know anything about Harper Lee as a human being, but she'd have to be quite low on the evolutionary scale to accept such a "gift" from Capote and then pass it off as her own. I can't imagine living your life as an imposter. It would be almost possible for me to imagine that if she had some other "real" credentials as a painter or whatever. But maybe I'm naive. (I am, after all, an adult who still will shed tears at the end of "Catcher..." ;] )
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Ortho Stice
This is water
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12:44 on 27/12/2011
To play the Devil's Advocate, there are thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of high school, college, and graduate school students who pass other people's work off as their own each year. One of the most successful education websites is something called Turnitin.com, which has a database of hundreds of thousands of sources and papers to help teachers detect plagiarism. I think you would be surprised to discover to what people will resort.
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c-tom
Badges we don't need no stinking badges
331 Fans
19:16 on 03/01/2012
I've heard a reverse theory. Harper co-wrote 'In Cold Blood' and gave Capote all the credit.
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Ortho Stice
This is water
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11:40 on 27/12/2011
Why does every slideshow default to ENTOURAGE on the iPad version?
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rdawning
3 Fans
11:26 on 27/12/2011
One of the best -Their eyes were watching God - Zora Neal Hurston
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