Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck, the author of more than 85 books and winner of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes in literature, died yesterday at her home in Denby, Vt., after a long illness. Mrs. Buck, who was 80 years old; had recently completed a children's book and was at work om two novels, one of which, “The Red Earth,” deals with the modern‐day descendants of the characters in her best‐known novel, “The Good Earth.” She was able to continue working despite failing health, which caused her to be hospitalized several times in the last year and to undergo surgery for the removal of her gall bladder last September. Mrs. Buck is survived by a daughter, Carol; nine adopted children, Janice, Richard, John, Edgar, Jean, Henriette, Theresa, Chieko and Johanna; a sister, Mrs. Grace Yaukey, and 12 grandchildren. According to her wishes, the funeral service will be private. In a tribute to Mrs. Buck, President Nixon said yesterday that she was “a human bridge between the civilizations of the East and West.” In a reference to the fact that Mrs. Buck spent almost all of the first 40 years of her life in China and devoted much of her writing to Chinese subjects, Mr. Nixon said: “It is fitting that Pearl Buck lived to see two peoples she loved so much draw closer together during her last years. ... With simple eloquence she translated her personal love for the people and culture of China into a rich literary heritage, treasured by Asians and Westerners alike. She lived a long, life as artist, wife, mother, and philanthropist.” Although Mrs. Buck's love for the Chinese people was enduring, she was persona non grata with that country's current leaders. Recently she was turned down in her efforts to be admitted to China because, Chinese authorities said, her works have “for a long time taken an attitude of distortion, smear and vilification toward the people of China and their leaders.” Mrs. Buck, who rarely minced words, was once asked by ari interviewer, “Why do you write so many books?” “Why not?” she replied, with a touch of irritation in her voice. “I'm a writer.” Wave of Resentment For the strong‐willed, highly opinionated Mrs. Buck, winner of a Pulitizer Prize and the only American woman Nobel Laureate for literature, the explanation was as simple as that. “When I say I'm a working writer, I accent ‘working,’” she said. Mrs. Buck was indeed a prolific writer. Her first novel, “East Wind: West Wind,” was not published until 1930, when she was 38 years old, but by her 80th birthday in 1972 she had published more than 85 novels and collections of short stories and essays, and more than 25 volumes still awaited publication. She was the most translated of all American authors. “Of course, one pays the price for being prolific,” Mrs. Buck said in an interview for this article in 1969. “I sometimes feel quite guilty for being so, and Heaven knows the literary Establishment can't forgive me for it, nor for the fact that my books sell. With some people, that's suspect, you know.” Mrs. Buck referred, as she was often wont to do throughout her lengthy and profitable career, to the disdain with which many critics looked upon her. Most of them welcomed her second novel, “The Good Earth,” which became one of the most phenomenally popular books of the century, but there was much resentment when it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1931. Her detractors argued that the Pulitzer is supposed to be given to a distinctly American work, by an American writer, and that “The Good Earth,” about Chinese peasants, was written by a woman who had lived most of her life in China. When Mrs. Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1938, it was fashionable in literary circles to complain that if any American woman was entitled to a Nobel, it was Willa Cather, not Pearl Buck. “Above all,” Mrs. Buck said, “so many writers and critics nave seemed to be jealous of me not simply because my books are popular, or that the Book‐of‐the‐Month Club has distributed a dozen of them, but because I write them swiftly. It's true, I do. It took me just two months to write ‘The Good Earth.’ But what must not be forgotten is that those agony‐filled two months were devoted to writing words on paper. The novel took shape in my mind over perhaps 10 years.” While busily turning out an average of two volumes a year, on an almost daily writing regime that began at 8 A.M. and ended at 1 P.M, Mrs. Buck managed to care for her mentally r******* daughter Carol and nine adopted children, while at the same time taking an active interest in projects for the aid of mentally r******* children, the placement for adoption of children of mixed blood, and the betterment of international relations. Involved as she seemingly was in the lives of other people, Mrs. Buck possessed a certain air of detachment and, as she put it, she was “a solitary person, an intellectual loner.” She said that she actually liked people, “but I prefer their cornpany only in small doses; have expected so much from so many people, and I have been so often disappointed.” If she viewed others with cool detachment, it was also true that Mrs. Buck believed the feeling was mutual. “Somehow I have always been an object, rather than a person,” she said. “As a child, I was white with yellow hair and blue eyes in a country where everyone knew the proper color of eyes and hair was black, and skin was brown. I can remember my Chinese friends bringing their friends to look at me because I was different. By the time I came to this country I was different again. I was already what people call famous. People came to see me as they would an object, not a person.” Mrs, Buck was the product of two cultures, which enabled her to become what she called “mentally bifocal.” She loved China and the Chinese and came to be equally devoted to America and Americans although she never hesitated to criticize both cultures She wrote an active member of the AncientFaces community, Amanda S. Stevenson a nice letter in the 1950's.