22.

AMERICAN POETRY AND FICTION OF THE TWENTIES

1920s was an era of political ignorance, material wealth, capitalism, big cities, new technologies,
intolerance, consumption, nostalgia for the past prohibition of alcohol and organized crime. It was
also a Jazz Age and the era of mass entertainment and films.

The Lost Generation

Gertrude Stein named this literary movement when she told Hemingway: “You are all a lost
generation.” It was meant for many restless young American writers who stayed in Paris and other
parts of Europe after WWI where they lost their ideals and purpose.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

His eye injury prevented him from joining the army so he volunteered for an ambulance unit in Italy
where he had a romantic affair with a British nurse. He -expressed his post-war disillusionment in the
novels The Sun Also Rises and his relationship with a nurse in semi-autobiographical A Farewell to
Arms.
For Whom the Bells Call takes place during the Spanish Civil War and tells a story of an American
named Robert Jordan fighting with Spanish soldiers on the Republican side. The Old Man and the
Sea is a novelette, his greatest literary success, a glorification of man’s eternal struggle with nature.
An old Cuban fisherman Santiago, though he conquers the great fish, he loses all but the memory of
his success.
Hemingway heroes are people who show grace under pressure but are stoic when the hope is lost.
Hemingway committed a suicide probably because he feared the loss of physical and artistic skills,
although he was awarded Nobel Prize.

John Dos Passos was a novelist and artist, born in Chicago in a wealthy family. He used film
techniques, wrote biographies of famous people and was fond of newsreel method = using headlines
from newspapers and TV programs. His U.S.A. trilogy includes The 42nd Parallel, 1919 and The Big
Money.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

He wrote brilliant short stories and novels that depicted the life, dream and disillusions of the new
post-war generation; all the ups and downs they went through. He met Zelda, a daughter of a judge
and they were engaged but she hesitated because of his poorness so he decided to get rich and
wrote the first novel This Side of Paradise about a young student in post-war times he was successful
and they got married. He was a friend of Hemingway but Zelda disliked him and accused her husband
of having an affair with him.

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The Great Gatsby, his masterpiece, is set is New York City during the 1920s. Nick, the narrator works
as a bond broker in Manhattan. He becomes involved in the life of his neighbour Jay Gatsby, a
mysterious financier, who is entertaining hundreds of guests at parties. Gatsby reveals to Nick, that
he and Nick's cousin Daisy, had a brief affair before the war. However, Daisy married Tom, a rich but
boring man of social position. Gatsby lost Daisy because he had no money, but he is still in love with
her. He persuades Nick to bring him and Daisy together again. Daisy, driving Gatsby's car, hits and
kills Tom's mistress, Myrtle, unaware of her identity. Gatsby remains silent to protect Daisy. Tom tells
Myrtle's husband it was Gatsby who killed his wife. Her husband murders Gatsby and then commits
suicide. Gatsby believed that money can buy love and social position.
Tender is the Night presents a brilliant psychiatrist who falls in love with his a rich and beautiful
mental patient. He marries her and loses his idealism and potential for a great career but she, having
battened on his strength and love for ten years, emerges victorious. Slapper is a story about
emancipated woman who even smoked in public. Short stories: The Curious Case of Benjamin
Button (made into film) and The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.

Southern Renaissance
The South was much damaged after the Civil War but in early 20 th century the South was increasing
again. William Faulkner revived the tradition of southern literature and brought new experimental
modernist aspect to it.

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

He was a novelist who came from an old southern family, Mississippi, awarded with Nobel Prize. His
first novel Soldier’s Pay he published with the help of Sherwood Anderson. The Sound and the Fury
presents the downfall of the one family seen through the minds of several characters - most
experimental, difficult to read with 4 different points of view. As I Lay Dying is about efforts of a
poor-white family to bury their mother forty miles from home. Absalom, Absalom! presents racial
prejudice since a young man is rejected by his father and brother because of his mixed blood.
A Rose for Emily begins at the huge funeral for Miss Emily. Nobody has been to her house in ten
years, except for her black servant. Her house is old, but was once the best house around. The town
had a special relationship with Miss Emily ever since it decided to stop billing her for taxes in 1894.
But, the newer generation wasn't happy with this arrangement and so they paid a visit to Miss Emily
and tried to get her to pay the debt. She refused to acknowledge that the old arrangement might not
work anymore, and flatly refused to pay. Thirty years before, the tax collecting townspeople had a
strange encounter with Miss Emily about a bad smell at her place. This was about two years after her
father died, and a short time after her lover disappeared from her life. The stench got stronger and
complaints were made, but the authorities didn't want to confront Emily about the problem.
Everybody felt sorry for Emily when her father died. He left her with the house but no money. When
he died, Emily refused to admit it for three whole days. The town didn't think she was "crazy then,"
but assumed that she did not want to let go of her dad. Not too long after her father died Emily
begins dating Homer, who is in town on a sidewalk-building project. The town heavily disapproves of
the affair. One day, Emily is seen buying arsenic at the drugstore and the town thinks that she plans

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to kill herself. When she buys a bunch of men's items, they think that she and Homer are going to get
married. Emily herself rarely leaves the home.
Her hair turns gray, she gains weight and she eventually dies in a downstairs bedroom that hasn't
seen light in many years. The story cycles back to where it began, at her funeral. Tobe, Ms. Emily's
servant, lets in the town women and then leaves by the backdoor forever. After the funeral and after
Emily is buried, the townspeople go upstairs to break into the room that they know has been closed
for forty years. Inside, they find the corpse of Homer Barron, rotting in the bed.
When you give a woman a rose, you pay her respect = title. The narrator is unreliable; he makes the
story from knowledge of villagers. Emily doesn’t have to pay taxes because she is one of old
aristocracy, a relic of old South. Villagers have respect to the fallen monument – past – not to Emily
as a person. They disapprove of her lover because it’s not proper of such a lady of old times. They
even cannot bring themselves to accuse her of smell so they just drop some lime around her house.
Only her black servant Tobe (= to be) doesn’t feel nostalgia and flees the house, his future is awaiting
him, he’s finally free.

Nathanael West was not a part of Southern Renaissance but wrote after 1920s. In his story, Miss
Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male journalist writing an advice column which the newspaper staff
considers a joke. As Miss Lonelyhearts reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly
burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking. He tries several
approaches to escape the terribly painful letters he has to read through religion, trips to the
countryside with his fiancée and affairs.
After his sexual encounter with Mrs. Doyle, he meets her husband, a poor crippled man. The Doyle
invite Miss Lonelyhearts to have dinner with them. When he arrives, Mrs. Doyle tries to seduce him
again but he responds by beating her. Mrs. Doyle tells her husband that Miss Lonelyhearts tried to
rape her. In the last scene, Mr. Doyle hides a gun inside a rolled newspaper and decides to take
revenge on Miss Lonelyhearts. The gun "explodes," and the two men roll down a flight of stairs
together.

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 Harlem Renaissance

Movement that started in 1920s focused in Harlem (not already a ghetto). Manifesto New Negro was
written by Alain Locke. They tried to re-define position of African-Americans and find out features
of their identity – searched for culture and religion they could share. They found the main inspiration
in African art, called in that time primitive, and European Picasso. Black writers tried to find new kind
of beauty. Until then Africa-Americans were not considered beautiful or desirable, Naomi Campbell
was the first one accepted as a black beauty. Writers were dealing with experience in America and
unlike previous black writers they decided to stop imitating the whites.

Phyllis Wheatley was the first black poet who adopted classic British poetic forms. She was
criticized for imitating the whites.

Claude McKay was the first poet of Harlem Renaissance, originally from Jamaica, dealing with
racism. He is using Shakespeare´s sonnet forms, his most famous poem is If We Must Die and
Winston Churchill used it to persuade Afro-Americans to join the war since McKay agitated his black
brothers not to dies as dogs but fight bravely. It is written in the form of sonnet! Collection: Harlem
Shadows.

Langston Hughes deals with common everyday life in Harlem, most of his poems have rhythms of
blues and jazz and when recited in clubs they were accompanied by music. He was called the White
Walt Whitman as he was referring to him and wanted Afro-Americans to be equal part of society.
Collection The Weary Blues. Poem I, Too, Sing America was inspired by Walt Whitman´s poem I
Hear America Singing.

Richard Wright was a prose writer, he wrote autobiographical novels. His first novel Black Boy
became the most important of the movement where he describes his growing up in a black ghetto
since father left him when he was small and he had to steal to get food. He is threatening if the
whites will not take Afro-Americans serious, there will be problems. Native Son is a protest
naturalistic novel with black taxi drives as protagonist who takes his master´s daughter home and he
accidentally kills her. As he does not want to be found out, he cuts her to pieces and burns down but
his lawyer defends him as a victim of society.

Zora Neale Hurston is a female prosaic who was interested in folklore from the south. Mules and
Men are black folk stories written in black vernacular language. Their Eyes Are Watching God is
partly autobiographical, female protagonist is dealing with double oppression as she is black and a
woman – it started a feminist movement in Afro-American literature.