American fiction

after the 2nd

World War
z

Nargiza Alimovna Makhmudova, Assoc. Prof., PhD,

Department of Linguistics and English Literature

1. American literature about
WWII
2. Beat Generation
z
 z Context
 Leadership of the Western capitalist world;

 the role of world policemen (the Korean  A new generation come out of the war,
war &the Vietnam war); and its ethnic, regional, and social
character was quite different from that of
 Cold War mentality (McCarthism or Red
the preceding one.
Scare);
 Among the younger writers were children
 racism;
of immigrants, many of them Jews;
 the Civil Rights movement;  African Americans, only a few generations
 feminism; away from slavery;

 anti-war protests;  and, eventually, women, who, with the rise

of feminism, were to speak in a new voice
 minority activism
 The rise of McCarthyism
 z
The first Red Scare was a period during the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread
fear of far-left movements, including Bolshevism and anarchism, due to real and imagined events; real events
included the Russian 1917 October Revolution and anarchist bombings in the U.S.

 At its height in 1919–1920, concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and the alleged
spread of socialism, communism and anarchism in the American labor movement fueled a general sense of concern.

 McCarthyism, also known as the second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing
individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions and
of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s.

 Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a
Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957.

 Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War
tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion.

 He is known for alleging that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United
States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, he was censured for refusing to
cooperate with, and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be
censured.

 The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-
communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated
 z
Realism and “metafiction”

 Two distinct groups of novelists responded to the cultural impact, and especially the
technological horror, of World War II.

 Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948) and Irwin Shaw’s The Young Lions
(1948) were realistic war novels, though Mailer’s book was also a novel of ideas,
exploring fascist thinking and an obsession with power as elements of the military
mind.

 James Jones, amassing a staggering quantity of closely observed detail,

documented the war’s human cost in an ambitious trilogy (From Here to Eternity
[1951], The Thin Red Line [1962], and Whistle [1978]) that centred on loners who
resisted adapting to military discipline.
 z
Postmodernism: “Metafiction”
 Younger novelists, profoundly shaken by the bombing of Hiroshima and the real threat
of human annihilation, found the conventions of realism inadequate for treating the
war’s nightmarish implications.

 In Catch-22 (1961), Joseph Heller satirized the military mentality with surreal black
comedy but also injected a sense of Kafkaesque horror. A sequel, Closing Time
(1994), was an elegy for the World War II generation.

 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), described the Allied firebombing of

the German city of Dresden with a mixture of dark fantasy and numb, loopy humour.

 Later this method was applied brilliantly to the portrayal of the Vietnam War—a
conflict that seemed in itself surreal—by Tim O’Brien in Going After Cacciato (1978)
and the short-story collection The Things They Carried (1990).
 z
Postmodernism: “Metafiction”

 In part because of the atomic bomb, American writers turned increasingly to

black humour and absurdist fantasy.

 Many found the naturalistic approach incapable of communicating the rapid

pace and the sheer implausibility of contemporary life.

 A highly self-conscious fiction emerged, laying bare its own literary devices,
questioning the nature of representation, and often imitating or parodying
earlier fiction rather than social reality.
 z
Realism: Norman Mailer (1923 – 2007)

 American novelist and journalist best known for using a form of journalism—called New
Journalism—that combines the imaginative subjectivity of literature with the more objective
qualities of journalism.

 Both Mailer’s fiction and his Mailer wrote 12 novels in 59 years.

 nonfiction made a radical critique of the totalitarianism he believed inherent in the centralized
power structure of 20th- and 21st-century America.

 The Naked and the Dead, novel by Norman Mailer, published in 1948 and hailed as one of
the finest American novels to come out of World War II.

 The story concerns a platoon of 13 American soldiers who are stationed on the Japanese-
held island of Anopopei in the Pacific. With almost journalistic detail, Mailer records the lives
of men at war, characterizing the soldiers individually in flashbacks that illuminate their pasts.
 Novels
z
 The Naked and the Dead. New York: Brown and Company, 1979.
Rinehart, 1948.  Of Women and Their Elegance. New
 Barbary Shore. New York: Rinehart, York, Simon and Schuster, 1980.
1951.  Ancient Evenings. Boston: Little,
 The Deer Park. New York: Putnam's, Brown, 1983.
1955.  Tough Guys Don't Dance. New York:
 An American Dream. New York: Dial, Random House, 1984.
1965.  Harlot's Ghost. New York: Random
 Why Are We in Vietnam? New York: House, 1991.
Putnam, 1967.  The Gospel According to the Son. New
 A Transit to Narcissus. New York: York: Random House, 1997.
Howard Fertig, 1978.  The Castle in the Forest. New York:
 The Executioner's Song Boston: Little, Random House, 2007.
 The Naked and the Dead
z
 The Naked and the Dead is a novel written by Norman Mailer. Published by Rinehart &
Company in 1948, when he was 25, it was his debut novel.

 It depicts the experiences of a platoon during World War II, based partially on Mailer's
experiences as a cook with the 112th Cavalry Regiment during the Philippines Campaign in
World War II.

 The novel is divided into four parts: Wave; Argil and Mold; Plant and Phantom; and Wake.
Within these parts are chorus sections, consisting of play-like dialogue between characters,
as well as Time Machine sections, which give brief histories and flashbacks of individual
characters’ lives.

 The book quickly became a bestseller, paving the way for other Mailer's works such as The
Deer Park, Advertisements for Myself, and The Time of Our Time. He believed The Naked
and the Dead to be his most renowned work.

 It was the first popular novel about the war and is considered one of the greatest English-
language novels. It was later adapted into a film in 1958.
 Themes
z

Dehumanization of soldiers

Loneliness

Death

Power

Brotherhood

Masculinity
z
Realism: Irvin Shaw
1893-1984

 Shaw was a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and

short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million
copies.

 He is best known for his novels, The Young Lions (1948) and Rich
Man Poor Man (1970).
 Works
 Novels z Plays
The Young Lions (1948) Bury the Dead, New York, Ethel Barrymore Theatre,

The Troubled Air (1951) April 1936.

Siege, New York, Longacre Theatre, December 1937.
Lucy Crown (1956) The Gentle People, New York, Belasco Theatre,

Two Weeks in Another Town (1960) January 1939.

Quiet City New York, Belasco Theatre, March 1939.
Voices of a Summer Day (1965) Retreat to Pleasure, New York, Belasco Theatre,

Rich Man, Poor Man (1969/1970) 1940.

Sons and Soldiers, New York, Morosco Theatre, May
Evening in Byzantium (1973) 1943.
The Assassin, New York, National Theatre, October
Night Work (1975)
1945.
Beggarman, Thief (1977) The Survivors, (with Peter Viertel) New York,

The Top of the Hill (1979) Playhouse Theatre, January 1948.

Children From Their Games, New York, Morosco
Bread Upon the Waters (1981) Theatre, April 1963.
A Choice of Wars, Glasgow, Scotland, Glasgow
Acceptable Losses (1982)
Citizens Theatre, 1967.
 z
The Young Lions
Christian Diestl is at first a sympathetic Austrian drawn to Nazism by despair for his future but
willing to sacrifice Jews if necessary.
Noah Ackerman is an American Jew facing discrimination.
Michael Whitacre is an American WASP who struggles with his lack of direction.

The three have very different wars:

Diestl becomes less sympathetic as he willingly sacrifices more and more merely to survive;
Ackerman finally overcomes the discrimination of his fellows in the army only to be nearly
undone by the horror of the camps;
Whitacre, still without meaning in his life, survives them both.
 z

 In a 1953 interview, Shaw commented, "what I was trying to do in The Young

Lions was to show the world at a certain point in its history, its good and
evil, and as many people as I could crowd into the book struggling through
that world, trying to find some reason for trying to stay alive in it".

 He described the character of the German soldier Christian:

 "I wanted to show how a man can start out decent, intelligent, well meaning,
as so many people in Germany must have been, even in the greatest days of
Nazism – and wind up bestialized, almost bereft of humanity, almost dead to
the instincts of survival even, as the Germans finally were, by believing in
one false thing, which spreads and spreads and finally corrupts them
entirely".
 z
Realism: James Jones (1921-1977)
Unfound Generation

 was an American novelist known for his explorations of World War II and its aftermath.

 He won the 1952 National Book Award for his first published novel, From Here to Eternity, which
was adapted for the big screen immediately and made into a television series a generation later.

 He enlisted in the United States Army in 1939 at the age of 17 and served in the 25th Infantry
Division, 27th Infantry Regiment before and during World War II, first in Hawaii at Schofield
Barracks on Oahu, then in combat on Guadalcanal at the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping
Horse, and the Sea Horse, where he was wounded in his ankle.

 He returned to the US and was discharged in July 1944.

 He also worked as a journalist covering the Vietnam War.

Works His wartime experiences inspired some of his most famous works, the so-
z
called war trilogy. He witnessed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
which led to his first published novel, From Here to Eternity (1951). The
Thin Red Line (1962) reflected his combat experiences on Guadalcanal
and Whistle (posthumous, 1978) was based on his hospital stay in
Memphis, Tennessee, recovering from surgery on an ankle he had
reinjured on the island

 Three of the central characters are essentially similar in all three of Jones'
World War II novels, but their names are altered.

 From Here to Eternity features First Sergeant Milton Warden, Private

Robert Prewitt, and Mess Sergeant Maylon Stark.

 The Thin Red Line (1962), features similar characters named First
Sergeant Edward Welsh, Private Robert Witt, and Mess Sergeant
Maynard Storm.

 In Whistle (1978), analogous characters again reappear named Sergeant

Mart Winch, Bobby Prell, and Johnny "Mother" Strange.
 The Thin Red Line has become an English language
figure of speech for any thinly spread military unit
z
holding firm against attack.
The phrase has also taken on the metaphorical
meaning of the barrier which the relatively limited
armed forces of a country present to potential
attackers.

Red line has been used since the 1970s to denote

a limit beyond which someone must not go without
facing severe consequences.
It suggests the idea of a physical boundary
marking the limits between acceptable and
unacceptable behaviour, and is related to
expressions such as 'cross a line' and 'draw a line
in the sand'.
 Metafiction
z Catch-22 (1961), Joseph Heller

Catch-22 is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was
first published in 1961.

Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses a distinctive non-chronological
third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters.

The separate storylines are out of sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot.

The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of antihero Captain John
Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier.

Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th US Army Air Squadron is based on the island of
Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy, although it also covers episodes from basic training at Lowry
Field in Colorado and Air Corps training at Santa Ana Army Air Base in California.

The novel examines the absurdity of war and military life through the experiences of Yossarian and his cohorts,
who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home.
 z

 Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering
bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has
never met are trying to kill him.

 But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the
number of missions the men must fly to complete their service.

 Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s
assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a
man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions,
but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and
therefore ineligible to be relieved.
 The idea for Catch-22 was based on Joseph Heller's personal experience in World War II. The
feelings that Yossarian and the other bomber crew felt were taken directly from problems he
z on duty. Heller flew 60 bombing missions from May to October in 1944. Heller was
suffered while
able to make it out of the war, but it took until 1953 before he could start writing about it. For this
reason, the book contains references to post World War II phenomena like IBM computers and
loyalty oaths. The war experience turned Heller into a "tortured, funny, deeply peculiar human
being".

 After publication in 1961, Catch-22 became very popular among teenagers at the time. Catch-22
seemed to embody the feelings that young people had toward the Vietnam War. A common joke
was that every student who went off to college at the time took along a copy of Catch-22.

 The popularity of the book created a cult following, which led to more than eight million copies
being sold in the United States. On October 26, 1986, professor and author John W. Aldridge
wrote a piece in The New York Times celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publishing of
Catch-22. He commented that Heller's book presaged the chaos in the world that was to come:

 The comic fable that ends in horror has become more and more clearly a reflection of the
altogether uncomic and horrifying realities of the world in which we live and hope to survive.

 The anti-war reputation of the novel was fueled instead by the pacifist, anti-war ethos among
young Americans surrounding the Vietnam War.
 z
Kurt Vonnegut,
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

 Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-
autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut.

 It follows the life and experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an
American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years, with
Billy occasionally traveling through time.

 The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied
firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience which Vonnegut himself lived
through as an American serviceman.

 The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most
enduring anti-war novels of all time"
 z
Themes

 War and death

 Religion and philosophy

 Mental illness
z
2. Beat
Generation
z The Beat Generation
 The Beat Generation was a literary subculture
movement started by a group of authors whose
work explored and influenced American culture
and politics in the post-war era.

 The bulk of their work was published and

popularized by Silent Generationers in the
1950s, better known as Beatniks.

 The central elements of Beat culture are the

rejection of standard narrative values, making a
spiritual quest, the exploration of American and
Eastern religions, the rejection of economic
materialism, explicit portrayals of the human
condition, experimentation with psychedelic
drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
 The Beat Generation
 The Beat Generation is a
term used to describe both:
 a group of American writers
who came to prominence in
the late 1950s and early
1960s.
 the cultural phenomena that
they wrote about and
inspired (later sometimes
called "beatniks").
 Origins…
 Author Jack Kerouac introduced
the phrase "Beat Generation" in
1948.
 Kerouac was generalizing from
his social circle to characterize
the underground, anti-conformist
youth gathering in New York at
that time.
 The press often used the term
"Beat Generation" in reference to
a small group of writers…
 Jack Kerouac
 Amongst the best known of the
writers known as the Beat
Generation.

 Kerouac's work was popular,

but received little critical
acclaim during his lifetime.
Today, he is considered an
important and influential writer
who inspired others.

 Best known for On the Road

(1958).
 On the Road
 On the Road is a 1957 novel by American
writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels
of Kerouac and his friends across the
United States.
 It is considered a defining work of the
postwar Beat and Counterculture
generations, with its protagonists living life
against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug
use.
 The novel is a roman à clef, with many key
figures of the Beat movement, such as
William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen
Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady
(Dean Moriarty) represented by characters
in the book, including Kerouac himself as
the narrator Sal Paradise.
 Allen Ginsberg

 Another well known writer in the

Beat Generation.

 Best known for Howl (1956), a long

poem celebrating his friends of the
Beat Generation and attacking
what he saw as the destructive
forces of materialism and
conformity in the United States at
the time.
 Howl
 Written in 1955; it consisted of 3 parts.

 Famous line from:

 I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked, dragging themselves
through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix; Angel-headed
hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry
dynamo in the machinery of night.
 William S. Burroughs

 Primary member of the Beat

Generation, he was an avant-
garde author who affected
popular culture as well as
literature.
 Much of his work is semi-
autobiographical, drawn from
his experiences as an opiate
addict.
 Naked Lunch
 Time magazine included the novel
in its TIME 100 Best English-
language Novels from 1923 to
2005.

 Drawn from Burroughs own

experience in and his addiction to
drugs.

 The way that the novel is written

is interesting, with many sub-
stories all feeding into the plot.
 Gregory Corso

 American poet, youngest of the inner

circle of Beat Generation writers.
 Spent several of this youth in jail
where he read constantly.
 Met Ginsberg (who recognized
Corso’s talent) when he got out jail.
 1st Beat writer to actual be published.
 Importance…

 The Beats represented a part

of American society that
rebelled against the status quo
of the 1950’s.
 Echoes of the Beat Generation
can be seen throughout many
other modern subcultures,
such as "hippies" and
"punks".
z

American fiction after the 2nd World War

Unfound Generation
Beat Generation