Literature of the 1920's
F. Scott Fitzgerald- F. Scott Fitzgerald was an author from the 1920s. He wrote both short stories and novels and completed a total of four novels during his lifetime. The most popular of his books was The Great Gatsby which is set in the 20s and comments on the American obsession with material things and alcohol consumption. Fitzgerald's marriage to his wife, Zelda, was a rocky one. He accused her of insanity and of encouraging him to drink and when his career failed for the first time, she left him. Fitzgerald was the first person to refer to the 1920s as "The Jazz Age."
From Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby:
""Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought -- frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon -- for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth."
Sinclair Lewis- Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist. Many of his works expressed his views against American society and capitalism. He was also known for having strong female characters in his books. He started his career writing poetry and sketches and moved from place to place getting jobs at newspapers and magazines. He became popular writing short stories that magazines would then buy. He wrote his first novel in 1914. Some of his works include Mainstreet, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Mantrap.
Ernest Hemingway- Hemingway was an American journalist and author. He began his writing career as a journalist, but shortly after the start of his journalism career he enlisted in World War I. His experiences there influenced his writing of the novel A Farewell to Arms. He was greatly influenced when living in Paris where he met many other famous writers of the generation. Some of his other works include The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises. Many of his novels are now considered American classics.
From Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms:
"Sometimes in the dark we heard the troops marching under the window and guns going past pulled by motor-tractors. There was much traffic at night and many mules on the roads with boxes of ammunition on each side of their pack-saddles and gray motor trucks that carried men, and other trucks with loads covered with canvas that moved slower in the traffic. There were big guns too that passed in the day drawn by tractors, the long barrels of the guns covered with green branches and green leafy branches and vines laid over the tractors. To the north we could look across a valley and see a forest of chestnut trees and behind it another mountain on this side of the river. There was fighting for that mountain too, but it was not successful, and in the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain. The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with the autumn. There were mists over the river and clouds on the mountain and the trucks splashed mud on the road and the troops were muddy and wet in their capes; their rifles were wet and under their capes the two leather cartridge-boxes on the front of the belts, gray leather boxes heavy with the packs of clips of thin, long 6.5 mm. cartridges, bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child."
From Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby:
""Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought -- frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon -- for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth."
Sinclair Lewis- Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist. Many of his works expressed his views against American society and capitalism. He was also known for having strong female characters in his books. He started his career writing poetry and sketches and moved from place to place getting jobs at newspapers and magazines. He became popular writing short stories that magazines would then buy. He wrote his first novel in 1914. Some of his works include Mainstreet, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Mantrap.
Ernest Hemingway- Hemingway was an American journalist and author. He began his writing career as a journalist, but shortly after the start of his journalism career he enlisted in World War I. His experiences there influenced his writing of the novel A Farewell to Arms. He was greatly influenced when living in Paris where he met many other famous writers of the generation. Some of his other works include The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises. Many of his novels are now considered American classics.
From Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms:
"Sometimes in the dark we heard the troops marching under the window and guns going past pulled by motor-tractors. There was much traffic at night and many mules on the roads with boxes of ammunition on each side of their pack-saddles and gray motor trucks that carried men, and other trucks with loads covered with canvas that moved slower in the traffic. There were big guns too that passed in the day drawn by tractors, the long barrels of the guns covered with green branches and green leafy branches and vines laid over the tractors. To the north we could look across a valley and see a forest of chestnut trees and behind it another mountain on this side of the river. There was fighting for that mountain too, but it was not successful, and in the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain. The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with the autumn. There were mists over the river and clouds on the mountain and the trucks splashed mud on the road and the troops were muddy and wet in their capes; their rifles were wet and under their capes the two leather cartridge-boxes on the front of the belts, gray leather boxes heavy with the packs of clips of thin, long 6.5 mm. cartridges, bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child."