The Spirit of the 1920s: Literary Images of the American Post-war Decade

Contents

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I. Introduction 3 II. The Experience of War 4 III. The Sun also Rises - Textbook of a Lost Generation 6 IV. The Great Gatsby and the Moral Waste Land of the Rich 8 V. Babbitt and the American Middle Class 12 VI. A Decade of Irresponsibility? 14 VII. Conclusion 18 Bibliography 21

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I. Introduction

A broad view on some of the major works of American literature in the 1920s raises the question: How can one possibly draw any general conclusion about the social and cultural reality of the decade out of these pieces? Take for example the experimental works of American poets, the poems of Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams or the plays of Eugene O’Neill. They were primarily concerned with an aesthetic revolution and with the artist’s place in modern society. There are works of fiction which many critics view today as expressions of the literary spirit of the decade, the works of Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos and others. These authors tell stories of alienation from modern life, culture, society and moral standards. Their works appear as expressions of an escape which was not only virtual but physical, as Europe and Paris in particular became an important centre of American literary life in the 1920s. ¹ Yet they remained American writers, writing about the country they had chosen to abandon in favour of artistic freedom even if they observed it from a distance, even if they might have felt as members of a ‘Lost Generation’. Naturally literary criticism focuses on the formal achievements of these writers, their share in the creation of what we call today Modernism. My purpose is to present the works of some of the writers of the decade in relation to the development of American culture and society. I want to examine a few of the literary themes that might be interpreted as a new approach to and a significant record of, what Hoffman calls the ‘human condition’ in the post-war decade. ² They imply often a notion of disillusionment and confusion rather than an explicit critique of the world they describe. Direct critique was provided by an older generation, men like Van Wyck Brooks, Sinclair Lewis, and H.L. Mencken and focused on the rising American middle class. In dealing with literature one is moving away from historical ‘facts’ and enters the empire of ideas and emotions, of fictional and aesthetic re-shaping of ‘reality’. Is it possible to grasp the ‘spirit’ of the 1920s through some of its major literary works or do these works represent merely the view of a minority of artists and intellectuals?

¹ It is important to note that I am concerned with the branch of literature which found its way into the ‘official’ canon, not with highly successful but forgotten works of popular fiction. It appears as if the gap between commercial literature, as part of the emerging entertainment industry, and ‘highbrow’ literature became wider in the post-war decade. Yet, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Dos Passos soon achieved popular success as well.

² Frederick J. Hoffman, The Twenties: American Writing in the Postwar Decade, New York: Free Press, 1962 (1st published in 1949). I am largely indebted to Hoffman’s work, a brilliant study of the major literary trends of the postwar era.

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First I will refer to the war as a major caesura in cultural terms and - for most of the writers of the 1920s - the definite dawn of the modern age. By examining three exemplary novels of the decade -Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt - I will attempt to portray the 1920s as a period of spiritual and cultural confusion deriving out of a fundamental re-definition of values and culture as a whole. I have chosen these works primarily for one reason. These novels are expressions of doubt or critique about the modern age and American society, though in very different ways. Some of the major literary themes of the time - disillusionment, social rebellion, resignation, hedonism, pessimism, melancholy, irony, and tragedy - are rather surprising if we consider the 1920s as a decade of economic prosperity and rising affluence. In the last chapter I will discuss some points of the sharp critique that emerged shortly after the end of the decade and accused the writers of the ‘Jazz Age’ of social irresponsibility, escapism, and pointless cynicism.

II. The Experience of War

There has been written much, maybe too much, about the so-called ‘Lost Generation’ and the term has become a cliché in itself, vaguely linked with Bohemian life, literary escapism and social rebellion. ³ I will not attempt to portray the members of this generation as a social type or group, for I believe that they were first and foremost highly autonomous individuals which is most clearly apparent in their work. Yet, they shared the same devotion to art and the same disillusionment over the world they lived in. Were did this disillusionment come from? In which way reflected or affected it the ‘spirit’ of the decade and in which way was it misdirected?

The First World War marks a major turning point. Brought up under the crusading spirit of the progressive era, many of the future writers went to war with vague ideals about a ‘fight for civilisation’ and the battlefield as testing ground of manly virtues. Most of them enlisted before America’s entry into the war in foreign armies, particularly as ambulance and ammunition drivers. 4

³ Malcolm Cowley mentions Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, Hart Crane, Thornton Wilder, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe as the most important members of the Lost Generation. However Cowley admits that the term ‘lost’ is misguiding if one examines the achievements of these writers and poets. See Malcolm Cowley, The Second Flowering: Works and Days of the Lost Generation, London: Deutsch, 1973.

⁴ Among the American writers who served as ambulance or camion drivers during the war were John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Louis Bromfield, William Seabrook, Larry Barretto, E.E. Cummings, Harry Crosby, and Sidney Howard. See Malcolm Cowley, Exile’s Return: A Narrative of Ideas, London: Cape, 1935, 46. Cowley states that “one might almost say that the ambulance corps and the French military transport were college-extension courses for a generation of writers” (p. 46-7).

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They experienced the real or virtual presence of death and destruction, the lack of any notion of

heroism or glory in the daily routine of killing or being killed, the hollow phrases of propaganda, the

speeches of politicians and military leaders and the mechanisation of war. The war experiences

culminated in a fundamental questioning of old values and preconceptions, in a loss of faith and a

deep mistrust concerning the orderly and reasonable nature of the world. In his poem Hugh Selwyn

Mauberley (1920) Ezra Pound expressed this feeling of disillusionment after the war:

Died some, pro patria,

non “dulce” non “et decor”... walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick

and liars in public places. [...] There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization,[...] 5

Even the basic medium of communication - language - became ‘contaminated’ by phrases which

had lost their meaning. Frederic Henry, the hero of Ernest Hemingway’s war novel A Farewell to

Arms (1929), notes with regard to great words:

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. 6

Thus after the war the re-definition of language through art, became the major concern for many

American writers and poets. Returning to America, many felt that they had become alienated from

⁵ Ezra Pound, ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’, in Pound, Selected Poems 1908-1969, London: Faber, 1977, (1st

published in 1920), 100-1.

⁶ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, London: Jonathan Cape, 1945, (first published New York: Scribners,

1929). Subsequent quotations will refer to this edition. Pagenumbers of the cited literary works will be appear immediately after the passage.

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society by an experience that nobody - except their former comrades - would be able to understand.

⁷ The fact that America’s primary concern was ‘business’, contributed further to the writer’s alienation from society, a point I will refer to later on.

The experience of war was intense enough to shatter old values but not strong enough to destroy physically and mentally. Due to their status as foreign volunteers in the French, British or Italian army, American writers and poets felt primarily as observers, rather than active participants. Frederic Henry states with relation to the war: “It did not have anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies.” (p. 41) ⁸ American post-war writers were among the first to give accounts of the unexplainable and their view reflected the common state of confusion and disillusionment after the war. ⁹ Returning to America they felt unable to assimilate, unable to go back to ‘normalcy’. In a certain sense they had been infected by a European disease - self-doubt. Many went back to Europe, most of them to Paris, to join the American colony of writers and poets like Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. They felt no loyalty towards abstract constructs like states, religion or nations but were only responsible to their art. One might call this attitude literary escapism or pure aestheticism, and certainly it would have been of minor importance if limited to an intellectual elite, but these writers created a new line of tradition, they shaped new modes of expression for the modern age.

III. The Sun Also Rises - Textbook of a Lost Generation

Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926. The book is usually viewed as a literary testament of the Lost Generation. ¹⁰ It is a novel about the loss of faith and values, about mere enjoyment of life and the quest for the basic things in human existence. Hoffman calls the novel “Hemingway’s best war book”. ¹¹ Although the war is rarely mentioned it overshadows the actions and mental condition of Hemingway’s heroes. The war represents a

⁷ Hemingway’s story Soldier’s Home reflects the feeling of alienation from home society perfectly (Published in the short story collection In Our Time, New York: Scribner’s/Macmillan, 1988 (1st published in 1925).

⁸ See also Cowley, Exile’s Return, 45-56.

⁹ Basic themes of American writers were the absurdity of the war (John Dos Passos, One Man’s Initiation:

1917[1920]), the destruction of art and ‘civilisation’ itself (Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers ^{[1920]); Harry Crosby,} Shadows of the Sun [1928])and the portrayal of war and the army as giant machines, hostile to the individual, its pretensions and hopes (E.E. Cummings, The Enormous Room [1922]). See Hoffman, 71-89.

¹⁰ The author himself did not think of his work in that way. The multitude of different interpretations of the novel proves the fact that the ambition of a work might go far beyond the intention of its creator. See for example Harold Bloom (ed.), Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, (Modern Critical Interpretation Series), New York/Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1987.

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