The "Lost Generation" became disillusioned after their traumatic experiences that they endured during World War I. The group of writers who moved to Paris believed that America was intolerant, materialistic, and unspiritual. They helped to establish many of the styles and themes that are still used in literature today.
Origin
Stein quoted her car mechanic, You are all a "génération perdue."
Stein told Hemingway, "That is what you are. That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation."
The Sun Also Rises
"Wherein the 'lost generation' that followed the War goes to the devil with a smile on the lip but with despair in its heart."
The idiosyncrasies of "Lost Generation" authors
abandonment of materialism prevalent in America
idealism
philosophical musings
alcoholism
extramarital affairs
lived in Paris
created a mold for many future writers
Prominent Authors
The term embraces Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, and many other writers who made Paris the center of their literary activities in the 1920s.
After the 1920s
In the 1930s, as these writers turned in different directions, their works lost the distinctive stamp of the postwar period. The last representative works of the era were Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (1934) and Dos Passos’ The Big Money (1936).
Works Cited
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and
the lost generation : a history of literary Paris in the twenties and
thirties. New York : Norton, 1983. Print.
"Lost Generation."
Brittanica. Encyclopædia Britannica, n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2013.
"The Lost Generation and 1920s Pop
Culture." Tripod. n.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2013.
"The Sun Also Rises." Flickr.
n.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2013.
Ernest Hemingway was born July 21st in
Oak Park, Illinois. His parents owned a cabin in Northern Michigan where he
learned to hunt, fish and appreciate the outdoors. This learned appreciation
for the outdoors would go on to influence his adventurous nature later in life.
In high school Hemingway began his prolific career by writing for the school
newspaper. After graduating he started writing for the Kansas City Star at the extremely young age of 17.
"On
the Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This
is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help
him if he gets out of it in time."-Hemingway
From an early age Hemingway was learning to write
directly, rather than in the expansive style of the time. This short, but
powerful, style of writing would go on to help him win the Nobel Prize.
Hemingway Goes to War...
In 1918 Hemingway left his job as a writer and
went to serve in World War I. He served as an ambulance driver during the war,
and actually earned the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery. However, he was
wounded during the war, and spent a long time in recovery.
During his time in recovery, Hemingway proposed to a
nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky. She accepted, but she quickly turned around and
had an affair. A devastated Hemingway would later use this ammunition in his
book A Farewell to Arms.
OOOOOHHHHH
CAAANNNAAADDDDAAAA…
A young recovering Hemingway moved back to
Chicago where he met his first wife Hadley Richards. Hemmingway then took a job
with the Toronto Star. For which he
would work as a foreign correspondent and cover events like the Greek
Revolution.
Paris...
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris
as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with
you, for Paris is a moveable feast”-Hemingway
Hemingway and Hadley very quickly moved to Paris.
They joined Gertrude Stein’s “Lost Generation” where they interacted with the
key artists of the time, such as Fitzgerald and Picasso. During this time Hemingway
really began to develop his own unique style of writing. Hemingway’s
interactions with Fitzgerald were particularly interesting, and will be covered
later.
It's a Boy...
In 1923 the couple had a child named John Hadley
Nicanor Hemingway
.
The Birth of a Novel...
In 1925 Hemingway and his wife joined a group of expatriates
to go to the Festival of San Fernin in Spain. This trip was Hemingway’s
inspiration for his most widely renowned book The Sun Also Rises.
However, after the book was published Hemingway
divorced his wife over an affair he was having. His mistress, Pauline Pfeiffer,
instantly became his next wife.
Key West...
Predictably, Hemingway’s new wife became pregnant.
So in 1928 they moved to Key West, Florida. It was during this wild time that
Hemming way published his critically acclaimed novel A Farewell to Arms.
Earning the Mustache...
During the 1930’s Hemmingway wrote, as well as
participated in the most mind boggling activities.
Big game hunting...
Bull fighting...
Deep sea fishing...
Borderline alcoholism...
"Write drunk, edit sober" -Hemingway
Ummmm…Third
Time’s the Charm?
In 1937 Hemmingway was covering the Spanish Civil
War when he became infatuated with a female correspondent named Gellhorn.
Needless to say, he soon divorced Pauline and married Gellhorn. During his time
in Spain collected enough to write his next novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. This novel went on to become Hemingway’s
first work to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Cuba…
After remarrying, Hemingway purchased a farm near
Havana, Cuba where he would spend his winters.
World War II
When World War II broke out, Hemmingway once again
became a correspondent. Hemingway was present at many crucial moments of the
war, including the legendary D-Day landing in France.
Marriages
of the Fourth Kind…
During his time covering WWII Hemmingway developed
an interest in a fellow correspondent named Mary Welsh. Soon after the war
ended, Hemingway divorced his third wife and married Welsh.
Success…
In 1951 Hemingway published his Pulitzer Prize
winning book The Old Man and the Sea.
Shortly after, in 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for literature
The
Long Fall…
During this time of great success in Hemingway’s career,
his body and mind began to fail him. After sustaining countless injuries during
his lifetime, including surviving multiple plane crashes during his African
safaris, Hemingway was finally paying the piper. Hemingway moved to Idaho where
he spent the next decade in a tragic downward spiral.
Before
the Dawn…
July 2nd 1961, Hemingway pushed to
shells into the barrels of his favorite shotgun, put the barrel in his mouth
and pulled the trigger. Hemingway’s steady decline had come to a disastrous and
undeserving end.
Such
Style…
Hemingway’s style of writing was very different from
his peers of the time. Most writers of the time, such as Fitzgerald, wrote in
long elegant sentences. Hemmingway
believed that writing in shorter, more powerful, sentences his writing was more
pure and superior. This style was created through his years as a reporter and
war correspondent. This short, but powerful, style of writing arguably mirrors
Hemingway’s lifestyle.
Fitzgerald
V. Hemingway
“ I never had any respect for him ever, except for
his lovely, golden wasted talent”-Hemingway on Fitzgerald
Hemingway was an extremely competitive writer. He
would frequently compare the completion amongst writers to boxing. He would
then also call himself “the champ”. Hemingway’s direct writing style was
extremely different from Fitzgerald’s long and eloquent wordiness. Hemingway
was very oppressive toward threatening writers, and Fitzgerald frequently fell
victim to Hemingway’s competitive thrusts. I believe that the character Tom in The Great Gatsby is actually a fictional
representation of Hemmingway.
Work Cited
Gent, George. "Hemingway's Letters Tell of Fitzgerald." New York Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.
"Ernest Hemmingway." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Feb 21 2013,
Martin, Christopher D. "Ernest Hemingway: A Psychological Autopsy Of A Suicide." Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes 69.4 (2006): 351-361. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.
Gertrude Stein was born on February 3, 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania the daughter of wealthy German-Jewish immigrants. After moving from the U.S. to Europe, living in Vienna and Paris, the family returned to America and settled in Oakland, California. Gertrude's mother died when she was only 14, and she lost her father only four years after.
"I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher."
An Education...or Lack Thereof
Gertrude Stein studied psychology at Radcliffe College under William James. She also studied medicine at Johns Hopkins for a short period of time. However, she did not receive a formal degree from either program. The jury is out whether she flunked or quit, most critics seem to agree it was a mixture of both.
Stein with Toklas
"America is my country, and Paris is my hometown."
Answering the Call to Return Home
In 1903, Gertrude Stein moved to Paris with her brother Leo. Shortly after moving there, she met her secretary and lifelong partner in Alice B. Toklas. She lived in a flat with both Toklas and her brother on the Left Bank, 27 rue de Fleurus.
Gertrude Stein lived here with her brother, Leo Stein and later Alice Toklas. She accepted many artists and writers here.
The walls of the studio apartment at 27 rue de fleurus quickly became filled with the diverse works of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Juan Gris. The Stein collection is still a marvel today, and many famous museums, such as the MET and Smithsonian, have displayed exhibitions of it.
"Paris was the place that suited us who were to create the twentieth century art and literature."
The Salon at 27 rue de fleurus
"Gertrude Stein was a central figure in the Parisian art world," as a strong "advocate of the avant garde" (poetryfoundation). Combined with her brother being an avid art critic and amateur painter, Stein's home quickly became known as a center of art and art appreciation. Their home became a safe haven for young artists who became known as "new moderns," a term coined for their belief in creation of a "novel form of expression and a conscious break with the past" (poetryfoundation).
Pablo Picasso and his portrait of Gertrude Stein
Henri Matisse and a piece of his from Stein's private collection entitled, "Woman in a Hat"
"You are all a lost generation."
Stein, Fitzgerald and Hemingway
Stein's salons did not only attract artists, but writers as well. The likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway found their way into her studio apartment. To them she coined the phrase "the lost generation," to define those "expatriate American and English writers" who flocked to France between the world wars (poetryfoundation).
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway, who took Stein's term "the lost generation" and popularized it in his novel, The Sun also Rises
"An audience is warming, but it must never be necessary to your work."
Personality and Writing Style
"She was an imposing figure, possessed of a remarkable self-confidence and a commanding manner" (poetryfoundation.org)
Stein had a personality that did not need the approval of those around her. She led a lesbian lifestyle, all but married to Alice Toklas, who she stayed with until her death.When she would get together with male artists and writers, she would send their wives off to be with Alice-showing that the two played relatively traditional gender roles in their relationship, with Stein acting(and looking) the more manly of the two. As a lover of modern art, Stein sought to accomplish the same rejection of traditional views on time and space through a literary form of "a spatial, process-oriented" one (poetryfoundation).
Three Lives, published 1909
.
"The identity of her characters as it is revealed in unconscious habits
and rhythms of speech, the classification of all possible character
types, and the problem of laying out as a continuous present knowledge
that had accumulated over a period of time" are all ideas Stein likely acquired when studying under James at Radcliffe College (poetryfoundation)
"Not trusting narration to convey the complexity of human behavior, Stein employed description to achieve what she called 'a continuous present.'
On the idea of a continuous present, literary critic Katherine Anne Porter commented:
"The people in this world appear to be motionless at every stage of their
progress, each one is simultaneously being born, arriving at all ages
and dying. You perceive that it is a world without mobility, everything
takes place, has taken place, will take place; therefore nothing takes
place, all at once."
Tender Buttons, published 1912
OR
"Devoid of logic, narration, and conventional grammar, it resembles a verbal collage" (poetryfondation)
THE PROBLEM IS...
No one got it, except for her.
Most critics agree that, in an attempt to reduce language to abstraction, it had no meaning to anyone but her.
Stein's most successful writing, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, was in fact an autobiography of herself. As her only writing that prescribed to a traditional, linear narrative, it was also her only widely-read one.
"Let me listen to me, and not to them."
Stein in Summation
Stein's contribution to 20th century literature "has largely been relegated to a secondary role," as more a personality and influence on the great writers and artists of the time than being one herself (poetryfoundation).Her stance as a woman unconcerned with public opinion or success, and her appreciation and encouragement of those whose genius had yet been recognized arguably defined the course of history of art and language development of modern times. Thus, she is a figure inseparable from the development of modernism.
Prohibition in the
United States was a measure designed to reduce drinking by eliminating the
businesses that manufactured, distributed, and sold alcoholic beverages. In the book, Prohibition and Repeal, Sylvia Engdahl stated that the prohibition of alcohol was no sudden event and that throughout the nineteenth century, there had been several temperance movements
leading to the ban of alcohol (16). Temperance originally meant moderating the use
of alcohol but for most supporters it eventually came to mean prohibiting it
completely(Engdahl,16). The remedy for “the organic disease” was not to
convince people to stop drinking or to change their ingrained habits but to
stop the corrupting influences on the young and that was the predominant reason
for the Amendments to be passed.
DID YOU KNOW?
-It was never illegal to drink during Prohibition.
The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, never barred
the consumption of alcohol-just making it, selling it
and shipping for mass production .
The
Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution
Passed by
Congress December 18, 1917. Ratified January 16, 1919. Repealed by Amendment
XXI.
The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution
prohibits the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquor, and
the import or export of liquor, within the United States and its territories,
starting one year from the ratification of this Article. Both Congress and the
states shall have the power to pass laws to enforce this article (Engdahl, 14)
The
Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution
Passed by
Congress February 20, 1933. Ratified December 5, 1933
The Eighteenth Amendment is hereby repealed. The
transportation of intoxicating liquor into any state, territory, or possession
of the United States is hereby prohibited if the liquor is intended for delivery
or use in violation of that territory’s laws (Engdahl,15).
The National
Prohibition Act (the Volstead Act)
Congress passed the
Volstead Act on October 18, 1919, and the law went into effect February 1,
1920. The Act was organized in two titles: the first instituted a system of
war-time prohibition that ran until the beginning of national Prohibition; the
second set out the system of national Prohibition and the
system for the regulation of production of industrial alcohol. The Volstead Act
banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages unless for religious or
medical purposes. The Act defined intoxicating beverages to include those that
contained as little as one half of one per cent alcohol, but it allowed for the
manufacture, possession, and use of alcoholic beverages in private homes. It
also contains a specific provision limiting
searches of private homes under the Act (Okrent, 96).
Prohibition became possible with the support of Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).
"NO MORE RUMMIES!"
Supporters of Prohibition:
-Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR)
-Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
-Prohibition Party
-Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals
-Anti-Saloon League
But we want John Barleycorn Back!
The prohibition of alcohol was intended to better society and end with the "evil" of alcohol but that was far from what happened. People turned to different options to obtain alcohol. Some people started to produce their own drink at home from wood alcohol and medical supplies, others would sell bootleg liquor in undercover bars called Speakeasies. Speakeasies were pretty interesting because in order to get in, you needed to give a password. Many people who were against Prohibition would not work, instead they would strike. Also, fashion had a great role during Prohibition. People who had obtained their "hooch" wanted to take it to parties and that is when they would wear the elaborate clothes shown below. The vial fixed in the high-heel shoe could hold a fullshot of whiskey.
DID YOU KNOW?
While Speakeasies were regarded as higher class, with food and entertainment, the term "blind pig" was used for dive bars, where costumers would pay to see an animal and receive a complementary drink.
"Who is this Gatsby anyhow?" demanded Tom Suddenly.
"Some big booglegger?"(Fitzgerald,107)
BACKFIRE OF PROHIBITION
Prohibition had a great impact in the American society and even though the point of Prohibition was to turn America's society into a "clean" and "pure" one, it turned out to be the opposite. One negative effect about Prohibition in society was that it drove people to go against the law. There were all sorts of underground alcohol smuggling usually referred to as "bootlegging". During Prohibition the respect for religion was gone, especially after the Volstead Act was passed. As mentioned before, the Volstead Act banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages unless for religious or medical purposes. In Daniel Okrent's "Last Call", is a very interesting phrase that followed the fact that the Volstead Act allowed rabbis to distribute sacramental wines to synagogue members. It said that "wine congregations" exploded in size, and wine stores opened in Jewish Neighborhoods (34).
One of the worst things that Prohibition brought to the American Society was the organized crime. During Prohibition, corruption in the government increased due to the bribery that took place between organized crime leaders like Alphonse "Scar face" Capone and politicians. There was a lot of "dirty" business during this time period.
DID YOU KNOW?
Al Capone earned $60 million annually selling illegal liquor.
TIME TO BEAT IT!
I have to say that Prohibition was a very interesting thing to happen to the American Society. Most of the time people will only relate it to alcohol but I have learned it goes beyond that. It had great effects on the society we now live in. I really encourage you to look more into it because you never know what surprising thing you might learn.
