19. The lost generation
What is it?
The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900's. At this point in time, America had become a great place to, “go into some area of business” (Crunden, 185). However, the Lost Generation writers felt that America was not such a success story because the country was devoid of a cosmopolitan culture. Their solution to this issue was to pack up their bags and travel to Europe's cosmopolitan cultures, such as Paris and London. Here they expected to find literary freedom and a cosmopolitan way of life. A cosmopolitan culture is one which includes and values a variety of backgrounds and cultures. In the 1920's the White Anglo Saxon Protestant work ethic was the only culture that was considered valued by the majority of Americans. It was because of ethics such as this which made the cosmopolitan culture of Paris so alluring. American Literature went through a profound change in the post WWI era. Up until this point, American writers were still expected to use the rigid Victorian styles of the 19th Century. The lost generation writers were above, or apart from, American society, not only in geographic terms, but also in their style of writing and subjects they chose to write about. Although they were unhappy with American culture, the writers were instrumental in changing their country's style of writing, from Victorian to modern.
Also:
Lost Generation, in general, the post-World War I generation, but specifically a group of U.S. writers who came of age during the war and established their literary reputations in the 1920s. The term stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation.” Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises (1926), a novel that captures the attitudes of a hard-drinking, fast-living set of disillusioned young expatriates in postwar Paris.
The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from a U.S. that, basking under Pres. Warren G. Harding's “back to normalcy” policy, seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. 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 centre of their literary activities in the '20s. They were never a literary school. In the 1930s, as these writers turned in different directions, their works lost the distinctive stamp of the postwar period.
What does the term originate from?
The term originated with Gertrude Stein who, after being unimpressed by the skills of a young car mechanic, asked the garage owner where the young man had been trained. The garage owner told her that while young men were easy to train, it was those in their mid-twenties to thirties, the men who had been through World War I, who he considered a "lost generation" - une génération perdue.
The 1926 publication of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises popularized the term, as Hemingway used it as an epigraph. The Sun Also Rises epitomized the post-war expatriate generation, which according to Hemingway biographer and scholar Jeffrey Meyers, is "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work." However, Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever;" he believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost.
In his memoir A Moveable Feast he writes "I tried to balance Miss Stein's quotation from the garage owner with one from Ecclesiastes." A few lines later, recalling the risks and losses of the war, he adds: "I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought 'who is calling who a lost generation?'"
Who was involved in it?
T.S.Eliot
T.S. Eliot was born into a prominent New England family. His education consisted of Harvard University, the Sorbonne, and the University of Oxford. Eliot was a disciple of the author/editor Ezra Pound who will be discussed later. His permanent residence became London, because Eliot found London more appealing due to its cultural tradition. Eliot's studies and interests stemmed from anthropology, mythology, and religion. His works ranged from subjects such as religion, serenity, the Italian poet Dante, English metaphysical poets, and Elizabethan dramatists. His poetry has no fixed verse, form, or regular pattern, with an occasional rhyme scheme. Eliot's most celebrated work "The Wasteland" is a long poem, which construes his views of the modern society, in comparison of the past. Eliot gave Ezra Pound the poem to edit, and pound and his wife cut through the poem, often emitting large portions that they felt irrelevant. In "The Wasteland" Eliot incorporates many footnotes. Some critics claimed it was Eliot's egocentrism that allowed him to do this, because he felt smarter than the average person did, and they would need the footnote to decode his writings. Others said he was crazy (he did suffer a nervous breakdown while writing "The Wasteland." Eliot was an essential figure in the modernistic times, and his methods of literary analysis, such as he develops in the work "Sacred Wood" influenced literary criticism for future writers.
From "The Hollow Men"
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound was born in Idaho, and at an early age moved to Pennsylvania with his family. His education consisted of Hamilton College, and the University of Pennsylvania where he meets literary figures such as William Carlos Williams, and Hilda Doolittle. Hilda Doolittle, Pound, and Richard Aldington published an anthology based on their famous teashop conversations called "Des Imgistes: An Anthology." Pound had this published to help further his friend's careers. He entitled the book in French because he felt that they owed a debt to French literature. Pound was an instructor in Romance Languages at Wabash College. Pound's friendship with various authors and poets helped establish the birth of modernism with regards to French, English, and American literature. Pound later moved to Europe, as he found nothing of interest in America. It was in Europe that Pound met T.S. Eliot. His course of readings in Europe had a profound effect on his writings. In addition to the Romance Languages, Pound studied Chinese. Pound felt a greater admiration to French and Chinese past histories than he did for American and British. Ezra Pound had a penetrating impact on literature. Not only did he write his own highly acclaimed works; he helped others to achieve the same recognition.
From "Portrait d'unne Femme"
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed waves of price
Great minds have sought you-lacking someone else.
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was born into an affluent family, which enabled her to spend a considerable amount of time in Europe. Having such a diverse background, Stein did not know the conventional life that many Americans lived. Her areas of study include Radcliffe College, where she studied with the philosopher William James. To further her education, Stein attended Johns Hopkins Medical School, but she did not have the drive to finish her degree. Stein used her knowledge of medicine and philosophy (particularly what she learned from James about stream of consciousness) and
incorporated them into her writings. Stein then went off to Europe, and with her brother Leo, set up a salon which was visited by such figures as Picasso, Henri Matisse, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway. With influences such as Picasso, Stein explored Cubism, with concentration on illumination of the present moment. A good example of this was the work "Tender Buttons." Stein's first and most celebrated work was "Three Lives"- where she tried to establish new verb forms, and a way to enable the reader's consciousness to be able to study the workings of another mind. Dialogue was a main focus, because dialogue allowed the reader to understand the perceptions of the characters, while allowing the reader to understand the perceptions of the self. Freud was also an influence, as seen in Stein's attempt to get into ones conscious and unconscious mind while merging the two together.
From "The Gentle Lena"
Poor Lena had no power to be strong in such trouble. She did not know how to yield her sickness nor endure. She lost all her little sense of being in her suffering. She was so scared, and then at her best, Lena, who was patient, sweet, and quiet, had not self-control, nor any active courage.
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway is probably one of the most celebrated authors of his time. Hemingway is well known for his fiction. His take on fiction is something invented or imagined. Main topics were centralized around his love of embellishment of the
facts. Hemingway did not have the education as many other writers of his time, rebelling against his parents attempts to send him to colleges. His idea of education did not consist of lectures, and research papers, but of life experiences, and his love of reading. Hemingway's readings centered around Russian writers such as Tolstoy and Turgrnev, Tolstoy was a primary influence in Hemingway's writings. WWI also had a profound impact on him as well, as he was an ambulance driver during the war. He hated the abstract, especially abstract words such as honor, glory, and courage. Hemingway held strong to old beliefs, and symbolism, as he used symbolism to depict the Protestant religion he could not accept. He used observation and description in his works, rather than rhetoric views. The concept of war fascinated Hemingway, as well as the experiences one could endure in a lifetime. One of the most famous works, "Farewell to Arms" depicted the uselessness for words such as honor and glory, because they were not the first things in a soldier's mind as he walked onto the battlefield. Hemingway's works were raw, and dilled with the notion that one could be inside the characters mind, the concrete, and not around in the abstract view of his works.
From "Big Two Hearted River Part I"
From the time he had gotten down off the train and the baggage man had thrown his pack out of the open car door things had been different. Seney was burned, he knew that. He hiked along the road, sweating in the sun, climbing to cross the range of hills that separated the railway from the pure plains.
When did it occur?
The term "lost generation" was coined by Gertrude Stein, a lost generation writer herself, after World War I. It was between the first and second World Wars, that these writers spent their time abroad. "In the 1930's, the forces of politics and war drove artists back to America."
Why was it significant to American Culture?
This temporary emigration of American talent into cosmopolitan cities such as Paris, is significant to American culture in
two parts.
One, because it aided in the desire for a cosmopolitan culture to be established and to exist in America.
Two, because when American Culture became more defined, European and other countries began to recognize a distinctive Democratic American culture.