Chapter 11
The Writers of the “Lost Generation”
From An Outline of American
Literature by Peter B. High
The “Lost Generation” (post WWI)


F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
This Side of Paradise (1920)
1. Fitzgerald’s first novel (p.143)
2. this generation “grew up to find
all gods dead, all wars fought, all
faiths in man shaken.”
3. two concerns: fear of poverty and
worship of success
F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940)

Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
1. collections of his best short
stories (p.144)
2. “flapper” – modern young ladies
of that period who smoked, drank
whisky, and lived dangerously
free lives
3. “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

The Great Gatsby (1925)
1. the greatest 20th century novel
2. belief in the absolute power and natural
goodness of money
3. Gatsby, a tragic figure, symbolizes the
American belief that money can buy love
and happiness
4. Believes he can change the material
world into the ideal world of his fantasy
5. heroic in his continuous belief of hope
and dream
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)


“Babylon Revisited” (1931) – describing the
Lost Generation after its moral and economic
collapse (p.146)
Tender is the Night (1934) – Fitzgerald’s
experience with his wife’s mental illness
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)

The Sun Also Rises (1926)
1. a portrait of young adults in the
post-war era living in Paris (p.146)
2. expatriates, people without a
homeland
3. their despair is similar to the despair
Eliot’s portrayed in his “Waste Land”
4. Jake Barnes, damaged by the war,
physically and spiritually impotent
From: http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/amlit/hemingway/hem3.html
Ernest Hemingway
(1898-1961)
New York: Grosset &
Dunlap, 1930.
Original black cloth
with red paper labels
lettered in black on
spine and upper cover.
White pictorial dustjacket printed in red,
green, and purple by
"S “
Ernest Hemingway
(1898-1961)

The Sun Also Rises
New York, The
Modern Library,
1930.
Original blue cloth,
spine & upper cover
stamped in gold. In
red and white
pictorial dust-jacket,
lettered in black
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
5. other characters deal with their symbolic impotence (p.147)
6. How to live in the emptiness of the world? How to fight
against the Nada of the world? (nada = nothingness in Spanish,
the loss of hope or the inability to become active in the real
world)
7. simple style and careful structure, “to get the most out of the
least”
8. the language is rarely emotional but it controls emotions, to
suggest a kind of stoicism (means patience and courage when
suffering), the main theme in his stories
The Sun Also Rises.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926.
First edition, original cloth in dust-jacket.

Hemingway's novel was published on October 22,
1926. Reviewers noted the "masterly cunning" of his
technique and welcomed his apparent conversion
from the aestheticism of (James) Joyce and (Getrude)
Stein. Among the book's critics was his Paris friend
John Dos Passos, who complained in the Communist
magazine New Masses that, "instead of being the epic
of the sun also rising on a lost generation,"
Hemingway's novel was "a cock-and-bull story about
a whole lot of tourists getting drunk." The book's
success with New York critics and readers gave
Hemingway new opportunities for placing his short
stories in American magazines.
The Running of the
Bulls in Pomplona
"...sound of the rocket exploding
that announced the release of the
bulls from the corrals at the edge
of town. They would race through
the streets and out to the bullring.
All the balconies were crowded
with people. Suddenly a crowd
came down the street...They were
all running...and then the bulls
galloping, tossing the heads up
and down."
From The Sun Also Rises.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)

“In Our Time” (1924), “Bit Two-Heated River”
(1925), “Men without Women (1927) – p.147
1. mixed psychological realism with symbolism
2. the outer world (nature) is a metaphor for the
spiritual world of the character
3. the hero’s actions is carefully described; each
action has a symbolic meaning

In Our Time; Stories.
New York: Boni &
Liveright, 1925. Original
cloth, in dust-jacket.

This first New York
commercial edition of
Hemingway's writings
shared its title with the
original Paris edition, but
intercut Hemingway's
original spare paragraphs
with more conventional fulllength stories from the
"Nick" sequence.
Hemingway was very
disappointed by its initial
sales and blamed Liveright
for a short print-run, poor
publicity, and inadequate
distribution.

In Our Time; Stories.
Paris: Crosby
Continental Editions,
1932. Original white
wrappers
"Big-Two
Hearted River"
Ernest Walsh
and Ethel
Moorhead, eds.,
This Quarter
1:1. Paris, May
1925. Original
wrappers.
With
Hemingway's
story "Big TwoHearted River"
(pp. 110-28 )
and his
"Homage to
Ezra" (pp. 221225).
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
A Farewell to Arms (1929) – anti-war love
story (p.148)
1. use “nature” symbolically
2. mountain symbolizes life and hope; the plan is
the image of war and death


Receiving Nobel Prize in 1954
A Farewell to Arms (1929)

"A Farewell to Arms,"
Scribner's Magazine, 85,
May-October, 1929.
Serialization, wrappers
bound in.

At Key West, in fall 1928,
Hemingway finished
drafting his Great War novel,
A Farewell to Arms. In the
year of the 1929 crash,
readers were ready to view
the War more realistically,
and Scribner's bid $16,000
for serialization rights. Not
everyone was ready. In
Boston, the second (June)
magazine installment was
banned as obscene.

A Farewell to Arms.
New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1929. First edition, first
printing. Original cloth, in
dust- jacket.

Primed by public reaction to
the magazine text, the book
(published September 27 that
same year) became
Hemingway's first bestseller,
with over 60,000 copies sold
by the end of the year. John
Dos Passos attributed the
sales ("like hot cakes") to its
combination "of having a love
story and being about the
war," but he also recognized it
as "a magnificent novel."

A Farewell to Arms
New York: Grosset and
Dunlap, 1929.
Movie tie-in edition with
scenes from the
Paramount Production
with Helen Hayes and
Gary Cooper.
"Hundreds of thousands
of readers have agreed
that here is one of the
world's finest modern
love stories...under its
cynical surface runs a fine
courage and a real
nobility"
The Old Man and The Sea

A fine love existed
between the old manand
the boy. The old man had
not had a good catch in 84
days and the boy was no
longer allowed to fish
with him. The boy
worried about the old man
and met his skiff every
evening to help him carry
his gear back to the old
man's shack.

Water color painting by
Kay Smith
The Old Man and The Sea

"They had gone one day
and one night with their
elbows on a chalk
line...forearms straight and
hands gripped tight. Each
was trying to force the
other's hand onto the
table."...he was not an old
man then but Santiago El
Champeon...he unleashed
his efforts and forced the
hand of the negro down and
down until it rested on the
wood."
From Old Man and The Sea
The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea
The mako shark came
first. Built for speed and
destruction, it came on
relentlessly. Others
followed in squardrons
and platoons. It was a
war of heroism and
futility for the old man.
Before he came into the
harbor he had lost the
little he had -- his
harpoon, the gaff, his
knife, yards of rope...
The Old Man and The Sea

Old Man and Skeleton of
The Marlin
"He knew he was beaten
now finally and without
remedy...and what beat
you, he thought."
"Nothing he said aloud. I
went out too far."
From Old Man and The
Sea
John Dos Passos (1896-1970)
One Man’s Initiation -- 1917 (1920)
1. the first American novella bout WWI
2. emotional and full of hatred for war

Three Soldiers (1921) – p.150
1. less personal and has a broader historical view
2. war like a huge machine that destroys individuals
3. saw the modern world as ugly and dirty
4. believed in the power of art that could save the world
5. show the purposelessness of history

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)
Manhattan Transfer (1925)
1. a modernist novel
2. describes the daily lives of a large number of New
Yorkers
3. pieces of popular songs mixed with newspaper
headlines and phrases from advertisements
4. uses the “montage techniques” of film directors like
Griffith and Eisenstein to show the relationship
between individuals and large historical events

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)

“U.S.A.” Trilogy, The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big
Money (p.151-52)
1. use movie techniques
2. show individuals are part of the history of the age in
which they live in
3. tell the history of the entire nation in the early 20th
century
4. not to create a single meaning; rather show the loss of
meaning which is the modern condition
William Faulkner
(1897-1962)

wrote about South

Soldier’s Pay
(1926) – wounded
soldier returns
home to the
“wasteland” of
post-war society
http://www.lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/faulknersite/faulknersite/majornovels/soldier.html
William Faulkner. Soldier's Pay. New York: Signet
Books, The New American Library, 1951.



Chapter IX in Soldier's Pay begins with the sentences quoted on the
back cover of this edition:
Sex and death: the front door and the back door of the world. . . In
youth they lift us out of the flesh, in old age they reduce us again to
the flesh; one to fatten us, the other to flay us, for the worm. When
are sexual compulsions more readily answered than in war or famine
or flood or fire? These topics are indeed themes in Faulkner's novels.
But in Soldier's Pay they are muted as Lieutenant Mahon fades into
death and Joe Gilligan's love for Margaret Powers is gently rebuffed.
The novel is one of loss, regret, and varying shades of gray. It is not
"passionate," although it is "powerful.“
This particular copy of the Signet first edition was originally part of
Faulkner's personal library at Rowan Oak. He gave it to his stepson,
Malcolm Franklin, who subsequently gave it to James W. Silver,
who in turn gave it to Faulkner scholar and collector, Louis Daniel
Brodsky, from whom our collector, Irwin T. Holtzman, acquired it.
William Faulkner. Soldier's Pay.
New York: Signet Classic, 1968
William Faulkner.Soldier's Pay. New York:
Boni & Liveright, 1926.
William Faulkner
(1897-1962)
The Sound and the Fury (1929)
1. modernist masterpiece (p.154)
2. tragic story of the Compson family
from four different points of view:
Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Dilsey
3. limited point of view
4. continuous present style of writing,
everything is part of now
5. readers need to sort out the facts of
the story

William Faulkner
(1897-1962)
Sartoris (1929) – p.153
1. creates his mythical
Yoknapatawpha County
2. the world after WWI
3. the Sartoris family contrasts the
Snopes family, which represents
the new spirit of the South, the
spirit of commerce and selfinterest.
4. The Snopes becomes central
characters also in The Hamlet
(1940), The Town (1957), and The
Mansion (1959)

William Faulkner.
Sartoris. New York:
Signet Classic, 1953
William Faulkner
(1897-1962)
Light in August (1932) and Absalom,
Absalom! (1936)
1. portraits of human evil (p.154)
2. deals with psychological illness caused
by racism and family tragedy



The Bear (1942) – description of
human goodness
receives Nobel Prize in 1950 &
Speech
William Faulkner.Light
in August. New York:
Penguin, 1967
The first British edition of this novel was
published with a dust jacket that emphasizes
loneliness and alienation from community.
The black figure of a solitary man is evocative
of the same mood as that suggested by the
single cabin highlighted by various rays of
light which Smith selected for the jacket of
the first American edition. Two later
paperback editions accomplish the same: a
man standing facing an empty road and the
single noose starkly drawn against a
background of bright light.
Most critics would agree with these publishers.
The novel works with themes Faulkner used
before: extreme isolation of the individual in
the modern world, the divided and alienated
self, the individual (like Bayard Sartoris,
Quentin Compson, and Joe Christmas) who
cannot relate to his society and thus cannot
establish a human identity. With this novel,
however, Faulkner demonstrates that isolation
can do more than merely cause suffering; it
can lead to dehumanization and evil which, in
turn, are exacerbated by racial division and
dissolution of social order.
William Faulkner. Light in
August. London: Chatto
and Windus, 1933.
The extensive period (1833 to 1910) and
the complex narrations that Faulkner used
to tell the Sutpen story caused him to
create three readers' guides that are
included at the end of the text. The first is
a "Chronology" that begins with Thomas
Sutpen's birth in 1807 and highlights the
major events in the story, ending with the
fire in 1910 that destroys Sutpen's
mansion. The second is a "Genealogy"
that lists the principal characters and
summarizes each person's birth, family
line, marriage and children, business or
occupation, and death. The third is a map
of Yoknapatawpha County which
identifies the twenty-seven places that had
figured so far in his fiction. It cost
Random House an extra hundred dollars to
print the map in two colors and tip it into
the 6,000 copies of the first impression.
From: http://www.lib.umich.edu/speccoll/faulknersite/faulknersite/majornovels/
absalom.html
William Faulkner. Absalom,
Absalom! New York: Random
House, 1936. Limited, signed
edition, number 51 of 300 copies.
E. E. Cummings
(1894-1962)





The Enormous Room (1922), his first novel
about the war (p.155-156)
influenced by the Cubist painters and Gertrude
Stein
breaks the traditional poem into unusual bits
and pieces that show individuality
rarely use capital letters that forced readers to
look at the individual word carefully
liberates the poetry of the 20th century
Chansons Innocentes: I

in Justspring when the world is mudluscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee


and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful





Chansons Innocentes: I
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far and wee