American literature (the 20th century)

3 general characteristics of American writers:

reflect traditional and cultural values, try to find new ideas, use humor even in bad situations

American literature is the youngest of all literatures.

Naturalism dies away at the beginning of the century.

Modernism

1910 – 1940
reflects a dissatisfaction with the present – they looked to the past or future for better times
poetry – in sign of free verse

– Ezra Pound

Lost Generation
- writers who fought in the first world war – they lost their illusions about the world and life
- crazy life, alcoholism, prohibition (bootleggars – people who brought alcohol illegally)
- women had to work men’s jobs while men were fighting in the war – then they wanted equal rights
- many writers escaped from America to Europe – write about America and its problems
- after WWI – Jazz Age (not about jazz but about the time, The Great Gatsby)
- Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner
30s – writing of the Lost generation suddenly became unpopular (Great Depression – people didn’t want to remember the happy times)

– writers write more realistic – about social problems (Steinbeck)

– about his own experience

– The old man and the sea, A farewell to arms

Francis Scott Fitzgerald – he wrote screenplays, married a rich woman, mainly novels

– characters seek themselves

– The Great Gatsby, Tender is the night

– The grapes of wrath (about desperation of people), Of mice and men

Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer – about his life in Paris, prohibited in the USA, spontaneous style of writing

since 1950
problems of peculiarities, science problems
influenced by WWII and the Cold War
lots of genres, more difficulty to read, intertextuality, sometimes no direct time line
poetry – Thomas Jeffers
The Beat Generation
- 50s – 60s
- writers from Columbia University – went to San Francisco to get their work published
- poetry and novels
- against the society of that age – didn’t like the values of the society
- vulgarism, drugs, free love
- jointed by the same thoughts and look on the world
- influenced by Buddhism
- new – spontaneous writing, author’s recital
- Allen Ginsberg – Howl
- William Burroughs – Western Lands
- Jack Kerouac – On the road

– Norman Mailer – The Naked and the Dead

– Kurt Vonnegut – Player Piano

– Joseph Heller – Catch-22

– John Updike

– Charles Bukowski

– P.K.Dick