ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE 1920S

An Atmosphere of Stimulation

Amid the exciting environment of the twenties, the arts thrived in the United States. The aftermath of the nation’s first involvement in an international war, the amazing march forward of technology, expanding cities, and the revolution in morals and manners all provided ample inspiration. In the past, Europe, especially Britain, had greatly influenced arts in the United States, but as American writers, painters, musicians, and architects interpreted the modern world, an American identity emerged.

The Lost Generation

The turmoil of the twenties produced a wealth of exciting and enduring works of literature that offer insights into the prevailing attitudes of a new generation of writers. Talented young authors, coming to terms with the brutality and failed promises of "the war to end all wars," as World War I was called, imbued their writing with a sense of disillusionment and alienation. There was a spirit of rebellion, a desire to break from the past and view the world in a cold, harsh light. Victorian ideas of decency were derided as hypocritical, and many young writers dealt frankly with sexuality. They fought against the censorship of profanity and incorporated Freudian ideas into their characters and styles. The United States was perceived to be spiritually impoverished, a theme expressed in T.S. Eliot’s most famous poem, "The Waste Land," written in 1922. To many, the probusiness, anything-for-a-buck mentality that ran rampant during Coolidge Prosperity was symptomatic of the moral emptiness of the United States. They also despaired that standardization was weakening American culture, making it bland and dull.

In the United States, the exciting center of the literary world was Greenwich Village in New York City, which already had a reputation as a magnet for radicals. But those who sought to escape the dullness and hypocrisy of the United States went to Europe, especially to Paris, where there was a thriving community of expatriates. Many of them gathered at the well-known salon of American writer Gertrude Stein, who is credited with referring to these young writers and artists as a "lost generation." In a 1927 interview, F. Scott Fitzgerald explained, "The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country." It is also a pleasure to get more for your money, and in the twenties, the dollar was very strong in France, an important consideration to a struggling young writer. Another benefit was that, without the restraints of prohibition, wine flowed freely in Paris.

From this group of expatriates a young writer emerged who would have a tremendous impact on American literature. Ernest Hemingway joined World War I as a volunteer ambulance driver in France and later entered the Italian army. He stayed in Paris for most of the decade writing short stories, poems, and novels, though for a time his work only excited interest among his literary colleagues. From Hemingway’s perspective, the world was senseless and often cruel, and the best an individual could do was to face it stoically, with courage. His style exhibits that philosophy with terse, simple sentences and a dispassionate tone. His was a fresh, new voice, and uniquely American. Hemingway achieved his first popular success with the 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, about a disillusioned group of expatriates in Europe, followed by A Farewell to Arms in 1929. They were just the first two of a number of classics Hemingway would contribute to American literature.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is another writer who arrived on the literary scene in the twenties, giving voice to the confusion and disappointment of the postwar generation. Many of his stories and novels bring to life the wild, giddy, party atmosphere of the twenties, and for that reason, his name is inextricably tied to the "Jazz Age." But his best work also conveys deep, lasting themes, as in The Great Gatsby, wherein he portrays the American Dream, the belief that, through hard work, anyone can achieve almost anything, as an unattainable myth.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948)

F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with coining the term "The Jazz Age," and together with his wife, Zelda, they were, for a time, its idols. Scott first met Zelda during World War I when he was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, her home town. The eighteen-year-old Zelda was so beautiful and popular that young army pilots regularly flew stunts over her home until the commanding officer forbade it. Though Zelda and Scott quickly fell in love, she hesitated to marry him because he had not yet proven to be a moneymaker.

That all changed with the publication of Scott’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. The story of a young Princeton undergraduate unlucky in love, the book was unpolished and weak in spots, but it also marked the arrival of an exciting, original voice, the voice of impatient youth. In it, Scott gave accurate, nonjudgmental descriptions of petting parties and flirtatious flappers that shocked much of the public. Most disturbing to some was his portrayal of postwar disillusionment among the young: "Here was a new generation…grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."

With his newfound fame and fortune, Scott won Zelda’s hand in marriage, and the two of them became the toast of New York. They hopped from party to party, drinking bootleg liquor, diving into fountains, and dancing on tabletops. With their beauty, their wittiness, and their wild antics, they seemed to personify the youthful ideal of the Roaring Twenties. In the process, they also ran up incredible tabs, though Scott always seemed to be shocked to find they were in debt. To pay for their extravagant lifestyle, Scott wrote prolifically, mostly for slick magazines. Much of what he wrote was not up to his level of talent, and at times, he became disgusted with himself for letting the high life get in the way of his serious work.

He wrote to his editor that he wanted to create "… something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." With the publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925, he succeeded. Though the novel is widely considered his best work, it did not sell well when it first appeared.

Meanwhile, Scott was slipping further and further into alcoholism. His and Zelda’s never ending quest for excitement grew increasingly desperate, and their attempts to shock others was alienating their friends. Fellow writer John Dos Passos remembered their behavior at an elegant outdoor dinner party in the French Riviera: "Scott and Zelda got drunk on the cocktails and instead of coming to the table crawled among the vegetables on all fours tossing an occasional tomato at the guests."

While Scott’s drinking problem escalated, Zelda also grew unstable. A talented amateur writer and painter, Zelda was jealous of Scott’s success. At the age of twenty-seven, she began to seriously study ballet, and though she practiced until her legs were bruised and her feet bled, she had started much too late in life to achieve success as a ballerina. That realization led to a nervous breakdown, and she spent the rest of her life in and out of asylums.

A character in "One Trip Abroad," a story Scott wrote in 1929, seems to sum up his state of mind as the Jazz Age drew to a close: "It’s just that we don’t understand what’s the matter. Why did we lose peace and love and health, one after the other?"

One of the most popular writers during the twenties was Sinclair Lewis. In 1920, he created a sensation with his novel, Main Street, a satirical look at small town life. His next novel, Babbitt, published two years later, sold even more copies and caused an even greater stir. This time, the target of Lewis’s satire was the average American businessman. in the form of George Babbitt, a realtor in the fictional town of Zenith. George is a model citizen, a town booster, member of the Elks, and eager to be accepted by the "right" circles of society. The conflict and the humor of the novel arise when George has something of a midlife crisis and begins experimenting with an unconventional life. In 1926, Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Arrowsmith. He shocked the nation by declining to accept the award because, he explained, such prizes were dangerous, and he did not want to contribute to the power they exerted over writers.

The satirical view of mainstream American life that Lewis conveyed in his novels was given an even sharper edge by H. L. Mencken, the most influential social commentator of the time. Mencken sought to deflate the pompous, expose the hypocritical, and ridicule the ignorant. He took on religious leaders, patriots, and even democracy itself. Sometimes Mencken chose vulnerable, obvious targets and attacked them with a viciousness that won him many enemies. But his witty, irreverent commentaries were very much in vogue with those who liked to consider themselves part of the Lost Generation.

H. L. Mencken. (1880-1956)

Journalist, editor, social critic, and political commentator, Henry Louis Mencken was one of the most controversial and influential figures of the twenties. He came to be known as the "Sage of Baltimore," where he was born and lived throughout his life. One of Mencken’s literary heroes was Mark Twain. Like Twain, he viewed the human animal as a flawed creature and used laughter as a weapon.

Armed with a sharp wit, Mencken was quick to attack pretensions wherever he perceived them. He mocked sentimentality and delighted in getting a rise out of his readers. At times, it seemed that Mencken was against anything that mainstream Americans were for, including democracy and religion. He had no faith in the middle class, which he referred to as the "booboisie."

Mencken’s positions against all authority and conventions made him a hero to the rebellious "Young Intellectuals" of the twenties. In 1924, he and George Nathan launched a magazine called American Mercury, which sought to explore, as Mencken put it, "the whole gaudy, gorgeous American scene." Its audience was mainly college students, Greenwich Village bohemians, and people who considered themselves, or wished others to consider them, freethinkers. Mencken actively sought out talented young writers and gave them a forum in his magazine. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote to the Sage that Mencken’s opinion of his book was more important to him than anyone else’s. Mencken was cynical of democracy and racial equality and is now considered antisemitic because of his racist outpourings.

In 1926, the April issue of American Mercury was banned in Boston for an article about a small-town prostitute. It was just the type of free speech fight that Mencken loved. In a prearranged event, Mencken was arrested for selling the magazine to the reverend who orchestrated the ban. A judge decided that the article was not obscene and Mencken was acquitted, but critics accused him of pulling a publicity stunt.

Mencken’s angry rebelliousness struck a chord in the twenties, but in the anxious, trying years of the Depression, the Sage’s influence waned and his popularity faded.

Plenty of other talents emerged on the literary scene during the twenties. Writer e.e cummings experimented with language and the established rules of literary genre in poems, plays, and novels. Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay expressed the defiance and desires of her generation in simple, clear, direct verse. William Faulkner was an important part of what came to be known as the Southern Renaissance in literature. He won critical acclaim in 1929 with The Sound and the Fury, an unconventionally organized novel that takes a dark look at the downfall of a southern family.

Edna St. Vincent Millay. (1892-1950)

In the early twenties, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was perhaps the biggest celebrity of the bohemian Greenwich Village set. Her poems expressed her disdain for the conventional, secure life and her desire to live for the moment, drinking in all the beauty and sadness that the world offered. She was young, beautiful, witty, and eloquent, a vivid example of the liberated woman. She believed in free love with a carefree, sometimes even flippant attitude, expressed in these lines: "And if I loved you Wednesday, / Well, what is that to you? / I do not love you Thursday / So much is true."

But if all of her poems had such a frivolous tone, Edna Millay would not be the enduring figure in American literature that she remains. In later poems, she contemplates why love fades away and explores the struggle to give oneself completely to love without losing one’s identity. In 1923, Edna Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Two years later, she moved with her husband to a farmhouse in upstate New York.

As a poet, Millay continued to mature. In 1928, she published a collection of poems entitled The Buck in the Snow. The poem, "Moriturus," included in the collection, begins: "If I could have / Two things in one: / The peace of the grave, / And the light of the sun; … " This was a recurring theme in Millay’s poems — the inevitability of death and the peace that it offers versus the burning desire to live life in all of its beauty and pain.

In some ways, Edna Millay was a bridge between nineteenth century and modern poetry. Though she employed traditional rhyme schemes and meters, she used them to express modern, unconventional perspectives. And though she sprinkled her poems with "O’s" and "thoust’s," she also created fresh, exciting imagery and a sense of spontaneity.

It was an exciting period in American literature. Though most of this new generation of writers were critical of their country, they played a huge role in advancing the image of American literature.