We will focus on two writers of this generation: Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
Both of them share some characteristics, such as living in Paris for some time after World War I. Both of them also show mainly male protagonists in their novels.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) mainly wrote novels and short stories about the so called "American dream", the kind of success it would seem he had achieved after marrying a wealthy woman (Zelda) and becoming a well known author. However, all fell apart after his wife's mental illness and his own problems with alcoholism which led to a premature death. In his novels his characters often reflect on the United States of America as a country and about the period in which they are set, also known as the "Jazz age".
His most famous novel is The Great Gatsby.
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| Scott Fitzgerald |
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| Francis and Zelda Fitzgerald |
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) wrote his realistic novels and short stories in a very concise, simple style, to convey a sense of heroic masculinity in his characters. A Nobel Prize winner, he was also a lover of Spain and contributed to make Pamplona's San Fermín festivities well known to an American audience, thanks to the novel he decided to call in Spanish Fiesta (in English, The Sun also Rises).
He is also famous for a novella called The Old Man and the Sea. His death was probably a suicide.
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| Ernest Hemingway |
A text by Hemingway (from the short story In Another Country):
We were all at the hospital every afternoon, and there were different ways of walking
across the town through the dusk to the hospital. Two of the ways were alongside
canals, but they were long. Always, though, you crossed a bridge across a canal to
enter the hospital. There was a choice of three bridges. On one of them a woman sold
roasted chestnuts. It was warm, standing in front of her charcoal fire, and the
chestnuts were warm afterward in your pocket. The hospital was very old and very
beautiful, and you entered a gate and walked across a courtyard and out a gate on the
other side. There were usually funerals starting from the courtyard. Beyond the old
hospital were the new brick pavilions, and there we met every afternoon and were all
very polite and interested in what was the matter, and sat in the machines that were
to make so much difference.
The doctor came up to the machine where I was sitting and said: "What did you like
best to do before the war? Did you practice a sport?"
I said: "Yes, football."
"Good," he said. "You will be able to play football again better than ever."
My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from the knee to the ankle without
a calf, and the machine was to bend the knee and make it move as riding a tricycle.
But it did not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending
part. The doctor said:" That will all pass. You are a fortunate young man. You will
play football again like a champion."
