The Lost Generation

You have just finished your 3,000 page book on how to save the earth. You have worked on it for so long and hard, to the point of tears and anger, or tears of happiness from all that you have accomplished. A few months later your book has already made millions of dollars. You have helped change a generation of peoples thoughts about the world and how to save it from destruction. This may be called a literary movement towards a healthier earth. 

"Hemingway is probably one of the most celebrated authors of his time, known for his fiction. His take on fiction is something invented or imagined." (Article 1) Hemingway and other known authors were part of a literary movement known as "The Lost Generation." "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.' The Lost Generation writers felt that America was not such a success story because it lacked a cosmopolitan culture." (Article 1) These writers wanted their literacy culture to be reflected in America, but never found it to come about. 
"Ernest Hemingway has been credited with changing American literature forever with his writing style. He moved American literature from the proper, often overblown prose of the Victorian Age to the unadorned frankness of his work. Hemingway used the term the lost generation as an epigraph for his novel, The Sun Also Rises." (Article 3) For Hemingway nothing seemed to stop him from writing whatever he wanted, people called him cruel and vulgar, yet he was never without his devoted readers. On a review of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Herbert Gorman writes "The Sun Also Rises is, therefore, the tail of a great spiritual debacle of a generation that has lost it's guiding purpose...Almost 75 years later and this characterization of the 'lost generation' is extremely prevalent in academia and justifiably so." (Article 2) The Lost Generation may not be well-known to many young readers, but in time that generation will become the lost. 
















Article 1:


"Hemingway: Generation Lost." Blog Catalog. Last Island. 30 November 2007. Web. 8 November  
                       2010. <http://www.engliterarium.blogspot/com/2008/11/hemingway-generation-
                       lost.html>


Article 2:


Sinclair, Brian Gordon." "Ahead of His Time: Reevaluating the Expatriate Status of Jake Barnes."
                      Timeless Hemingway, 1998-2010. Web. 8 November 2010.
                     < http://www.timelesshemingway.com/content/aheadofhistime>


Article 3:


Czech, Jan. "The Lost Generation." Suite 101. 1 March 2010. Web. 8 November 2010.
                     <http://www.suite101.com/content/the-lost-generation>




Photo 1 Courtesy of "Lost Generation" the band.
Photo 2 Courtesy of Paul Sahre & Christopher Brand