Modern lives: a cultural re-reading of "the lost generation"

Abstract

For nearly half a century, American 1920s were widely characterized as era of the lost generation. Experiences like European expatriation, habitual drunkenness, and repeated artistic failure (which were wholly unrepresentative of most early-twentieth-century American lives) were nevertheless frequently employed in both popular and academic venues as useful symbols for that pivotal era. In recent years, this misleading image of period has generally faded. It has been replaced by a more inclusive vision of 1920's as a decade that saw many Americans incorporate aspects of aesthetic modernism, ethnic diversity, and new mass culture into their preexisting way of life. Nevertheless, the lost remains a fascinating instance of historical mythology - a widely known and accepted account of American history that had little if any basis in fact. Written with general Americanist rather than theoretical specialist in mind, Modern Lives traces development of idea of the lost and reinterprets it in light of more recent versions of American 1920s. Employing a wide range of historical, literary, and cultural theory, Marc Dolan focuses on American versions of the lost generation, particularly as they emerged in autobiographical writings of generation's supposed members. By examining narrative and discursive forms that Ernest Hemingway, Malcolm Cowley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others imposed on raw data of their lives, Dolan draws out subtle relationships between and historical narratives of early twentieth century, as well as ways in which mediating notion of a distinct generation allowed those authors to pass back and forth between the personal and the historical.

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