American literature of the 20th century. American literature of the first half of the 20th century

American Literature 1910-1940

American literature, compared to the literature of Western European countries, is the youngest. According to this, her literary process was characterized by a certain lag in pace in the 19th century, a late flowering of the romantic school and a later development of realism than in most European countries.

The twentieth century in American literature is rich, complex, and dramatic. Along with various decadent and modernist movements, realism developed in American literature of the 20th century. During this period, US literature emerged as one of the leading literatures in the world.

The First World War seemed to be an impetus that forced thinking Americans to take a fresh look at themselves and the world, and largely determined the character of all US literature of the 20s, including those works that, at first glance, had nothing to do with the theme of war.

The 20-30s can be considered the most fruitful in the history of American literature of the 20th century. A characteristic feature of the literary process of the 20s in America was the deepening and aggravation of social conflicts in the works of writers. The social thought of this time was characterized by the beginning of the collapse of the myth of the prosperity of America - the “country of the dollar”, the “country of equal opportunities”, about its supposedly special path of development, different from European states, which was reflected in Dreiser’s work “An American Tragedy”. An interesting document of the era was the book “Civilization in the USA” published in the 1920s by a group of writers and journalists.

In the 1920s, critical realism began to develop. At this time, a group of talented writers entered the literary arena, whose work has become firmly entrenched in the history of American literature: Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, etc. The theme brilliantly developed by Dreiser in “An American Tragedy” became fundamental to the literature of those years. moral degradation of the individual.

This theme is developed in various versions in the works of other writers. The author of "Bebbitt" Sinclair Lewis decides and, based on the life of the American province, debunks the naive idea that is so characteristic of the average American that the province lives according to different, more just and humane laws than the city. The world-famous collection of stories by Sherwood Andersen, “Otto Winesburg” (1919), was written based on the life of the American province.

The development of critical realism was complicated in the 20s by the influence on American literature of the school of European modernism - M. Proust, D. Joyce, W. Woolf, Eliot, which manifested itself both in the problematics and in the artistic form of the works of a number of American writers of those years.

The influence of G. Stein was indeed manifested, say, in the simplified syntax of Hemingway, but at the same time, many components of the artistic form adopted from G. Stein were filled with new content in the work of the writers of the “Lost Generation”. It is interesting that G. Stein was not immediately disappointed in Hemingway, since she perceived in his work a connection with the “old” American traditions of realism.

In the 1930s, proletarian literature began to develop. In the early 30s, workers' theaters opened for which E. Sinclair, A. Maltz, and Michael Gold wrote.

A distinctive feature of American literature of the 30s is a fundamentally new solution to themes that had already been mastered by the literature of the previous decade. For example, the theme of criticism of bourgeois America is already acquiring a comprehensive character; the theme of racial discrimination (Caldwell) and the theme of the fight against fascism (articles by Dreiser, Hemingway, Faulkner) sound with new urgency.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Andrei Platonov read Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms in 1938. and wrote a review that opened with the following words: “From reading several works by the American writer E. Hemingway, we are convinced that one of his main thoughts is the idea of ​​finding human dignity. The main thing is that dignity must still be found, discovered somewhere in the world and in the depths of reality, it can be earned at the cost of hard struggle and this new feeling must be instilled in a person, nurtured and strengthened in oneself.”

In his desire to truthfully, in other words, realistically, depict life, Hemingway saw the highest task of a writer, his calling. To do this, as will later be said in the story “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952), it is necessary to show “what a person is capable of and what he can endure.”

E. Hemingway grew up in a doctor's family in a provincial American town in Illinois. His childhood years were spent in the forests of Michigan. Anyone who read the writer's stories about Nick Adams, his father and his friends - bloodhounds, may not even fully identify Nick with the artist, but could imagine the world of Hemingway's adolescence. After graduating from college in his hometown, he went to Kansas City and became a reporter for a local small newspaper there.

19-year-old Hemingway found himself on the Italian front of the First World War. Auxiliary Medical Officer, Hemingway. was seriously wounded. After a long stay in hospitals, he... returned to the States - but not for long: as a correspondent. Here he began to write and met representatives of the “lost generation” grouped around G. Stein.

Hemingway was essentially the same age as the century - he was born in 1899 - and his entire generation was aptly called the “lost generation” (an apt term dropped by G. Stein. This saying was accidentally heard by E. Hemingway and put into use by him. The words “Everyone you are a lost generation" he put one of two epigraphs to his first novel "The Sun Also Rises" ("Fiesta", 1926). Over time, this definition, precise and succinct, received the status of a literary term.)

As a correspondent in 1922, he participated in the Greco-Turkish War. The manuscript of a novel about the Greco-Turkish War, written by him from fresh memory, is Hemingway's first novel. - died.

In the early 20s, Hemingway settled in Paris. He traveled to other European countries, to Italy, where fascism came to power, to Gur, occupied by the predatory Entente. His reports from those years speak of the maturing talent of a true artist of the 20th century, who felt the drama of the events of his time, who was able to discern in the tragedies of entire nations and personal tragedies, the fate of ordinary people that worried Hemingway.

In the mid-20s, Hemingway retired from working in newspapers. He becomes a professional writer and quickly gains recognition in the circle of American writers who lived in Paris in those years and grouped around G. Stein.

The writer fought against the fascist dictatorship in Spain. During the days of World War II, he guarded America from German submarines, then served as a correspondent in aviation units and took part in the landing of Allied troops in France.

The last years of his life were spent in Cuba. “Dad” - his relatives and friends called him

In great literature, Hemingway entered the second sex. 20s, when, following the book “In Our Time” (1925), his first novels “The Sun Also Rises” (1926) (Fiesta) and “A Farewell to Arms” (1929) appeared. These novels gave rise to the fact that Hemigway began to be considered one of the most outstanding artists of the “lost generation”. A sense of tragedy permeates most of Hemingway's works. the first 10 years of his work - from the mid-10s to the mid-20s.

The surrounding reality was perceived by the writer as a mosaic of large and small human tragedies, which embodied man’s fruitless pursuit of happiness, a hopeless search for harmony within himself, and loneliness among people.

Hemingway's first book. “In Our Time” (1925) told the story of a recent idyllic youth and the brutal war that replaced it. The composition of the book is bizarre, the description of events is given in sharp contrast. The book includes stories about the childhood and youth of Nick Adams, Hemingway's first lyrical hero.

The book “In Our Time” also outlines another theme - the lost generation. In one of the stories - "At Home" - Hemingway conveys the story of Krebs.

The fate of people burned by war, knocked out of their knees, incurably poisoned by its breath is at the center of the novels “The Sun Also Rises” (Fiesta) (1926), and “A Farewell to Arms!” (1929).

The problem of the “lost generation” is deployed in full force in the story “The Sun Also Rises” (Russian translation of “Fiesta”). "Fiesta" has many beautiful, exuberant scenes depicting the Spanish folk festival in all its archaic splendor, against which American and European tourists are so pitiful. These episodes of the novel contrast with ironic sketches of Paris with its taverns, prostitutes, cosmopolitan mixture of scum and loafers from all countries of the world, it would seem that this is already enough to make “Fiesta” a passionate and sad book, full of a tart feeling of post-war life. But the most important thing in the book is not these picturesque contrasts, but a deeper comparison of life, which flows on as if nothing had happened, and the fate of Jake Barnes, who embodies the millions of dead and maimed victims of war.

There are different interpretations of the novel "Fiesta". Thus, V.N. Bogoslovsky writes: “the book gives a convincing and accurate portrait of representatives of the lost generation.”

Barnes, the main character, gives the impression of a strong and healthy man, he works hard, but internally he is broken. The severe physical trauma received in the war turns into a spiritual trauma; he painfully feels his inferiority, the impossibility of personal happiness. Emptyness and despair reign in his soul.

Other characters in the novel, despite their physical health, are also internally devastated. We meet Jake and his friends in Parisian cafes, on pleasure trips in northern Spain, at a fiesta. But no matter where they are, Jake, Brett and the others don't feel happy. Clear, concise, but surprisingly bright, impressionistic pictures of noisy Paris, the Basque country, and the festive atmosphere of the Spanish fiesta contrast with the inner confusion of the characters, their inability to change anything in the world and in their lives.

All these years, Hemingway made no attempt to solve social problems. The life program of his heroes is extreme individualism; hence their internal discord as a consequence of the failure of this program. Loneliness does not make them happy. R. J. Somarin also interprets the novel: “The war disfigured him (Jake), crossed him out from the ranks of normal people, forever branded him with the seal of inferiority. After physical ugliness comes mental ugliness. Jake Barnes is morally destroyed, sinking lower and lower. One of the most tragic heroes of the “lost generation”, he lives, drinks, smokes, laughs - but he is dead, he is decomposing; life causes him nothing but suffering. He yearns for her ordinary, natural joys, which everyone around lives by and which are forbidden to him. Perhaps, none of the works of the “lost generation” expressed with such force the irreversibility of the losses caused by the war, the incurability of the wounds caused by it. The deep troubles of post-war Europe, the fragility of the world that the survivors are in a hurry to enjoy, are felt in “Fiesta”. But the sun still rises over this sad and pitiful world!

Hemingway more than once called his first novel, Fiesta, which brought him worldwide fame, tragic. Lamenting the misunderstanding of the novel, he indignantly complained: “To write such a tragic book as this and have them perceive it as a superficial jazz story!” And indeed, behind the convulsive joy of the novel’s heroes, behind their emphatically soulless attitude to life, one can clearly see the tragedy of an entire generation, devastated by the war, having lost its spiritual ideals, torn from its roots and driven like autumn leaves across troubled Europe.

The author rises to true heights of tragedy in the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” (1929), telling the love story between American officer Frederick Henry and English nurse Catherine Barghley, two grains of sand caught in the bloody whirlwind of World War II.

War generally occupied a significant place in Hemingway’s work. In this tragic, doomed world, it was necessary to find at least some kind of anchor, at least a straw to cling to. Hemingway found such an anchor in the “moral code” he developed in those years. The meaning of this code is as follows: since a person in this life is doomed to defeat, to death, then the only thing that remains for him to preserve his human dignity is to be courageous, not to succumb to circumstances, no matter how strange they may be, to observe, like in sports, the rules are “fair play”. This idea is most clearly expressed by Hemingway in the story “Undefeated.” For the aging matador Manuel, bullfighting is not only an opportunity to earn money for a living, it is much more self-affirmation, a matter of professional pride. And even when defeated, a person can remain undefeated.

A well-known researcher of Hemingway’s work, B. Gribanov, in contrast to R. M. Somarin and V. N. Bogoslavsky, believes that the hero of the novel “Fiesta”, Jake Barnes, does not drown in the whirlpool of thoughtlessness surrounding him, among this “vanity of vanities” only because he adheres to Hemingway’s “code” - unlike the nonentities and slackers around him, he loves his profession of journalism and is proud of it. Deprived of life due to an injury that deprives him of the ability to physically love a woman, he does not wallow in self-pity, does not become a misanthrope, does not become an alcoholic and does not think about suicide. Jake Barnes finds the strength to live, accepting life as it is, he maintains mental fortitude, the ability to withstand everything.

Nature helps the Fiesta hero survive. She acts as a healer of spiritual wounds, an eternal source of joy.

The image of nature, salvation and eternal power, comes essentially through all the stories about Nick Adams. In the novel “Fiesta,” this image grows to the scale of a symbol, and nature remains, as Hemingway wrote in one letter, “eternal, like a hero.”

Barnes's confession was set out in that new issue of the letter, which is commonly called the “stream of creation.” Hemingway made it a means of realistically revealing the mental life of his hero, his complex painful conditions and the conflict with life in which Barnes finds himself. At the same time, it was in “Fiesta” that Hemingway developed his art of subtext, the ability to make one guess what his characters are thinking about, hiding their genuine and often terrible or vile thoughts under the fabric of ordinary speech, under the haze of ordinary omissions and forced phrases. Deep psychological mastery was combined in Fiesta with a magnificent abundance of visual images, striking in their freshness and boldness in description. Already here the people, singing, dancing, showing the inescapable power of their vitality, look like a merry titan, next to whom the Yankees and English are so pathetic and colorless, gawking at the holiday.

Hemingway's third major work is the novel A Farewell to Arms! "(1929). This is an anti-war book, full of pictures of suffering and destruction, the horrors caused by war. This novel is Hemingway's hard-won, thoughtful reflection on the First World War. The theme of the “lost generation” also runs through the novel. This is a novel about the birth of a great human feeling, a novel about how the cheerful Lieutenant Henry became a lonely and sad widower, whiling away his days in an empty Swiss resort. But the novel noticeably deepens another theme, which was also outlined in general terms in Fiesta. Hemingway not only shows the results of the war, he condemns the imperialist war in all its everyday vileness, he condemns it in the trenches and in the hospital, on the front line and in the rear. The novel develops a theme of protest against the imperialist war. Hemingway rose to the point of truthfully portraying the spontaneous anti-war movement brewing in the Italian army, thirsting for peace. Retreating crowds of Italian soldiers wandering along the retreat road, when asked what unit they are from, answer defiantly: “From the Peace Brigade!”

The artistic style of the novel is characterized by extraordinary restraint, turning into laconicism. Hemingway writes simply, but behind this simplicity lies complex content, a large world of thoughts and feelings that seem to be carried into the subtext. According to Hemingway, a writer must know well what he is writing about. In this case, he "may miss much of what he knows, and if he writes truthfully, the reader will feel everything missed as strongly as if the writer had said it."

Hemingway substantiates the “iceberg theory”, which requires the writer to be able to select the most important, characteristic events, words and details. “The majesty of the movement of the iceberg is that it rises only one-eighth above the surface of the water. A writer who omits a lot out of ignorance simply leaves empty spaces.” This ability to convey a wealth of feelings, tragic, socially and psychologically rich content through an apparently ordinary fact, an insignificant conversation, is especially felt in Hemingway’s short stories “Cat in the Rain”, “White Elephants”, “A Canary as a Gift”.

In other stories and novels: “A Farewell to Arms!”, “To Have and to Have Not,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Hemingway depicts his heroes in moments of the most difficult trials, in moments of the highest tension of physical and spiritual strength. This leads to an energetic development of the plot, to a richness of action, to the identification of the heroic in the characters of people.

The dialogue between the characters in Hemingway’s works carries a particularly significant semantic load. Here, each word serves not only to express a direct thought, but also hints at another, hidden, secret meaning, which can only be achieved with careful selection and precise use of words. The writer also introduces an internal monologue. This technique helps to reveal the true attitude of the characters to the events taking place. For example, at the first meetings, Henry convinces Catherine that he loves her, and his internal monologue is immediately given: “I knew that I did not love Catherine Barclay, and I was not going to love her. It was a game like bridge, but there were words instead of cards. Like in bridge, you had to pretend that you were playing for money or something else. Not a word was said about what the game was about. But I didn't care." It is characteristic that this monologue was a mistake: Henry really fell deeply in love with Catherine.

The composition of the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” characterized by a certain fragmentation. The author does not go into detailed biographies of the characters. They immediately appear to us as active people living in the present. As for their past, it is only spoken about and not mentioned at all. Their future is also uncertain. Characters often appear out of nowhere, and we don't know what their end will be. Unusually relief landscape sketches emphasize the semantic focus of the book.

The turning point of the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” in the development of a writer is obvious. So, for example, the theme of the people grew in the novel into a wide curtain of people in war.

After the novel, Hemingway chooses that new and unusual way of life for a recognized writer, which alienated him from the bourgeois literary environment with its petty squabbles and passions, from the banal path of a successful writer. Hemingway settled in Sea West, a resort town in southern Florida, on the ocean. From here he made his long trips through Europe and Africa - the trip of a hunter, fisherman, athlete and always a talented observer of life, learning more and more fully.

At the beginning of the 30s, Hemingway wrote the books “Death in the Afternoon” (1932), “Green Hills of Africa” (1935) and a number of stories “The Winner Takes Nothing” (1933), the story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1936). In new books we meet many images of the common man.

A certain turning point in Hemingway's mood occurs in the mid-30s. New socio-economic ideas appeared in Hemingway's work. New works in the novel “To Have and Have Not” (1937), stories about Spain, and the play “The Fifth Column” (1938) reflected the rise of critical realism, which was characteristic in general for US literature of the 1930s and which was marked by the appearance of a number of outstanding works John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Erskine Poldwell. The American realistic novel of the 1930s is a great phenomenon that goes beyond the boundaries of US literature. Hemiway's creativity is one of the most significant aspects of this phenomenon.

The book “To Have and Have Not” can be considered as a transitional book, indicating significant changes in the author’s worldview. Unlike other works, which mostly took place in Europe, the new novel is about the United States. The novel provides a broader social background than in the writer's earlier works. This is the first book to explore big contemporary social issues. The novel marked Hemingway's departure from the path of loneliness that Hemingway had hitherto walked.

The humanistic line in Hemingway’s work began to emerge in his 20s. But in the novel “To Have and Have Not” it was the humanism of the writer, who called the have-nots to unity in the name of their future, condemning the haves. The best stories of the 1930s, “The Short Happiness of Francis Macomber” (1936) and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” speak about the power this condemnation of the haves and those who serve them acquired. The active democratic humanism to which Hemingway turned in the mid-30s brought him to the camp of anti-fascist writers.

The Spanish Civil War turned out to be, to a certain extent, a turning point in his political thinking and creative decisions. Hemingway acted as a convinced, passionate and irreconcilable fighter against fascism; he took part in the struggle of the Spanish people for freedom as a writer, as a publicist, and at times as a soldier. His short stories and essays about Spain are true examples of brevity, poetry, masterpieces of small and epic form. Among them are “The American Fighter” (1937) and “To the Americans Who Died for Spain” (1939) - works imbued with the spirit of internationalism, remarkable proof of the high creative upsurge Hemingway experienced under the influence of the liberation struggle of the Spanish people.

This new hero entered the writer’s work, in the play “The Fifth Column” (1938), and in the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1940). And if the First World War turned out to be in the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” ” senseless massacre and his hero Frederic Henry deserted, then the new heroes, participants in the popular revolutionary war in Spain, discovered that there is something in the world for which it is worth fighting, and, if necessary, dying: the freedom of the people, the dignity of man.

Solving the problem of a positive hero in a new way, the “Fifth Column” contained a sharp condemnation of fascism, emphasizing its incompatibility with humanity, with humanism. It was reflected with tragic force in the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1940). Here is a story about how the American Jordan helps Spanish partisans blow up a bridge of strategic importance. The novel reflects the writer's mental crisis caused by the defeat of the Spaniards.

The spiritual crisis, which is so felt in Hemingway’s novel, turned out to be both long-lasting and fatal for the writer. Having left for a time direct support of anti-fascism at the front, Hemingway was no longer able to return to the big themes that characterized his work in the years when it was inspired by the fate of the people who fought against the fascist threat.

During the Second World War, Hemingway published the anthology Men at War (1942), carefully compiled from excerpts from works of world literature from Caesar to the present day dealing with war. There were also a few limp notes in military periodicals. He was hunting for a German submarine on his fishing boat off the coast of Cuba. In the summer of 1944, having escaped from the hospital where he was recovering from the consequences of a car accident, Hemingway landed with Allied troops in Normandy and then participated in the liberation of Paris as part of a combined French-American detachment.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

Gertrude Stein, known not so much for her creativity as for developing the position of modernism, sought to become a mentor to the youth generation of American writers of the 20s.

Origin - from an old aristocratic family, she was interested in psychology and medicine. After graduating from the University of San Francisco, she moved to Paris in 1903. In the 20s, G. Stein's Parisian salon became a meeting place for many outstanding writers and artists of that time.

The aesthetic credo put forward by G. Stein arose under the influence of the latest trends in painting and poetry (Cubism, Fauvism), as well as Freud’s psychological theory. Its essence comes down to the denial of the plot as such. Stein sees the task of the artist in conveying a certain “abstract” “rhythm of life.”

The works of G. Stein (“Tender Buds”, 1914, “The Creation of Americans”, 1925) are distinguished by the exceptional static nature of the narrative, generated by a conscious attitude towards refusing to depict life in a developmental perspective. The concepts of “past”, “future” and “present” are replaced by the concept of the so-called “continuous present tense”. G. Stein believes that it is necessary to depict only the “present moment” without its connection with the past or probable future, all this led to the rejection of attempts to interfere in the course of existence.

Features of G. Stein's style are repetitions, confusion of semantic accents, primitivism and simplification of syntax, infantilism of the position of the author and his characters.

In the history of American literature, the name of G. Stein has been preserved not thanks to her artistic works, but thanks to her aesthetic program, the influence of which was experienced by a number of outstanding US artists and, first of all, writers of the so-called “Lost Generation”.

“Lost Generation” is a very relative concept. It applies to writers who are very different in their worldview, aesthetic views, and creative style. They are united by a feeling of rejection of post-war American reality, the search for a way out of the impasse, and the search for new forms of expression of the art of words.

In the works of the writers of the “lost generation,” the leading place was occupied by the theme of the tragic fate of a young man, crippled by the war spiritually and sometimes physically, who had lost faith in the rationality and justice of the existing order of things. (“A Farewell to Arms!” by Hemingway, “A Soldier’s Award” by Faulkner, “Three Soldiers” by Dos Passos). The hero of these works is not able to adapt to the life around him, to find a place for himself in the world of well-fed and prosperous citizens. This is what ultimately determines the reader's sympathy for them.

American criticism, emphasizing the connection of the writers of the “Lost Generation” with the tradition of Gertrude Stein, often exaggerates the scale of this connection.

This is the era of colonization, the dominance of Puritan ideals, patriarchal pious morals. Theological interests predominated in literature. The collection “Bay Psalm Book” () was published; poems and poems were written for various occasions, mainly of a patriotic nature (“The tenth muse, lately sprung up in America” by Anne Bradstreet, an elegy on the death of N. Bacon, poems by W. Wood, J. Norton, Urian Oka, national songs “Lovewells. fight”, “The song of Bradoec men”, etc.).

Prose literature of that time was devoted mainly to descriptions of travel and the history of the development of colonial life. The most prominent theological writers were Hooker, Cotton, Roger Williams, Bayles, J. Wise, Jonathan Edwards. At the end of the 18th century, agitation for the liberation of blacks began. The champions of this movement in literature were J. Woolmans, author of “Some considerations on the Keeping of Negroes” (), and Ant. Benezet, author of “A caution to Great Britain and its colonies relative to enslaved negroes” (). The transition to the next era was the works of B. Franklin - “The Path to Plenty” (eng. The Way to Wealth), “The speech of Father Abraham”, etc.; He founded Poor Richard's Almanac. Poor Richards Almanack).

Age of Revolution

The second period of North American literature, from before 1790, embraces the era of revolution and is distinguished by the development of journalism and political literature. Major writers on political issues: Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, J. Matheson, Alexander Hamilton, J. Stray, Thomas Paine. Historians: Thomas Getchinson, supporter of the British, Jeremiah Belknap, Dove. Ramsay and William Henry Drayton, adherents of the Revolution; then J. Marshall, Rob. Proud, Abiel Golmez. Theologians and moralists: Samuel Hopkins, William White, J. Murray.

19th century

The third period covers all of 19th century North American literature. The preparatory era was the first quarter of the century, when the prose style was developed. " Sketch-book"Washington Irving () marked the beginning of semi-philosophical, semi-journalistic literature, sometimes humorous, sometimes instructive-moralistic essays. The national traits of the Americans were especially clearly reflected here - their practicality, utilitarian morality and naive, cheerful humor, very different from the sarcastic, gloomy humor of the British.

Edgar Allan Poe (−) and Walt Whitman (−) stand completely apart from the others.

Edgar Allan Poe is a deep mystic, a poet of refined nervous moods, who loved everything mysterious and enigmatic, and at the same time a great virtuoso of verse. He is not at all American by nature; he does not have American sobriety and efficiency. His work bears a sharply individual imprint.

Walt Whitman is the embodiment of American democracy. His " grass leaves"(English) Leaves of Grass) sing of freedom and strength, joy and fullness of life. His free verse revolutionized modern versification.

In the prose literature of America, novelists, as well as essayists, are in the foreground - then Washington Irving, Oliver Holmes, Ralph Emerson, James Lowell. The novelists portray the energetic, enterprising natures of both the former settlers, who lived amidst danger and hard work, and the modern, more cultured Yankees.

Emigrants played a major role in American literature of the twentieth century: it is difficult to underestimate the scandal that Lolita caused; a very prominent niche is American Jewish literature, often humorous: Singer, Bellow, Roth, Malamud, Allen; one of the most famous black writers was Baldwin; Recently, the Greek Eugenides and the Chinese Amy Tan have gained fame. The five most significant Chinese-American writers include: Edith Maude Eaton, Diana Chang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and Gish Jen. Chinese-American literature is represented by Louis Chu, author of the satirical novel Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961), and playwrights Frank Chin and David Henry Hwang. Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. The work of Italian-American authors (Mario Puzo, John Fante, Don DeLillo) enjoys great success. Openness has increased not only in the national-religious field: the famous poet Elizabeth Bishop did not hide her love for women; Other writers include Capote and Cunningham.

J. Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye" occupies a special place in the literature of the 50s. This work, published in 1951, has become (especially among young people) a cult favorite. In American dramaturgy of the 50s, the plays of A. Miller and T. Williams stand out. In the 60s, the plays of E. Albee became famous ("An Incident at the Zoo", "The Death of Bessie Smith", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "The Whole Garden"). At the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, a number of novels by Mitchell Wilson were published , related to the topic of science (“Live with Lightning”, “My Brother, My Enemy”). These books became widely known (especially in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 70s).

The diversity of American literature never allows one movement to completely displace others; after the beatniks of the 50-60s (J. Kerouac, L. Ferlinghetti, G. Corso, A. Ginsberg), the most noticeable trend became - and continues to be - postmodernism (for example, Paul Auster, Thomas Pynchon). books by postmodernist writer Don DeLillo (b. 1936). One of the famous researchers of American literature of the 20th century is the translator and literary critic A.M. Zverev (1939-2003).

In the United States, science fiction and horror literature became widespread, and in the second half of the 20th century, fantasy. The first wave of American sci-fi, which included Edgar Rice Burroughs, Murray Leinster, Edmond Hamilton, was primarily entertaining and gave rise to the "space opera" subgenre. By the mid-20th century, more complex fiction began to dominate in the United States. Among the world-famous American science fiction writers are Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Andre Norton, Clifford Simak. In the USA, a subgenre of science fiction called cyberpunk arose (Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling). By the 21st century, America remains one of the main centers of science fiction, thanks to authors such as Dan Simmons, Lois Bujold, David Weber, Scott Westerfeld, and others.

Most of the popular horror authors of the 20th century are American. A classic of horror literature of the first half of the century was Howard Lovecraft, creator of the Cthulhu Mythos. In the second half of the century, Stephen King and Dean Koontz worked in the USA. American fantasy began in the 1930s with Robert E. Howard, author of Conan, and was subsequently developed by authors such as Roger Zelazny, Paul William Anderson, Ursula Le Guin. One of the most popular fantasy authors in the 21st century is the American George R. R. Martin, creator of Game of Thrones.

Literary genres

• American fiction
• American detective
• American novella
• American novel

Literature

• Allen W. Traditions and dreams. A critical survey of English and American prose from the 1920s to the present day. Per. from English M., “Progress”, 1970. - 424 p.
• American poetry in Russian translations. XIX-XX centuries Comp. S. B. Dzhimbinov. In English. language with parallel Russian. text. M.: Raduga. - 1983. - 672 p.
• American detective. Collection of stories by US writers. Per. from English Comp. V. L. Gopman. M. Legal. lit. 1989 384 p.
• American detective. M. Lad 1992. - 384 p.
• Anthology of Beat poetry. Per. from English - M.: Ultra. Culture, 2004, 784 p.
• Anthology of Negro poetry. Comp. and lane R. Magidov. M., 1936.
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see also

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Lecture 23. AMERICAN LITERATURE OF THE XX CENTURY.

1. Periodization of American literature. Turn of the century realism.
2. The Development of the American Novel. Dreiser and Faulkner.
3. Beat literature.

The history of the United States before the outbreak of World War II was determined by the following events: victory in the Spanish-American War (1899) and participation in the First World War, industrial revolt: industrialization (the appearance of the tram, Ford factories, the Panama Canal), the final settlement of territories (Alaska and California), the growth cities, "Great Depression" 1929 crisis of overproduction), Roosevelt's New Economic Deal, as a result of which the United States became the leading world power at the beginning of World War II.

At the turn of the century, America's dominant social reference point was the myth of equal opportunity. One cannot discount the traditional puritanical morality of the settlers and the influence of non-traditional sets of ideas (Marxism, Freudianism) and new art (Cubist painting, cinematographic techniques).

The beginning of the 20th century in American literature is associated with the birth of social realistic literature, because it is a much younger literature that developed at an accelerated pace for 2 centuries. What was in European literature in the mid-19th century, that is, the social-realistic novel (Balzac, Dickens and his company), was not in American literature either at that time or later.

Poe, Melville, Hawthorne - American romantics.

American literature of the twentieth century. divided into the following stages:

1) 1900s – the dominance of positivism (O. Comte), the strong influence of late romanticism (Whitman).

2) From the late 1910s to the 1930s. American literature deals with the issue of individual mastery, and the romantic conflict between culture and civilization is widespread. the formation of American national drama (Eugene O'Neill)

3) 1930s – the lyrical and epic (naturalistic technique and the romantic idea of ​​a new type of individualism) are reconciled. There is a politicization of literature due to the economic crisis, civil wars, and the threat of fascism.

The 1930s were marked by a stormy labor movement. Under the influence of these events, American writers intensified their criticism of capitalist orders. Among them are Thomas Wolfe and John Steinbeck.

4) WWII period (late 30s - until 1945). During WW2, many American writers joined the fight against Hitlerism. Hemingway, Sinclair and others performed anti-fascist works.

5) Post-war years (after 1945):

A) The post-war period is characterized by the Cold War period. This includes the works of Alexander Saxton, Shirley Graham, Lloyd Brown, William Saroyan, and William Faulkner.

B) 50s In the 50s, the United States was experiencing rampant McCarthyism (Senator McCarthy). In literature, cinema, and on TV, protective, conformist tendencies are intensifying (Mickey Spillane, Herman Wouk, Alain Drury). In 50, a number of books appeared that were a direct response to the regime of political persecution and to the reactionary activities of Senator McCarthy. Among them are Jay Dice “The Washington Story”, Felix Jackson “So help me God”.

B) In post-war America. literature appeared the works of the so-called “beatniks” - young Americans, representatives of the post-war broken generation. The beatniks rebel against the ugliness of bourgeois civilization and condemn bourgeois morality. Representatives: Norman Mailer, Son Bellow, James Baldwin.

6) 60s In the 60s, anti-war sentiments intensified, and the fight against aggression in Vietnam intensified. The second half of 60 was marked by an intensification of the movement among young people, many new bright books about American reality appeared - Truman Capote, John Updike, Harper Lee.

7) 70-90s. XX centuries (T. Williams, T. Morrison, etc.)

When characterizing the literary process in the USA, it should first of all be noted that in American literature there was no “end of the century” situation (decadent moods, symbolism). Realists bring world fame to the American novel. Naturalism became firmly established in American literature of the 20th century. At the same time, there is a certain romanticization of it (in Dreiser). Since the mid-1910s. realism moves away from social orientation and heads towards painting the exact word.

Modernism declares itself to be a school of imagists, represented mainly by the work of Ezra Pound, whose works give every reason to talk about the European school of American modernism.

1920s –

The search for new paths in literature followed different paths:

1. In an in-depth study of the human psyche (Fitzgerald)

2. At the level of formal experiment

3. In the study of the laws of a new society (Faulkner)

4. Outside America, in man's flight from civilization (Hemingway)

Turn-of-the-century realism in American literature.The most prominent names of this period are Mark Twain and O'Henry.

Mark Twain(1835 - 1910), real name Samuel Clemens, was a satirist who reshaped American literature, pioneered Romanticism, and paved the way for realism. Born into the family of a shopkeeper, he was early inclined to work as a typographic typesetter (the work involved traveling).

The first try of the pen was in 1863 under the pseudonym Mark Twain (in the jargon of pilots, “double measure” is a distance sufficient for the passage of a ship). In his early works, the writer tries on the mask of a simpleton, which made it possible to evaluate phenomena “from the outside - (“How I was elected as governor”). In his work, he polemicized and fought against “gentle,” “pink” realism and was friends with its founder for 40 years. Nostalgia for the morning of America was embodied in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), “A Hymn in Prose,” as the author called it. The book is imbued with light lyricism, despite the problem posed (traditional for American literature) - the confrontation between naturalness and social conventions.

The novels “The Prince and the Pauper” (1882) and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” - the book from which all American literature emerged” (E. Hemingway) are imbued with real tragedy. Here the contradictions of human impulses and social institutions are insoluble. Evil satire permeates all of M. Twain’s later work. A Yankee in King Arthur's Court turns the Knights of the Round Table into businessmen; there is a man who has seduced an entire city inhabited by decent citizens. Having created a special style of storytelling, M. Twain remained in the history of literature as the “American Voltaire.”

O.Henry- pseudonym of William Sidney Porter (1862-1910), a pharmacist by training, he had to work as a cashier. The discovered embezzlement forced the future writer to flee to Latin America, where he obtained material for his future book “Kings and Cabbages.” Upon his return, he faced trial and a prison sentence.

At this time, the theme of the fate of a stumbled person appears in his short stories (“The Appeal of Jimmy Valentine”). After his release, he moved to New York, where he worked as a journalist, gaining fame after the publication of the collection of short stories “Four Million”. O'Henry perfects the short story genre (using the experience of W. Irving, E. Poe, M. Twain).

Distinctive features of O'Henry's novella:

Captivating plot and kaleidoscopic plots

Brevity

Good humor

The principle of the “double plot spring”, triggered in the finale: the real solution is quietly prepared from the very beginning, but is hidden by the substitution of a false ending.

Jack London- pseudonym of John Griffith London (1876 - 1916), a writer whose eventful life served as a source of creativity. Issues of social justice began to concern him early. His passion for socialist ideas was natural. London showed interest in Nietzsche's philosophy, although the attitude towards him was ambiguous.

London devoted all his free time to reading and self-education. Efficiency and perseverance did their job: in 1900 the first collection of stories “Son of the Wolf” was published and in 1901. – collection “The God of His Fathers” At the age of 24, success, fame and material well-being come to London.

The popularity of the writer's short stories is partly explained by the literary situation. In American literature at the turn of the century, the position of realism was strengthening, and the influence of the “tradition of sophistication” was clearly weakening. In addition to social criticism, new realistic works depicted a hero-victim of social conditions. These are somewhat exceptional heroes - real and at the same time upbeat.

D. London was not a supporter of “mundane” realism based on everyday verisimilitude, but of poetic realism, animated by romance, elevating the reader above everyday life (B. Gilenson). London in his stories gives a different type of hero - this is an active person who asserted himself thanks to energy, resourcefulness and courage.

D. London's poetic realism does not at all prevent the writer from exploring life. In 1902, the Writer went on a business trip to London, which resulted in the book “People of the Abyss.” In 1904, London went to the Russo-Japanese War as a correspondent. A lot of time is occupied by the social activities of a writer who is a member of the Socialist Party. Rebellious sentiments were expressed in the utopian novel, the warning novel “The Iron Heel” (1907).

In the same year, London goes on a trip on his own yacht, built according to his drawings. The main result of the trip is the novel “Martin Eden” (1909). Autobiography, revelation of the writer's psychology, pessimism - these are, in brief, the main characteristics of the novel. The book became prophetic in many ways. Outwardly it was an example of prosperity, but the writer was in a deep crisis. This personal and creative crisis was largely associated with the new time of shattered ideals, in which the writer never found himself and in 1916 committed suicide by taking a large dose of morphine.

In any preface you will read about the romanticism of Jack London. Nothing could be more wrong. A man who stormed Alaska with Spencer and Nietzsche under his arm cannot be a romantic. But the romance of events, the local color of Alaska, as in all the works of Jack London, is present. And his “Northern Stories” are based on the idea of ​​natural selection. The strongest always survive. For London, the strongest is not the physically strongest, but the strongest in spirit and character. And only in “Martin Eden” do these ideas fade into the background, and Jack London’s ability to see the world in its socio-historical categories, as a system of social relations, appears, although the biological factor also plays a certain role.

The anti-fascist movement of 30-40, led by communists, played an important role in the development of American literature. Sinclair Lewis, Michael Gold, and Richard Wright sharply criticized fascism.

S. Lewis(1885–1951) was the most caustic writer of everyday life in the American province. Having chosen his hometown as the target of his brilliant satire in the novel Main Street (1920), he became a merciless critic of the American middle class. With a mixture of contempt and sympathy, the portrait of the hero of his novel “Babbitt” (1922), whose name became a household name, and whose image became an impressive personification of the “little man” who idolizes success and a soulless industrial society, was painted. "Arrowsmith" (1925) - the story of a young doctor who painfully chooses between spiritual and material values; Elmer Gantry (1927) is a merciless satire of a Midwestern evangelist. Lewis sought the purity of the American ideal, but everywhere he saw only dirt and the worship of money. In 1930, he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Development of the American Novel due to the popularity of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in America (in the 10-20s), as well as the need to comprehend the gap between the “American dream” and the reality of social contrasts.

The novel developed in two directions:

1) realistic, oriented towards naturalism (T. Dreiser, early D. Steinbeck);

2) synthetic, incorporating all novel traditions, including modernist ones.

John Steinbeck(1902, Salinas, California - 1968, New York), American writer. Studied at the Faculty of Biology at Stanford University. In his youth he changed a number of professions.

In his early work, he shared romantic illusions about the possibility of escaping from bourgeois society (the novel “The Chalice of God,” 1929), and gravitated toward depicting bizarre types of provincial and rural America (the story cycles “Paradise Pastures,” 1932, “Red Pony,” 1933).

In the 30s developed as a writer of acute social issues (the novel “In a Fight with a Questionable Outcome,” 1936, the story “Of Mice and Men,” 1937, Russian translation, 1963).

S.'s heroes are tragic in their deprivation and lack of understanding of the causes of the life ruins that haunt them.

The pinnacle of S.'s creativity is the novel "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939, Russian translation, 1940), in the center of which is the fate of farmers driven off the land, wandering around the country in search of work. Through difficult trials, the heroes come to the realization that they are part of a suffering and struggling people.

In the 40s retreated from the traditions of proletarian and revolutionary literature (novels "Cannery Row", 1945; "The Lost Bus", 1947; "East of Paradise", 1952). S.’s creativity experienced a new takeoff in the early 60s. The novel “The Winter of Our Anxiety” (1961, Russian translation, 1962) and the book of essays “Journey with Charlie in Search of America” (1962, Russian translation, 1965) alarmingly told about the destruction of personality in the world of petty-bourgeois standards, in an atmosphere of deceptive prosperity . During the Vietnam War, he defended US aggression. Nobel Prize (1962).

The realistic novel is primarily represented by romance Theodore Dreiser(1871 - 1945) - publicist, reporter, creator of the American novel. Dreiser considered himself a member of the “muckrakers,” a group of journalists who opposed the traditions of decency in literature. The creator of the great American novel came from a family of immigrants and learned early on the life of the bottom.

The main method is critical realism. In his early work he was strongly influenced by O. de Balzac (although there is an opinion that Dreiser is the “second Zola”). Thus, Dreiser used the basic Balzac principle of “seeing the historical meaning of minor changes,” and also used the type of a young man standing on the threshold of life and challenging it.

THEODORE DREISERnot only quickly gained fame, but to a certain extent even outlived his fame. He very quickly turned into a living classic, a monument to himself, and at the moment when his works were established in American literature, the next generation, who wrote completely differently, had already begun their creative activity. And Dreiser already looked archaic in the 20s. No wonder Faulkner, considered the best writer of the 20th century in America, said quite clearly: “Dreiser’s tread was heavy. But just as all Russian Literature came out of Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” we all came out of Dreiser’s novels.” We are all him, and Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, Hemingway...

What did Dreiser do, if we talk about his works as a whole? They are generally extremely simple. These are biographical novels according to their model, all (from the first to the last) smoothly developing into epic novels about the same character, where the central figure and her fate are always presented in close interaction with the outside world. Almost every biographical novel of his is a study of the interactions between a person and the society around him.

In the very first novel, “Sister Carrie” (1901), again, naturalistic tendencies are extremely strong. There, Dreiser, like London at this time, explains the reasons why the life of his heroine Caroline turned out the way it did, because she has a psychophysiological potential that drags her up the river of life.

But starting with the second novel, Jenny Gerhard (1912), the study of social relations and how they determine human life begins. And from this point of view, all of Dreiser’s novels are exactly the same in terms of the principle of construction and the objects of study. Only different environments, since the heroes belong to different social strata, do different things, say, “Genius” - a conversation about the fate of the artist not in general in bourgeois society, but in the world of emerging American capitalism. "Trilogy of Desires" ("Financier", "Titan", "Stoic"). “The Financier” is an anatomy of the grabs of the new generation of American capitalists, those who will create the capitalist society of the 20th century.

Dreiser's language is quite clothy and ponderous; German English, as he comes from a family of German immigrants and spoke German at home. He writes in English measuredly, but sometimes very bright images, very bright pages break through the measured heavy style.

Since Dreiser has a great sense of this new America taking shape before his eyes at the beginning of the 20th century. This is capitalist America. Until the end of the 19th century, the United States was an agricultural country. Midwest only - area around the Great Lakes, Chicago, etc. at the turn of the century at the beginning of the 20th century - industry begins to develop there, and the United States very quickly gains industrial potential, a capitalist industrial appearance, which is greatly helped by the successive 2 world wars in Europe, in which the United States takes a specific part.

And Dreiser becomes the first artist to capture and reflect the features of the new America on the pages of his narrative. And along with these traits, he talks about new people of a new era, who are building this era and enjoying its fruits.

And hence the meaningful result of Dreiser’s novels - a story about time, about society, an era in the simplest form of biographical novels.

"Sister Carrie" Critics condemned Sister Carrie for her behavior, and Dreiser because he, in turn, did not condemn the heroine. But Dreiser’s creative method of that time was naturalism - a method that recognizes not the concepts of bad/good, but the concept that exists in nature. Carrie goes upstairs, it seems, with the help of a man, but in fact, thanks to her inner energy. Carrie achieves prosperity and breaks up with her two men. But the second and last man (Hurstwood) does not have the same energy. The divergence of these people begins. Carrie is capable of doing anything to survive, but Hurstwood has broken down, his psycho-physiological potential has dried up, while Carrie’s is enormous. There is no one to blame here except the very essence of life. That's why D. doesn't condemn Carrie.

After “Sister Carrie,” an eleven-year break followed in D.’s work due to fierce criticism.

1912 – "Jenny Gerhard" - many plot parallels with "Sister Carrie". In J.G., however, it is no longer psychophysiology that is important, but how these relationships are interpreted by the surrounding society. Both men are loved by Jenny, but both of them were higher on the social ladder, i.e. the meaning of the conflicts was social. A millionaire from a family of millionaires - Lester. He is given a choice: abandon Jenny (a former hotel maid) and be a full member of the clan, or not engage in business. Lester loves his job, but chooses Jenny. After some time, she herself returns him home, since he cannot live without his business. But even there he is unhappy.

The country abolished class prejudices, but erected material barriers. The story of a girl organizing her life is repeated, but shown from the other side - the social side of society is explored. Dreiser explores the new America emerging before his eyes at the beginning of the twentieth century.

"Trilogy of Desires" : novels “The Financier” (1912), “Titan” (1914) and “The Stoic” (1945) - a chronicle of America. This trilogy is a biography. Published posthumously in 1947. This is the life story of Frank Cowperwood and the history of America from the turn of the 1860s to the 1870s. until the Great Depression - late 1920s. The action takes place in Philadelphia ("The Financier"), Chicago ("Titan"), London ("The Stoic").

Dreiser always wrote biographical novels, and the story about the hero’s life in them was combined with characteristics of the era and the life of society at one time or another. It was Dreiser who became the first poet of the new industrial America, the America of skyscrapers (the aesthetically significant reality of the twentieth century). Dreiser analyzes the internal life of society and identifies the laws of its development.

"American tragedy" (1925). The name is an opposition to the concept of the “American Dream” - the path to the top, in which society gives everyone equal opportunities. This is a very old complex (the American dream), a lot was explained by one of the founders of this complex - Benjamin Franklin, the author of the saying “Time is money”: every moment of life should be devoted to specific productive activity, then you can achieve high results and realize the “American dream”.

At the center of the novel is the story of a man who dreamed of becoming a rich and respected member of society - Clyde Griffiths.

Reasons for failure:

1) Features of the hero’s psychology: Griffiths is a weak and mediocre person. Clyde ends up with a rich uncle who gives him a chance to make a career. But Clyde failed to take advantage of this chance. He has a grudge against his uncle, who gave him a small position, and Clyde expected from him the direct realization of his dream (a car, high society, etc.).

Clyde decides to marry advantageously, but it doesn't work out. The tragedy is not that he cannot adequately assess the situation. Dreiser questions the validity of the “American Dream” principle.

Clyde decides to kill the girl with whom he was having an affair so that she could not interfere with his marriage to Sondra. The decision to kill Roberta stems from a weakness of character.

2) A personality exists in a certain social and ideological context, but does not have the ability to assert itself in this life, as the context dictates.

3) The American dream becomes an incentive not to work, but to kill.

Dreiser repeats the situation three times:

Clyde himself; Roberta (killed by Clyde) wants to go up through Clyde: Clyde is the nephew of the owner of the factory where she works. At the same time, Dreiser does not simplify the situation: Clyde loves Sondra, at the same time, marriage for him is a means to get to the top. Roberta, who loves Clyde, finds herself in the same situation.

The story of the prosecutor - Prosecutor Mason. Mason knows how hard it is to climb to the top. He wants to get Clyde convicted as a representative of the Griffiths clan. Thus, he wants to take revenge on those who once humiliated him and at the same time get a chance to run for the position of state prosecutor.

Clyde did not deal Roberta the fatal blow, so there is no decisive evidence. Then the prosecutor allows his assistant to falsify this evidence.

"An American: A Tragedy" (1925) is a novel about the death of two lovers, which was a consequence of their desire to achieve the "American Dream". In the 1830s. anti-fascist journalism becomes his weapon. Until the end of his days he continued his spiritual search and to this day remains in literature “an unshakable giant of realism” (T Bulf).

Thus, Dreiser introduces the theme of the author of social literature. Dreiser considered himself obligated to take part in public life. He is the author of many essays.

William Faulkner(1897 - 1962) - Nobel laureate, worked in the genre of synthetic novel. The main themes of creativity are the duality of the human soul; the problem of crime and punishment; the way of the cross of a man with ideals. A complex writer: Russian critics call him a realist, while at the same time recognizing the writer’s distinct inclination towards modernism (especially in the novel “The Sound and the Fury”).

This is the author of one of the most unique creative models in American and world literature. Faulkner had a truly profound influence on American and world literature. He is considered to be a difficult writer, but he is not the most difficult writer in this world.

The figure of Faulkner is interesting because when assessing his life and work, one gets the feeling that he was walking on his own. He did not have a university education, he did not study anything at all. In fact, he is self-taught in the full sense of the word, he read a lot, including Joyce, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. This feature of his is also visible in the theme, since all of Faulkner’s works are dedicated to something. What is not at the forefront of human history. For example. Hemingway writes about world wars. About different countries and people. Faulkner wrote all of his works about Yoknapatawpha County (a Native American word). This district is located in the state of Mississippi, in the USA, Earth, Galaxy, Universe. This is a piece of the American south, hence the specificity and difficulties of the reader.

The specificity is that all the features, particulars of that life and genres that Faulkner takes, for the reader absorb what for Faulkner was part of humanity. This is what popularity and authority rest on. This feature is based on the fact that American literature consisted of different literatures, different cultural traditions, the people themselves came from different places to America, therefore the states are very different, in addition, for Americans it is the law of the state that is important, not the state.

The history of America is a history of constant convergence of regions. First, the war for independence and the disintegration into separate states, then they united, then the war between the North and the South, and again the division into two regions. And here a very important thing happens: after the victory of Server, the South was forcibly returned to the fold of the state, and its fundamental reconstruction began. This led to the fact that the natural development of the South was forcibly interrupted; its position is still that of a second-class region. In principle, this is an agricultural piece of the United States. The Americans, having destroyed the plantation economy by introducing elements of industry, are in no hurry to develop industrial relations here or to equalize its social and material situation with that of the North. This is a deep province with many racial problems. The south is a rather poor region. When natural development is interrupted, much is destroyed very quickly, even in the memory of even one generation. History turns into myth.

These plantations had everything: light and dark, nobility, tragedy, meanness, and oppression. Memory is passed on from generation to generation. The southern myth is a very tenacious thing, it is the same ennobled, transformed, romanticized memory of the pre-war south. This myth is still alive. Literature is connected with it by very strong chains. This myth leads to a rather complex result; it helps the southerners, who were most brutally dragged into the union, to maintain their independence to a greater extent, even if not administrative and legislative, but a sense of their own specialness, their own, albeit spiritual, gender still separate from everyone else U.S.A.

Faulkner very colorfully and accurately captures the essence of this myth, the myth of southern life. History is what happens in the past, this past lives in myth, this myth is always relevant. The past, which is experienced as the present, is part of human psychology and the subject of depiction in literature. He writes about seemingly very special things, southerners live with myth in their souls, specific manifestations of myth in the soul of a southerner are specific manifestations of the laws of psychology.

Faulkner is a talented writer. He found himself and found themes that he pursued throughout his life. Much of his work is devoted to the life of the small fictional county of Yoknapatawpha. There are no Indians left there; whites and blacks live there. The fictional county embedded in Mississippi (his home state) gave him a special touch... The small town of Oxford, where he spent most of his life, is now a museum in his home. And when you walk through this small town, as if you are in Jefferson Town, you see a monument to a Confederate soldier, which stands opposite the court in the central square. All these details are from reality. Faulkner is not limited to the South, otherwise he would not be so popular.

But the specific characters, the situations of the inhabitants - all of this in Faulkner is obtained in the projection of the universal laws of life phenomena, therefore, in this combination of the peculiar and the universal - this is what Faulkner’s world consists of. His style is difficult, not a typically English style. Very long, flowing phrases, very attractive, which seem to draw you in. On the other hand, Faulkner begins, as it were, from the middle of a sentence, a half-word, the middle of a situation.

The first pages of any work are a mystery. Faulkner does this deliberately, putting the reader in a situation similar to life. Let's say you come to some city and you need to settle down for a while, and here you are standing in the middle of the street, people are walking past you, they are strangers to you. But gradually you enter this life; whether you like it or not, you must begin to understand people's relationships, get to know them

Most of Faulkner's works are pieces, sketches of a larger canvas of life, and as a result, the pieces create a larger picture in the human mind. And hence the opportunity to speak as if from the middle. This is only as if, because in fact Faulkner gives enough information to understand, but at the same time, each subsequent work is easier for the reader, because it is already something that complements the first work. A wide range of characters, there are heroes who appear once, and there are a number of heroes who move from story to story. This gives Faulkner the opportunity to continue the story, as if it were going on forever.

In the 20th century, a fashion for the Faulknerian principle of depiction began in world literature, because this principle of a mosaic of pieces allows one to complete the picture endlessly.

"Faulkner's Principle of the Inexhaustibility of the Universe" ". A separate piece is finished, but this is not the last, you can always add something. And many writers have used this principle.

Faulkner, on the one hand, combined a description of southern peculiarities and the position of southerners.

Like Balzac, he divided novels into cycles, and also used division by family (Snopes, Sartoris).

The principle of understatement is used, which allows the reader to create his own impression.

Innovation of form: lack of genre definition; the writer complicates the syntax (strives to express the whole in one phrase); uses the multiple narrator technique (Faulknerian polyphonism); repeated repetition of events, violation of chronology, time shifts. Uses specific means of individualizing characters (southern eloquence, slang, oral storytelling, peculiar humor).

The main motives are the motive of fate, sin, rejection of history or ancestors, leading to dire consequences; biblical allusions. Faulkner's achievements include the use of regional mythology (the American South), a tragicomic understanding of history, and romantic-symbolic thinking.

The influence of symbolism: the elevation of the particular, local (Yoknapatawpha) into the general, universal. From modernism in the works of Faulkner, the image of the dark sides of human consciousness, the collapse of a sick society. But the general image of life, according to the writer himself, is contrasted with despair and hopelessness: “I believe in man. I would like to fight modernism on its territory.”

1st novel (1926) "Soldier's Award"- not very successful. Faulkner took on the theme of the soldier's mood, although he himself did not know this topic.

1929 - the story was published "Sartoris"(very revealing - the lost generation of youth) and the novel "The Sound and the Fury" (were published within a few months of each other).

The hero of the story "Sartoris", young Sartoris, returns from the World War, was a pilot. Johnny died, but his twin brother Boyard survived and returned. Boyard feels bad, he is restless in this world, and cannot begin a normal life. The work is typical at first, like all works about lost time. Boyard is tormented by the problem of existence; he does not care about preserving his own spiritual and physical self. He and the people around him have an excellent attitude towards death. This is not a painful reflection on the fact that death is a transition from non-existence to being, but about worthy and unworthy death. Aunt Boyard says: "People are born, live and die." Boyard is tormented by the fact that all the Sartoris, and this is an old plantation family, all the men served in the army and were famous for their bravery, and Boyard remembered Johnny when he was dying - he laughed, and Boyard felt fear, he was scared in the war, that's what he was tormented. And Boyard’s entire post-war life is an attempt to overcome this fear and prove to himself that he is not afraid of this death.

This is a typically Faulknerian device. It’s as if everything is familiar, but in fact it’s in a different vein, in the traditions of the South. But Faulkner does not stop there; he begins to study these principles, the covenants of the southerners. Boyard compares his inner feelings with the behavior of his twin brother. He verifies his feelings with endless memories of the courage of his ancestors. Sometimes absolute courage borders on stupidity, when one of the Sartoris was a platoon commander, he led his soldiers on reconnaissance, they were hungry, they had nothing to eat, he raided the northerners’ camp, got porridge, but it was stupid, since there were much more northerners and it could turn out that no one would need the porridge.

Any story is an interpretation, because not all Sartoris were brave men, they embellished their stories. The broken life of young Boyard is all a derivative of the fact that he measured his life against a myth, against a legend. He related his own self to what was offered to him. It is not known what Johnny honored deep down, but he behaved in accordance with the myth, the accepted rules. And here is the trap that Boyard falls into, which Faulkner wants to convey to the southerners. When we correlate reality with some legends, we drive ourselves into a trap and try to build our lives according to them. This problem is not just a problem specific to Southerners, it is a Faulknerian attitude toward myth. Many similar examples can be found in modern literature.

"The Sound and the Fury"(1929) is also about this, most of the Cobson family also lives with their heads turned backwards. One of the heroes simply commits suicide. The Cobson family is also an old plantation family, which lost everything during the Civil War and reconstruction, and now they only have memories of their former splendor, greatness, and this is what they live with.

The idea is aesthetic, used here as the basis of the form, because the novel “The Sound and the Fury” was translated late; it was believed that Faulkner was a realist, but in a difficult moment in his life he went and wrote a modernist novel. This novel consists of 4 parts, 3 of which are recordings of streams of consciousness of 3 family members. This is a technique of modernism that Faulkner uses, but this does not mean at all that this novel is modernist, because these 3 streams of consciousness tell in the most direct way about this very phenomenon, about the state, the quality of psychology, when there is no “was”, but only “is” is a phenomenon, a psychological characteristic of a person, for Faulkner it is a product of certain socio-historical conditions. That is, Faulkner draws forms and techniques from everywhere, including from the modernists, but reincarnates and uses them in order to create the most generalized, most metaphorical picture of certain socio-historical conditions. He takes an aesthetic thesis and turns it into a beautiful phrase, showing the hero’s experiences, but in fact the conflicts of reality. This is Faulkner's appeal to both readers and writers.

Quentin Cobson commits suicide at the beginning of the 20th century because he cannot reconcile the reality in which he exists and the demands of myth. And a duality is born in his psyche. He owns Faulkner's famous words: "There is no 'was,' but only 'is,' and if 'was' existed," then suffering and grief would disappear." This is an excellent characteristic, the law of our life. "The morning is wiser than the evening."

In the morning you get up and begin to calmly figure out what happened yesterday, and you can move on with your life, but for Quentin this “was” and “is” are merged together. He perceives everything as his personal tragedy. Everything becomes a drama for him when he finds out that his sister had an affair, got pregnant, then this man leaves her, she marries someone else to hide everything, but everything turns out and the family falls apart. This is drama.

But what is dramatic for Quentin is that in these new life circumstances he cannot defend his sister’s honor, that he cannot behave like a gentleman, and the burden of the myth is killing him.

At the same time, Faulkner considers the other side of the myth, another option for action. Quentin and Caddy's brother Jason belongs to those people who consider it necessary to forget about the past, these are chains on their feet, the family is declining, but lives in the shadow of this past. But Faulkner would not be a Southerner if he accepted this idea.

Jason is one of the most rude, cruel characters. This is what distinguishes Faulkner in general. Americans are generally tuned to the present and the future, the past - let the dead bury their dead. Jefferson says the Constitution should be revised every 20 years. The generation is changing. This focus on the future is part of the American dream. What matters is what YOU build in this life, how YOU live.

For Faulkner, this is such a disregard for the past and reliance on the present, the future is not close. In Faulkner's time this was a significant difference. For him, forgetting the past leads to regression. You stop understanding an essential part of yourself. Knowledge of the past will answer your question: “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

Hero of the novel (one of the famous ones) "Light in August"(1934) Joe Christmas is a foundling, he does not know who his parents are, and for him this is the source of a colossal tragedy. He doesn't know who he is, and therefore he is NOBODY. Unable to find a place in the social structure, he is viewed as an outcast in Jefferson. Where is he from, from the white trash, from the gentlemen? - after all, everyone has their own attitude. And what about blood purity? And at some point he is ready to admit that his father is colored, this is not good for a white man, but at least it will give him the opportunity to answer the question “Who is he?” Everything is intertwined, social, purely southern historical problems. A person must know history, but history, not myth. Myth is sublime, but it is a myth.

The most powerful and darkest novel" Absalom, Absalom!"(1936). The time of action is the beginning and middle of the 19th century, the beginning of the Civil War. The history of the plantation family is shown. Faulkner shows their life not at all as beautifully as, for example, in Gone with the Wind. This is the difference between great literature and mass literature. Mr. O'Hara, also an alien, infiltrates the plantation community and receives a respectable wife, becoming a member of society. And Faulkner shows that such intrusions actually happened often, they are associated with ambition, with a thirst for wealth.

Thomas Sapiens belongs to the so-called. "White trash" There were slaves, traders, etc. and white trash is a white person who does not have his own property, they were hired as farm laborers. Thomas Sapiens planned to get out of this white trash. And how much he did to get out of it. These are people who stood even lower than blacks on the social ladder, because every self-respecting black belonged to some master, that is, he had a “place in the sun” (that is, in the social structure), while “white trash” did not . And so Thomas Sapiens decided to get out of this “white trash” and, moreover, become a planter. And how much he committed - meanness, cruelty, crimes - before he became a full member of the community, a participant in life, only this happened. And then there is a rather gloomy story. It was as if he were being pursued by fate.

But everything seems to be fine: Thomas is a respected member of the planter community, his son Henry is among respectable youth. And then a civil war begins, which threatens to destroy everything they have created. Then trouble comes from a completely different direction: a young man appears on the horizon, on the estate, who turns out to be Thomas’s son from his first marriage in Haiti. The wife was the daughter of a planter (land, money...), but Thomas abandoned her as soon as he found out that she had a drop of black blood in her (on the Caribbean islands there are slightly different attitudes towards Creoles, mestizos, etc.). He leaves her without regret, believing that this marriage did not exist at all, because this marriage in no way fits in and will not contribute to his dream of becoming a plantation owner. How can a planter have an official colored wife?

But then a son appears from his first marriage, and he also begins an affair with Thomas’ daughter from another marriage. They don't know that they are brother and sister.

And Thomas, having learned about this, tells his son from his second marriage, Henry. Henry is outraged and kills Charles, his half-brother, avenging his sister's honor, avenging the sin of incest; but in fact, both Thomas and Henry know very clearly why they act this way.

Thomas tells his son, clearly realizing to himself that Henry will kill Charles not because of sinfulness, but primarily because he has black blood flowing in him, and therefore his sister got involved with a colored man, which, naturally, can damage his honor Houses.

This novel shows very well, on the one hand, in terms of content, that you must know your history, the real one: and on the other hand, this novel very well demonstrates the specifics of the technique that Faulkner uses.

The problem that is being studied is a problem of a socio-historical nature, and the form in which it is presented (the murder of a brother by a brother, provoking a murder) is all “The Sound and the Fury” from Shakespeare, Absalom, the son of David.

All titles contain some clues, often quotes. The gloominess of the novel stems from this Old Testament saturation with something dark, hidden, bloody, but the presence of these mythologies in the text written in the late 30s suggests that Faulkner (who pretended to be a “plow guy” all his life) is from the category , knowing nothing and writing randomly) worked a lot on his style.

This is all the use of modernisms, developed ideas of creating a work of art with the help of universal human culture, just like modernists do (mythological structures use). But in Faulkner, unlike Joyce or Eliot, these mythologems are always, on the one hand, structure-forming, and on the other hand, they are metaphors, they are only images for the embodiment of some socio-historical approach.

If there is a socio-historical approach, then it is a realistic work. If there is any version of the universal approach (metaphysical) - this is the literature of the modernists. There is no “was”, and there is only “is”. What is this philosophically? This metaphor describes the Proust-Bergsonian the idea of ​​spontaneous memory. When a person is able to experience the past, living it again as the present.

But this is not all of Faulkner's works. This trilogy is a continuation of the conversation about the matters of the South, about indigenous southerners: and on the other hand, a conversation about the prospects for life in the South in a changing world. The outlook could get pretty bleak if what's described in this trilogy happens. One fine day, first in the village of Frantsuzova Balka, then in Jefferson, out of nowhere, a certain young man Flem Snobs (a stranger, from somewhere completely from the bottom) appeared, and the conquest of the village and ascension to power takes place.

Faulkner is also a master of detail, which is super colorful and super informative. Here is one single phrase: In Bill Warner's shop, which is not a boutique, but just a shop, here Flem Snobs saw paper money for the first time in his life; before that he had never seen more than an iron dollar. Some time passes, and all this French Balka, and Bill Warner's shop, the rest of the houses and lands, Bill Warner's daughter - everything becomes the property of Snobs, and he is already cramped in Balka, and he moves to Jefferson, founds a company, banks appear his numerous relatives from all corners.

This is a forecast of changes in the lives of southerners if they are not on their guard. That the South could not remain so separate from the rest of America, agrarian, was absolutely clear to Faulkner.

The question is, how will this integration go? Will she follow a reasonable path, or will the strangers and newcomers destroy this old South?

Faulkner is a southerner, which is why he was so sensitive to this problem. If the Southerners are not on their guard, they will find themselves captives of Snobs like these. But in general, this is again a special case of the colossal problem that the 20th century is a process of changing the culture of civilizations.

Civilization is what we create in material terms, everyday life, state and social development. Culture is a personal and spiritual principle. And we replace one with the other.

There is no scarier character in Faulkner's novels than Flem Snobs. His name has become a household name. Faulkner condenses the image itself with its negative properties. Flem is impotent and has no potency. According to Freud, libido determines our personality, emotions, and absence determines the absence of emotions. Flem is scary for us because he is a machine, neither happy nor sad. But this is an impeccable machine, before which normal people are powerless. A normal person is subject to joy, sadness, he suffers and hates, and all this can make a person vulnerable. The machine - Flem has no feelings, you can’t stop him, you can’t defeat him - he’s stronger than everyone else. Each of the normal people is weaker, but we must win, otherwise such people will defeat us.

In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, much more of Faulkner’s works were drawn to socio-historical conflicts.

In the early works, the problem of the South is presented; in the later works, the scale expands - major problems of human life. Faulkner noted that how smart he is, he created the Nation before Hitler, because one of his characters, Percy Grim (novel "Light in August"), is an ideology of fascism.

The atmosphere of the 30s forces writers to immerse themselves in public life. It is not modernism that comes to the fore, but the open, ideologically biased art of realistic literature; and if not realistic, then still charged with relevance, perhaps not momentary, but belonging to the decade of the 30s. An association of writers in defense of democracy was created, a congress in defense of democratic literature (1935), and engaged, politicized art appeared. Journalistic books, essay books.

Great influence on American literature of the 50-70s. years was influenced by the philosophy of existentialism. The problem of human alienation formed the basis of the ideology and aesthetics of the so-called “beatnik” generation. In the 50s In San Francisco, a group of young intellectuals formed who called themselves the “broken generation” - the beatniks. The beatniks took to heart such phenomena as the post-war depression, the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear disaster. The beatniks recorded the state of alienation of the human personality from their contemporary society, and this, naturally, resulted in a form of protest. Representatives of this youth movement made them feel that their American contemporaries were living on the ruins of civilization. Rebellion against the establishment became for them a unique form of interpersonal communication, and this related their ideology to the existentialism of Camus and Sartre.

The semantic center is black music, alcohol, drugs, homosexuality. The range of values ​​includes Sartre’s freedom, the strength and intensity of emotional experiences, and readiness for pleasure. Vivid manifestation, counterculture. Security for them is boredom, and therefore illness: live fast and die young. But in reality everything was more vulgar and rude. The beatniks glorified hipsters and gave them social significance. Writers lived this life, but they were not marginalized. The beatniks were not literary exponents, they only created a cultural myth, the image of a romantic rebel, a holy madman, a new sign system. They managed to instill in society the style and tastes of the marginalized.

He became an iconic figure among beat writers Jack Kerouac. His creative credo is contained directly in artistic texts. Kerouac wrote ten novels.

His novel became the manifesto of the beat writers "Town and City". Kerouac compared all his prose works to Proust's epic In Search of Lost Time.

The “spontaneous” method invented by the writer - the writer writes down thoughts in the order in which they come to his mind - contributes, according to the author, to achieving maximum psychological truthfulness and reducing the distance between life and art. The “spontaneous” method makes Kerouac similar to Proust.

In most of Kerouac's works, the hero appears in the guise of a tramp, running away from society, violating the laws of this society. Kerouac’s beatnik journey is a kind of “knight’s quest” in American style, a “pilgrimage to the Holy Grail”, in fact, a journey to the depths of one’s own self. For Kerouac, loneliness is the main feeling that takes a person away from the real world. It is from the depths of your loneliness that you should evaluate the world around you.

Almost nothing happens in Kerouac's works, although the characters are in constant motion. The hero-narrator is a person identical to the author. But in Kerouac’s novels there is almost always a second hero, whom the narrator observes.

D. Copeland "Generation X"

Copeland's characters do not strive for fame, do not make a career, do not arrange their family life - in fact, they do not even have affairs. They do not look for recipes for happiness in foreign religions and traditions. They just talk and look at the sky. They don’t admire the sky, but just look. And even if they admire it unconsciously, they will never say it out loud.

Copeland's characters have a special relationship with the material world in general and consumer goods in particular. Every object is firmly sealed for them into a specific chunk of time.

September 24 is the 120th anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous American writers, Francis Scott Fitzgerald. It is also one of the most difficult to understand, although at first the reader's eyes and mind are blinded by the glamor of the parties described, deep moral and social problems lie behind it. The editors of YUGA.ru, together with the “Read-Gorod” bookstore chain, have selected six more iconic works for this date that will help you look at America and Americans with different eyes.

“The Great Gatsby” is a great novel, but there is no greatness in the life or soul of its protagonist, there are only sparkling illusions “that give the world such color that, having experienced this magic, a person becomes indifferent to the concept of true and false.” . The wealthy millionaire Jay Gatsby had already lost them and, along with them, lost the opportunity to again feel the taste of life and love - and yet all their treasures were at his feet.

The reader is presented with the America of Prohibition, gangsters, playmakers and brilliant parties to the music of Duke Ellington. That very “jazz age,” a magnificent age when it still seemed that all desires would come true, and you could get a star from the sky without even standing on your tiptoes.

The portrait of the protagonist of the Trilogy of Desire series, Frank Cowperwood, is largely based on a real-life person, millionaire Charles Yerkes, and in the last few years, viewers around the world have been following the life of the central figure of the House of Cards series, Frank Underwood. It can be assumed that the president even borrowed the name “great and terrible” from the character created by Dreiser. His whole life revolves around success, he is a shrewd financier and builds his empire, using everything and everyone for his own purposes. That’s exactly what “The Financier” is called, the first novel of the trilogy, where we see how the personality of a prudent businessman was formed, who is ready, without hesitation, to step over the law and moral principles if they become an obstacle in his path.

The most acutely social and accusatory book ever written in the USA and about the USA, “The Grapes of Wrath” affects the reader, perhaps, no less than Solzhenitsyn’s texts. The cult novel was first published in 1939, won the Pulitzer Prize, and the author himself was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. A portrait of a nation during one of the most difficult periods in history, the Great Depression, is painted through the story of a farming family who, after going bankrupt, are forced to uproot and seek food on a grueling journey across the country on that same "Route 66". Like thousands, hundreds of thousands of other people, they go for illusory hope to sunny California, but even greater difficulties, hunger and death await them.

451° Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper ignites. Bradbury's philosophical dystopia paints a picture of a post-industrial society: this is a future world in which all written publications are mercilessly destroyed by a special squad of firefighters, the possession of books is prosecuted by law, interactive television successfully serves to fool everyone, punitive psychiatry decisively deals with rare dissidents, and incorrigible dissidents are hunted down the electric dog comes out. Today, in Russia in 2016, the relevance of the novel published in 1953 (already 63 years ago!) is greater than ever - in different parts of the country, home-grown censors are raising their heads who seek to limit freedom of speech precisely by destroying and banning books.

Jack London's life was as romantic - at least when viewed through some lyrical lens - and eventful as his novels, and Martin Eden is considered the pinnacle of his work. This work is about a man who achieved recognition of his talent by society, but was deeply disappointed in the respectable bourgeois stratum that finally accepted him. In the words of the writer himself, this is “the tragedy of a loner trying to instill the truth in the world.” A truly timeless work and a hero whose feelings are understandable to readers on any continent and in any era.

One of the most difficult to understand, but at the same time incredibly interesting and multifaceted authors, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, mixing genres and always leaving the reader with uncertainty - what exactly did he just read, was it an appeal to himself through the pages of a book and What are we even talking about here? In “Breakfast for Champions,” the author surprisingly subtly and accurately destroys stereotypes of perception, showing us man and life on Earth with a detached look, looking as if from another planet, where they don’t know what an apple or a weapon is. The main character, writer Kilgore Trout, is both the author’s alter ego and his interlocutor; he is about to receive a literary award. At the same time, someone who reads his novel (the character, Dwayne Hoover, was played by Bruce Willis in the 1999 film adaptation) slowly goes crazy, taking everything written in it at face value and losing touch with reality - as he begins to doubt the reader is also in it.

In John Updike's first novel in the Rabbit series, Harry Engstrom - and this is precisely his nickname - is a young man for whom the rose-colored glasses of his youth have already been broken by the inexorable reality. He went from being the star of his high school basketball team to becoming a husband and father, forced to work in a supermarket to provide for his family. He is unable to come to terms with this and goes on the run. Updike and Kerouac seem to be talking about the same people, but in different tones - so those who have read the latter’s work “On the Road” will be interested in moving from beatnik literature to complex psychological prose, and those who have not read it will undoubtedly get a lot pleasure, switching attention and plunging even deeper into the same topic.

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Despite its relatively short history, American literature has made an invaluable contribution to world culture. Although already in the 19th century the whole of Europe was reading the dark detective stories of Edgar Allan Poe and the beautiful historical poems of Henry Longfellow, these were only the first steps; It was in the 20th century that American literature flourished. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, two world wars and the struggle against racial discrimination in America, classics of world literature, Nobel Prize laureates, writers who characterize an entire era with their works are born.

The radical economic and social changes in American life in the 1920s and 1930s provided the ideal soil for realism, which reflected the desire to capture the new realities of America. Now, along with books whose purpose was to entertain the reader and make him forget about surrounding social problems, works appear on the shelves that clearly show the need to change the existing social order. The work of the realists was distinguished by a great interest in various kinds of social conflicts, attacks on the values ​​​​accepted by society and criticism of the American way of life.

Among the most prominent realists were Theodore Dreiser, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner And Ernest Hemingway. In their immortal works, they reflected the true life of America, sympathized with the tragic fate of young Americans who went through the First World War, supported the fight against fascism, openly spoke in defense of workers and without hesitation depicted the depravity and spiritual emptiness of American society.

THEODORE DREISER

(1871-1945)

Theodore Dreiser was born in a small town in Indiana into the family of a bankrupt small businessman. Writer from childhood I knew hunger, poverty and need, which was later reflected in the themes of his works, as well as in his brilliant description of the life of the ordinary working class. His father was a strict Catholic, narrow-minded and despotic, which forced Dreiser hate religion till the end of one's days.

At the age of sixteen, Dreiser had to leave school and work part-time in order to somehow earn a living. Later, he was still enrolled at the university, but was only able to study there for a year, again due to money problems. In 1892, Dreiser began working as a reporter for various newspapers, and eventually moved to New York, where he became a magazine editor.

His first significant work was a novel "Sister Carrie"– published in 1900. Dreiser describes, close to his own life, the story of a poor village girl who goes to Chicago in search of work. As soon as the book barely made it into print, it immediately was called against morality and was withdrawn from sale. Seven years later, when it became too difficult to hide the work from the public, the novel finally appeared on store shelves. The writer's second book "Jenny Gerhard" published in 1911 was also trashed by critics.

Then Dreiser begins to write the series of novels “Trilogy of Desires”: "Financier" (1912), "Titanium"(1914) and unfinished novel "Stoic"(1947). His goal was to show how at the end of the 19th century in America "big business".

In 1915, a semi-autobiographical novel was published. "Genius", in which Dreiser describes the tragic fate of a young artist whose life was broken by the cruel injustice of American society. Myself the writer considered the novel his best work, but critics and readers greeted the book negatively and it was practically wasn't for sale.

Dreiser's most famous work is the immortal novel "American tragedy"(1925). This is the story of a young American who is corrupted by the false morals of the United States, causing him to become a criminal and a murderer. The novel reflects American way of life, in which the poverty of workers from the outskirts stands out clearly against the background of the wealth of the privileged class.

In 1927, Dreiser visited the USSR and the following year published a book “Dreiser looks at Russia” which became one of the first books about the Soviet Union, published by a writer from America.

Dreiser also supported the movement of the American working class and wrote several journalistic works on this topic - "Tragic America"(1931) and "America is worth saving"(1941). With tireless strength and skill of a true realist, he depicted the social system around him. However, despite how harsh the world appeared before his eyes, the writer never didn't lose faith to the dignity and greatness of man and his beloved country.

In addition to critical realism, Dreiser worked in the genre naturalism. He meticulously depicted seemingly insignificant details of the daily life of his heroes, cited real documents, sometimes very long in size, clearly described actions related to business, etc. Because of this style of writing, critics often accused Dreiser in the absence of style and imagination. By the way, despite such condemnations, Dreiser was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1930, so you can judge their veracity for yourself.

I don’t argue, maybe sometimes the abundance of small details is confusing, but it is their ubiquitous presence that allows the reader to most clearly imagine the action and seem to be a direct participant in it. The writer's novels are large in size and can be quite difficult to read, but they are undoubtedly masterpieces American Literature, worth spending time on. It is highly recommended for fans of Dostoevsky's work, who will certainly be able to appreciate Dreiser's talent.

FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD

(1896-1940)

Francis Scott Fitzgerald is one of the most prominent American writers lost generation(these are young people drafted to the front, sometimes not yet graduating from school and starting to kill early; after the war they often could not adapt to peaceful life, they became drunkards, committed suicide, and some went crazy). These were people devastated from within, who had no strength left to fight the corrupt world of wealth. They try to fill their spiritual emptiness with endless pleasures and entertainment.

The writer was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, into a wealthy family, so he had the opportunity to study at prestigious Princeton University. At that time, there was a competitive spirit at the university, which influenced Fitzgerald. He tried with all his might to become a member of the most fashionable and famous clubs, which attracted with their atmosphere of sophistication and aristocracy. For the writer, money was synonymous with independence, privilege, style and beauty, while poverty was associated with stinginess and limitation. Later Fitzgerald I realized the falsity of my views.

He never finished his studies at Princeton, but that was where his literary career(he wrote for the university magazine). In 1917, the writer volunteered for the army, but never took part in real military operations in Europe. At the same time he falls in love with Zelda Sayre who came from a wealthy family. They got married only in 1920, two years later after the resounding success of Fitzgerald's first serious work. "The Other Side of Heaven", because Zelda didn't want to marry a poor unknown man. The fact that beautiful girls are attracted only by wealth made the writer think about social injustice, and Zelda was subsequently often called prototype of heroines his novels.

Fitzgerald's wealth grows in direct proportion to the popularity of his novel, and soon the couple become the epitome of a luxurious lifestyle, they even began to be called the king and queen of their generation. They lived luxuriously and ostentatiously, enjoying fashionable life in Paris, expensive rooms in prestigious hotels, endless parties and receptions. They constantly pulled out various eccentric antics, had scandals and became addicted to alcohol, and Fitzgerald even began writing articles for the glossy magazines of the time. All this is undoubtedly destroyed the writer's talent, although even then he managed to write several serious novels and stories.

His major novels appeared between 1920 and 1934: "The Other Side of Heaven" (1920), "The Beautiful and the Damned" (1922), "The Great Gatsby", which is the writer's most famous work and is considered a masterpiece of American literature, and "Night is tender" (1934).

Fitzgerald's best stories are included in collections "Tales of the Jazz Age"(1922) and "All These Sad Young Men" (1926).

Shortly before his death, in an autobiographical article, Fitzgerald compared himself to a broken plate. He died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940 in Hollywood.

The main theme of almost all of Fitzgerald's works was the corrupting power of money, which leads to spiritual decay. He considered the rich a special class, and only over time began to realize that it was based on inhumanity, his own uselessness and lack of morality. He realized this along with his heroes, who were mostly autobiographical characters.

Fitzgerald's novels are written in beautiful language, understandable and sophisticated at the same time, so the reader can hardly tear himself away from his books. Although after reading Fitzgerald's works, despite the amazing imagination a journey into the luxurious “age of jazz”, there remains a feeling of emptiness and futility of existence, he is rightfully considered one of the most outstanding writers of the 20th century.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

(1897-1962)

William Cuthbert Faulkner is one of the leading novelists of the mid-20th century, set in New Albany, Mississippi, from an impoverished aristocratic family. He studied at Oxford when the First World War began. The writer's experience gained at this time played an important role in the formation of his character. He entered military flight school, but the war ended before he could complete the course. After this Faulkner returned to Oxford and worked postmaster at the University of Mississippi. At the same time, he began taking courses at the university and trying to write.

His first published book, a collection of poems "Marble Faun"(1924), was not successful. In 1925, Faulkner met the writer Sherwood Anderson, which had a great influence on his work. He recommended to Faulkner do not engage in poetry, prose, and gave advice to write about American South, about the place Faulkner grew up in and knows best. It is in Mississippi, namely in a fictional county Yoknapatawpha the events of most of his novels will take place.

In 1926 Faulkner wrote the novel "Soldier's Award", who was close in spirit to the lost generation. The writer showed tragedy of people who returned to peaceful life crippled both physically and mentally. The novel was also not a great success, but Faulkner was recognized as an inventive writer.

From 1925 to 1929 he works carpenter And painter and successfully combines this with writing.

The novel was published in 1927 "Mosquitoes" and in 1929 – "Sartoris". That same year, Faulkner published the novel "The Sound and the Fury" which brings him fame in literary circles. After this, he decides to devote all his time to writing. His work "Sanctuary"(1931), a story of violence and murder, became a sensation and the author finally found financial independence.

In the 30s, Faulner wrote several Gothic novels: "When I was dying"(1930), "Light in August"(1932) and "Absalom, Absalom!"(1936).

In 1942, the writer published a collection of short stories "Come Down, Moses", which includes one of his most famous works - the story "Bear".In 1948 Faulkner writes "Defiler of Ashes", one of the most important social novels associated with the problem of racism.

In the 40s and 50s, his best work was published - a trilogy of novels "Village", "City" And "Mansion" dedicated to the tragic fate of the aristocracy of the American South. Faulkner's last novel "The Kidnappers" released in 1962, it is also part of the Yoknapatawpha saga and depicts the story of the beautiful but dying South. For this novel, and also for "Parable"(1954), whose themes are humanity and war, Faulkner received Pulitzer Prizes. In 1949, the writer was awarded "for his significant and artistically unique contribution to the development of the modern American novel".

William Faulkner was one of the most important writers of his time. He belonged to Southern School of American Writers. In his works, he turned to the history of the American South, especially the times of the Civil War.

In his books he tried to deal with the problem of racism, knowing full well that it is not so much social as psychological. Faulkner saw African Americans and whites as inextricably bound together by a shared history. He condemned racism and cruelty, but was sure that both whites and African Americans were not ready for legislative measures, so Faulkner mainly criticized the moral side of the issue.

Faulkner was skilled with the pen, although he often claimed to have little interest in writing technique. He was a bold experimenter and had an original style. He wrote psychological novels, in which great attention was paid to the characters' lines, for example, the novel "When I was dying" is built as a chain of monologues of the characters, sometimes long, sometimes in one or two sentences. Faulkner fearlessly combined contradictory epithets to powerful effect, and his works often have ambiguous, uncertain endings. Of course, Faulkner knew how to write in such a way that stir the soul even the most fastidious reader.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

(1899-1961)

Ernest Hemingway - one of the most widely read writers of the 20th century. He is a classic of American and world literature.

He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of a provincial doctor. His father was fond of hunting and fishing, he taught his son shoot and fish, and also instilled a love for sports and nature. Ernest's mother was a religious woman who was entirely devoted to the affairs of the church. Due to different views on life, quarrels often broke out between the writer’s parents, which is why Hemingway couldn't feel calm at home.

Ernest's favorite place was the house in northern Michigan, where the family usually spent the summer. The boy always accompanied his father on various forays into the forest or fishing.

Was at Ernest's school gifted, energetic, successful student and excellent athlete. He played football, was on the swim team and boxed. Hemingway also loved literature, writing weekly reviews and poetry and prose for school magazines. However, Ernest's school years were not calm. The atmosphere created in the family by his demanding mother put a lot of pressure on the boy, so he ran away from home twice and worked on farms as a laborer.

In 1917, as America entered World War I, Hemingway wanted to join the active army, but due to poor eyesight he was refused. He moved to Kansas to live with his uncle and began working as a reporter for the local newspaper. The Kansas City Star. Journalistic experience clearly visible in Hemingway's distinctive writing style, laconicism, but at the same time clarity and precision of language. In the spring of 1918, he learned that the Red Cross needed volunteers for Italian front. This was his long-awaited chance to be at the center of the battles. After a short stop in France, Hemingway arrived in Italy. Two months later, while rescuing a wounded Italian sniper, the writer came under machine gun and mortar fire and was seriously wounded. He was taken to a hospital in Milan, where after 12 operations, 26 fragments were removed from his body.

Experience Hemingway, received in war, was very important for the young man and influenced not only his life, but also his writing. In 1919, Hemingway returned to America as a hero. Soon he travels to Toronto, where he begins working as a reporter for a newspaper. The Toronto Star. In 1921, Hemingway married young pianist Hadley Richardson, and the couple moves to Paris, a city that the writer has long dreamed of. To collect material for his future stories, Hemingway travels around the world, visiting Germany, Spain, Switzerland and other countries. His first job "Three stories and ten poems"(1923) was not successful, but the next collection of stories "In our time", published in 1925, achieved public recognition.

Hemingway's first novel "And the Sun Rises"(or "Fiesta") published in 1926. "A Farewell to Arms!", a novel depicting the First World War and its aftermath, published in 1929 and brings great popularity to the author. In the late 20s and 30s, Hemingway published two collections of stories: "Men Without Women"(1927) and "Winner takes nothing" (1933).

The most outstanding works written in the first half of the 30s are "Death in the Afternoon"(1932) and "Green Hills of Africa" (1935). "Death in the Afternoon" tells about the Spanish bullfight, "Green Hills of Africa" and a well-known collection "Snows of Kilimanjaro"(1936) describe Hemingway's hunting in Africa. Nature lover, the writer masterfully paints African landscapes for readers.

When did it start in 1936? Spanish Civil War, Hemingway rushed to the theater of war, but this time as an anti-fascist correspondent and writer. The next three years of his life are closely connected with the struggle of the Spanish people against fascism.

He took part in the filming of a documentary film "Land of Spain". Hemingway wrote the script and read the text himself. The impressions of the war in Spain are reflected in the novel "For whom the Bell Tolls"(1940), which the writer himself considered his best job.

Hemingway's deep hatred of fascism made him active participant in World War II. He organized counterintelligence against Nazi spies and hunted German submarines in the Caribbean on his boat, after which he served as a war correspondent in Europe. In 1944, Hemingway took part in combat flights over Germany and even, standing at the head of a detachment of French partisans, was one of the first to liberate Paris from German occupation.

After the war Hemingway moved to Cuba, sometimes visited Spain and Africa. He warmly supported the Cuban revolutionaries in their struggle against the dictatorship that had developed in the country. He talked a lot with ordinary Cubans and worked a lot on a new story "The Old Man and the Sea", which is considered the pinnacle of the writer’s creativity. In 1953, Ernest Hemingway received Pulitzer Prize for this brilliant story, and in 1954 Hemingway was awarded Nobel Prize in Literature "for the narrative mastery once again demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea."

During his trip to Africa in 1953, the writer was involved in a serious plane crash.

In the last years of his life he was seriously ill. In November 1960, Hemingway returned to America to the town of Ketchum, Idaho. Writer suffered from a number of diseases, which is why he was admitted to the clinic. He was in deep depression, because he believed that FBI agents were watching him, listening to telephone conversations, checking mail and bank accounts. The clinic accepted this as a symptom of mental illness and treated the great writer with electric shock. After 13 sessions Hemingway I lost my memory and the ability to create. He was depressed, suffered from bouts of paranoia, and increasingly thought about suicide.

Two days after being released from a psychiatric hospital, on July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway shot himself with his favorite hunting rifle in his home in Ketchum, leaving no suicide note.

In the early 80s, Hemingway's FBI file was declassified, and the fact of surveillance of the writer in his last years was confirmed.

Ernest Hemingway was, of course, the greatest writer of his generation, who had an amazing and tragic fate. He was freedom fighter, vehemently opposed wars and fascism, and not only through literary works. He was incredible master of writing. His style is distinguished by laconicism, accuracy, restraint in describing emotional situations, and specificity of details. The technique he developed entered the literature under the name "iceberg principle", because the writer gave the main meaning to the subtext. The main feature of his work was truthfulness, he was always honest and sincere with his readers. While reading his works, confidence in the authenticity of events appears, and the effect of presence is created.

Ernest Hemingway is the writer whose works are recognized as true masterpieces of world literature and whose works, without a doubt, are worth reading for everyone.

MARGARET MITCHELL

(1900-1949)

Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia. She was the daughter of a lawyer who was chairman of the Atlanta Historical Society. The whole family loved and was interested in history, and the girl grew up in atmosphere of stories about the Civil War.

Mitchell first studied at Washington Seminary and then entered the prestigious all-female Smith College in Massachusetts. After studying she started working in The Atlanta Journal. She wrote hundreds of essays, articles and reviews for the newspaper, and in four years of work she grew to reporter, but in 1926 she suffered an ankle injury, which made her work impossible.

The energy and liveliness of the writer’s character could be seen in everything she did or wrote. In 1925 Margaret Mitchell married John Marsh. From that moment on, she began to write down all the stories about the Civil War that she heard as a child. The result was a novel "Gone With the Wind", which was first published in 1936. The writer worked on it for ten years. This is a novel about the American Civil War, told from the point of view of the North. The main character is, of course, a beautiful girl named Scarlett O'Hara, the whole story revolves around her life, family plantation, love relationships.

After the release of the novel, an American classic bestseller, Margaret Mitchell quickly became a world-famous writer. More than 8 million copies have been sold in 40 countries. The novel has been translated into 18 languages. He won Pulzer Prize in 1937. Later a very successful film was filmed movie with Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Leslie Howard.

Despite numerous requests from fans to continue O'Hara's story, Mitchell did not write more not a single novel. But the name of the writer, like her magnificent work, will forever remain in the history of world literature.