The "Lost Generation"

[hawthorns]

Just wondered if anyone might have some recommendations for the between the wars / 20s-30s / "Lost Generation" era as the setting? Since I love first-person narrations, I'd welcome a good non-fiction autobiography in the period too. There's something about these loss of innocence/coming of age/memory themed works like Brideshead Revisited, Remembrance of Things Past, A Movable Feast, Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lolita (astounding), Speak Memory, etc. that really speak to me.

Thanks so much!

[WICKES]

Just wondered if anyone might have some recommendations for the between the wars / 20s-30s / "Lost Generation" era as the setting? Since I love first-person narrations, I'd welcome a good non-fiction autobiography in the period too. There's something about these loss of innocence/coming of age/memory themed works like Brideshead Revisited, Remembrance of Things Past, A Movable Feast, Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lolita (astounding), Speak Memory, etc. that really speak to me.

Thanks so much!

Try 'Vile Bodies', by Evelyn Waugh- and Aldous Huxley's early satiric novels.

[Seasider]

"Goodbye to Berlin" by Christopher Isherwood. He went to Berlin in the thirties...perhaps because the city had a reputation for tolerance in sexual matters .He wrote this as a group of short stories each dealing with an individual or group which might have problems if the politics changed. Which unfortunately for them,it did.

[Lokasenna]

"Goodbye to Berlin" by Christopher Isherwood. He went to Berlin in the thirties...perhaps because the city had a reputation for tolerance in sexual matters .He wrote this as a group of short stories each dealing with an individual or group which might have problems if the politics changed. Which unfortunately for them,it did.

I'll second that. Isherwood's Berlin sounds exactly the sort of thing you might be after.

[mal4mac]

I'll third that, Isherwood's "Mr Norris Change's trains" is also to the point. Also, try some of Aldous Huxley's early work, like "Point Counter Point", and more Waugh, like, "Vile Bodies" (I wrote that last sentence before reading Wickes' post!)

[Nate]

if you liked proust and nabokov, i'd suggest joyce's ulysses. nabokov selected it as the greatest work of the 20th century (he put in search of lost time in 4th place) and the lost generation (excepting gertrude stein) looked upon joyce as a god. anyway, give it some thought; reading ulysses has been one of the highlights of my life and it's not as hard as it seems at first

[kev67]

Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell starts off in that era. The narrator, Jenkins and his friends were too young to serve in WW1 and slightly too old to serve in WW2.

[hawthorns]

Thanks, everyone. Those look my kind of tea!

[mal4mac]

Thomas Mann "The Magic Mountain" also fits the bill.

[Yaur]

"Ham on Rye" covers Bukowski's childhood, starting in about 1922 and ending just as America is entering the second world war.

[kasie]

Robert Graves: Goodbye To All That (1929) (autobiography) and Siegfried Sassoon Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man(1928) and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) (fictionalised semi-autobiography) would give you some background to the period from the point of view of two men who survived trench warfare.

[country doctor]

BUCKLE UP!

the doc's surprised that 'the razor's edge' wasn't typed in earlier, general lit chatters...

so there you go...'the razor's edge'...

ROAR!

[Bustrofedon]

Rumor is that you like Proust, Doc. With that in mind you might try The Man without Qualities by Musil.