http://www.sylviaplath.de/ Site doesn't have the complete text of "The Bell Jar" [also http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/plath-sites.html ]
http://www.sylviaplath.de/ Site doesn't have the complete text of "The Bell Jar" [also http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/plath-sites.html ]
Last edited by quasimodo1; 11-23-2008 at 11:25 PM.
I will suggest what I am most familiar with.Originally Posted by americanlit
Hemingway wrote novels dealing with the war directly (A Farewell to Arms) and the interwar period and lost generation (The Sun Also Rises). I am not familiar with For Whom the Bell Tolls, as of yet, so I could not say.
As for the discussion of 20th century American literature as a whole, there is certainly as much literary merit in the States as anywhere else (except perhaps Ireland).
Outside of Fitzgerald and Steinbeck (the latter I find dreadful), there is Hemingway, Faulkner, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and others outside of the early 20th century that I'm unfamiliar with.
Simply for the fact that Faulkner, Pound, and Eliot were Americans makes worthwhile 20th century American Literature. Of course, ignore the fact that the two poets left the country never to return.
EDIT: I misread the original post. You asked for WWII. This I cannot help you with.
hawthorne and melville aren't unassailable. melville's pierre is full of the pretentious bombast that hawthorne himself couldn't stand; and hawthorne's marble faun is yet another variation of a tired old theme, guilt.
post ww2 american literature which can stand up to any include john cheever's short stories and the latter half of john updike's rabbit tetralogy.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.
--Shakespeare
I cannot agree with your comment on American literature but I would say that there has been a dirth of great writing both in the USA and Europe since WW11; I cannot speak for other parts of the world as I have not studied them but it is likely that a similar situation applies.
Much of the writing that has achieved recognition since WW11 is as a result of clever marketing; a case in point being `Catch-22` a mildly, but self- consciously, funny book about the folly of war. It is this `Hey! Look how clever I am ` quality that denies so many post-war writers any claim to importance.
The American authors you have mentioned favourably did not need this form of self-advertisement in their writing and neither, I would contend, did Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Steinbeck etc. etc. The difference in their style was partly occasioned by the disruption of WW1 on the arts per se but I would submit that they are not inferior to their predecessors.
However, the hallmark of post WW11 writing , as with the arts in general, is a lack of profundity that relegates much of it to the superficial. Obviously, I am not referring only to the `best sellers` but writing in general.
Perhaps this post will engender a negative response from those who identify with the post-war period more readily than I do and names such as Roth, Bellow, Rushdie, Amis, Grass, Boll etc.etc.will be mentioned, but I suggest that they only go to underline my theory.
If that is not the case, a glance at the writers most frequently mentioned within this forum will.
American 20th century drama is pretty good.
A lot of modern classics were written by Americans. Don't like Lolita? The Great Gatsby? Of Mice and Men? To Kill A Mockingbird?
Lolita was written by Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian, and The Great Gatsby was mediocre. Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird were not awful, though I can't claim impressed.
Wallace Stevens is, with Faulkner, the great of American 20th century literature. Since you haven't read Stevens, I don't know how you can comment on American literature, as it is essentially impossible to read second-half century American poetry with a good understanding without reading Stevens, and his contemporary William Carlos Williams.
I've said nothing negative of the poetry. I adore T.S. Eliot. I think the 20th century American novel is overrated, and overdone in Lit classes, thus I may tire of it and in this may lie my only distaste for the school of Literature. I do not hate it, mind you, I merely see it as mediocre.
You said American literature - so poetry isn't literature anymore?
But I had specified in reply to your inquiry that I enjoyed T.S. Eliot and the like. I admit to a sweeping generalization in my first comment, but I do not retract the statement entirely, merely do I add exemptions to its jurisdiction. Few exemptions, that do not damage the integrity of my aforementioned opinion on 20th century (especially post World War II, as this topic is centered upon) American literature. I find the majority of it-- and here lies the distinction between a human, who would generalize without thinking that there may perhaps be one or two poets enjoyable, lies-- to be rather uninteresting. This is opinion, and cannot rightly be opposed by more opinion, as that is in contrast to the very definition of "opinion". To my opinion-- which, to be clear, (and now amended) states that "most 20th century American literature-- especially that after World War II, and excluding a few poets such as T.S. Eliot, and a few novelists such as Kurt Vonnegut-- does not particularly (note, not fill me with horrid resentment and abomination) interest me to the point in which I would actively pursue the consumption thereof."
Specification seems my only savior.
The second world war ended in 45, and quite frankly the individual betterment mythos seems more a product of the first half, though you haven't read Stevens, so how could you possibly hope to understand 20th century American literature.
I don't see how the consumption of works by one poet can encompass all of a school of literature, though I take your word seriously and will study Stevens before drawing any further conclusion. I thank you for your vigorous suggestions.
Whilst I am reluctant to take sides with anyone who could describe The Great Gatsby as mediocre, I have to agree with your comment here.
I happen to think that Gatsby is one of the greatest novels ever written but, considering the wide range of American literature, I would hesitate to suggest that it is essential to an understanding of the whole.
You forget that a) there is more to literature than novels, and b) even novelists know this, and many of them read poetry extensively.
Not having read the central poet, and commenting on the whole, is like talking about Southern Gothic without having read Faulkner.
But yeah, I guess since it's not a novel it doesn't count - yeah right, good luck then.
Either way though, the second half of the twentieth century in American literature doesn't seem to be about the betterment of the individual as you suggest, but more about the failure of the individual.
But then again, you haven't read Stevens, so who knows what other giants you haven't read.
One genre, novels, isn't literature, and isn't enough to understand a time period, even if you are only talking about novels.
I've read Gravity's Rainbow twice and I can't tell you much about it except the first line:
A screaming came across the sky.
The name of its main character:
Tyrone Slothrop
I know that it's nihilistic and absurd. I also know that I didn't get the jokes or the point. I have it on the shelf and I'll probably read it again, but Pynchon writes from a place that I don't quite get. But he's like a car wreck, you can't look away.
Other post-WW2 writers/works I'd recommend are Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhous-Five), Barthelme, Cheever, and Barth (try Giles Goat-Boy).
Never read The Bell Jar. Probably won't.
No damn cat, no damn cradle - Newt Honniker
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