(Uece 2007)TEXTO The economic collapse of 1929 des

(Uece 2007)

TEXTO

            The economic collapse of 1929 destroyed the happy, confident mood of America in the "Jazz Age" twenties. "It was borrowed time anyway," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. Millions of Americans lost their jobs as the nation entered the Depression era. America was entering a new period of social anger and self-criticism. The writings of Dreiser, Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair and Sherwood Anderson now had a strong "Leftist" flavor. Instead of ¹experimenting with "modernist" literature, most writers turned to a new kind of social realism and naturalism. It showed the struggles and tragedies of ordinary people. But it also showed their strength, their energy and their hopefulness. The ²writing itself is strong, energetic and quite easy to read. It usually gives us a clear picture of the times.

            In the early thirties, the first reaction to the Depression was a literature of social protest. There was a powerful Marxist "Proletarian Literature" movement. The main intellectual magazine of the era was the pro-Marxist "Partisan Review", edited by Jewish intellectuals in New York. Michael Gold (1896-1967), editor of the Communist paper "The New Masses", was a ³leading force in the movement. He wrote "Jews without Money" (1930) as a model for other "Proletarian" writers. It describes the terrible reality of his boyhood world: dirty streets and poor houses, the gangsters, prostitutes and factories with awful working conditions. Edward Dahlberg's "Bottom Dogs" (1930) and Jack Conroy's "Disinherited" (1933) are similar autobiographical novels of social realism.

            Gold's novel was also the start of the "Jewish-American" novel, which became an important type of literature in the fifties and sixties. Gold describes the failure of the "American Dream" for those who had left Europe looking for a new and better life. This soon became a main theme in "Jewish-American" literature. "Call It Sleep" (1935), by Henry Roth, mixes Marxist and Freudian theory, Jewish mythology and a stream-of-consciousness writing style. He describes a young boy growing up in a poor area of New York. It is "a world that had been created without thought of him".

            The novels of John O'Hara (1905-1970) show a similar interest in "documentary" realism. They are tough, realistic descriptions of the upper middle-class world. "Appointment in Samarra" (1934) is considered his best novel. Its fast-moving story holds the reader until the main character kills himself at the end: did society cause his death or did he die for more private reasons? In this novel and in his next, "Butterfly 8" (1935), O'Hara creates an honest picture of twentieth century Americans. They are driven by money, sex and the struggle for a higher position in society. In 18 novels and 374 short stories, O'Hara recorded the changing American scene from World War I to the Vietnam War.

            The work of John Steinbeck (1902-1968) represents a similar attempt to "get it all down on paper". In the thirties, his characters were "naturalistic" in the classic ⁴meaning of the word. We see them driven by forces in themselves and in society: fear, hunger, sex, the disasters of nature and the evils of Capitalism. Crime is often the result of these forces. Steinbeck even describes "innocent murders" - by Lennie, the idiot in "Of Mice and Men" (1937), and by a betrayed husband in "The Long Valley" (1938). In all of his novels, Steinbeck combines a naturalistic way of looking at things with a deep sympathy for people and the human condition. We feel that he really does love humanity. Steinbeck's books search for the elements in human nature which are common to all people. He usually finds them in the family, the group and the nation, rather in the individual. In a letter of 1933, he wrote: "The fascinating thing for me is the way the group has a soul, a drive, an intent... which in no way resembles the same things possessed by the men who make up that group."

            Like some other writers in the thirties Steinbeck often tried to paint large portraits of the "national spirit". To do this, he combined myth with his naturalism. To him, ⁵"westering" (the movement to the American West) had great significance as an American myth. The old pioneer grandfather in "The Long Valley" says:

            "When we saw the mountains at last, we all cried - all of us. But it wasn't getting here that mattered, it was the movement and the westering. We carried life out here and set it down the way those ants carry eggs... The westering was as big as God and the slow steps that made the movement piled and piled up until the continent was crossed."

            In "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), Steinbeck's finest novel, the characters are larger than life. He is not simply describing the experiences of a single family of individuals. He is really telling the story of a great national tragedy through the experiences of that one family. The Joads, a family of farmers, must leave Oklahoma because of the great "dust bowl" disaster. Terrible winds have destroyed their land. They go west into California and work as fruit pickers. There, they experience the hatred and violence of the large California landowners. Steinbeck's description of this social injustice shocked the nation. In time, laws were passed to help people like the Joads. But the literary interest of the book is its descriptions of the daily heroism of ordinary people. Slowly, they learn to work together as a group, and help each other. In her thick Oklahoma accent, Ma Joad explains: "Use'ta be the fambly was fust. It ain't so now. Its anybody." This "anybody" comes to include all of humanity.

            The use of mythical elements is less successful in East of Eden (1952). It tells the story of a family from the Civil War to World War I. Here, Steinbeck uses his naturalistic style to create a modern story based on the Bible story about the brothers Cain and Abel. The book became famous as a movie, starring James Dean. In 1960, Steinbeck traveled through small-town America (US) with his dog, Charley. The book he wrote about this, "Travels with Charley" (1962), is filled with his own personal Transcendentalism. It is a quiet book which expresses the unity of all living creatures. In the same year, 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

HIGH, Peter B. An outline of American literature. London: Longman, 1996.

The words "experimenting" (ref. 1), "writing" (ref. 2), "leading" (ref. 3), "meaning" (ref. 4) and "westering" (ref. 5) in the text function respectively as