Literary Look: Modernism

I'm finally bringing back one of my favorite series I've started on the blog: Literary Look. If you are new to these posts, I use them to take a look at the authors and works (and sometimes art pieces in other forms such as traditional art and music) that make up an artistic/literary movement.

Today, I was interested in the Modernist moment, so I decided to record my findings in a post.

You can see the past Literary Look posts here

General Information

The Modernist movement is set in the early 1900s with beginnings in the late 1800s. The movement really picks up momentum after the end of WWI in the 1910s. This movement was of course a response and rejection of earlier movements, such as Realism, as well as a physical representation of the distress caused the utter destruction and violence of WWI. The slogan of this movement was coined by Ezra Pound: "Make it new" and the movement desired to do just that. Authors explored the complexities of the human mind in new narrative styles. Literary terms such as stream of consciousness, the unreliable narrator (one of my personal favorites), and multiple points of view narration were introduced and used by many of the prominent authors in this movement. Many in this movement were inspired by the works of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, as well as the idea of questioning the rationality of the human mind. Works of psychology and philosophy were of particular importance and influence to this movement because of how heavily the works dealt with the human mind and the stream of consciousness narrative style. 

Many historians have chosen 1910 as the start date for this movement, but earlier works can be fit into the movement as well. 

Major Authors and Works 

James Joyce

Joyce's most well-known works include Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Yong Man, The Dubliners, and Finnegan's Wake. Joyce is one of the most well-known contributors to the Modernist Movement, and his novels were highly experimental for the time. Many of his works use the stream of consciousness narrative style, which adds to the difficulty of their reading. Ulysses covers the events in the life of the main character over a twenty-four hour period, in the style of Homer's The Odyssey, in a stream of consciousness narrative style. Finnegan's Wake is a stream of consciousness narrative written in puns and word-plays, much in the style of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. Joyce's short stories are much easier to read and less intimidating than these two huge works, and they are all I have read of Joyce myself.   

Virginia Woolf 

Woolf is an author that interests me greatly, as I have not read many of her works. Her fiction pieces such as To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway are two of the most popular Modernist novels. Both use a stream of consciousness narrative style and focus on the inner thoughts of her characters. Her works were popular while she was alive and tend to focus on lyrical inner-narratives rather than plot. Woolf was also a pioneer in the literary world of writing about gender, her essay A Room of One's Own illustrates the difficulties that women writers face because of their gender, and her novel Orlando deals with gender and society's black-and-white view of it. Woolf suffered from depression and mental illness, and killed herself in 1941 by drowning.

Franz Kafka

Kafka's works, originally written in German, have come to define the Modernism Movement and Surrealist Literature. His works deal with themes of isolation, anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include, The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. I read The Metamorphosis quite a while ago, you can read my old review here, but I would like to read it again to see how I feel about it now that I have been studying literature for such a long time. I am also eager to try The Trial. Kafka also has a very interesting collection of drawings that accompany the Modernist Movement quite well.    

Poetry and Poets 

T.S. Elliot

You can read my poetry spotlight on The Wasteland here. 

Carlos Williams Carlos 

Carlos William Carlos' poems are very interesting, and much like the poems of Pound below. His poems are short and without a lot of poetic language and devices. His most famous poem is The Red Wheel Barrow, which you have probably read, but also check out This is Just to Say and Complete Destruction.

Ezra Pound 

Pound was a silent leader of the Modernism movement, offering advice and council to many authors including Elliot, but never published anything too well-known himself. He has published quite a few poems and of course they fit in with the Modernism movement. His poems are quite accessible compared to Elliot's. His poems include In a Station of the Metro, "A Girl", and A Pact. 

Other Art Pieces

Picasso and Cubism

Les Demoiselles D'avignon

Georgia O'Keeffe 

Ram's Head with Hollyhock 

The Treachery of Images by Rene Magritte 

 More Information

Wikepeida's Modernism Page

Modernism Art Pieces

Norton's Anthology of English Literature- Modernism

Literary Look: The Gothic Novel

Finally back with another Literary Look post, and one that I'm very excited for: (although I'm always excited for these posts) The Gothic literary movement! Make sure you check out my other Literary Look posts (linked below) for more literary fun! (Yay!)

Read my Previous Literary Look Posts Here

It may be helpful to read my two posts, European Romanticism and American Romanticism before this one, as Gothic Literature is a branch off of Romanticism, but you won't have to in order to follow this post.


General Information:
Gothic literature falls under the larger umbrella of Romantic literature, and was mainly popular in England from 1790-1830. Gothic literature is characterized by a combination of Romantic elements with horror, and inspiration was drawn from horror stories from the Medieval Ages. Gothic novels often explore the idea of "the fallen world" through the story, setting, themes, and characters. The 'horrors' in these novels often turn out to elements of humanity more than the supernatural creature that is used to display these elements. The setting is usually dark, gloomy, and reminds the reader of this fallen world idea through ruins and decrepit castles and abbeys.

The Gothic Hero has become an archetype present in novels from this movement. The protagonist is usually isolated either by choice or force. Then there is the Villain who is the embodiment of evil because of a fall from grace (usually) and the two must meet in the end, usually after the protagonist has fallen from grace as well. The Wanderer is another common charter type in Gothic novels; this character wanders the earth in permanent exile as a form of (divine or otherwise) punishment.

American magazines that would reprint Gothic horror tales would become known as Pulp Magazines. The covers of these magazines have become very recognizable and are often parodied today.  This element of dramatic horror was often parodied by other writers as well while the genre was still popular.

 

Weird Tales was a popular Pulp mag, that republished the stories of Poe, Conan Doyle, and published new tales by Lovecraft.

Authors and Novels:

Early Gothic Lit.

Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto: This is widely regarded as the first gothic novel. and was published in 1764. Warpole wished to combine elements of the Medieval Romance with elements of the modern day novel. This book contained the first appearance of Gothic's most well-known elements: mystery, ancestral curses, hidden passageways, and the oft- fainting heroine. Warpole disguised the first edition of this novel as a newly discovered and translated Medieval romance, and because of good reviews and acclaim, Warpole claimed authorship on the second edition. But of course, this new claim to authorship brought about a large string of rejections. This incident started out the Gothic novel with a bad rep.

Ann Radcliffe: Ann Radcliffe is known for developing what is called the "explained supernatural." The seemingly supernatural elements of her novels would turn out to be completely explainable at the end of the novel. Radcliffe also introduced the archetype for the Gothic Villain which would develop into the Byronic Hero. Many of Radcliffe's novels were best-sellers, and her two literary devices would be borrowed and imitated by many authors, but her novels were generally dismissed by critics and academics because of the Gothic element. Her most popular novels include: A Sicilian Romance, and The Mysteries of Udolpho.

Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk: The idea of Gothic literature spread from England to the European continent, and Lewis' The Monk was a major Gothic published during the time of expansion. Lewis wrote this novel in just ten weeks, and before his twentieth birthday, but the scandalous plot made it one of Lewis' and Gothic's most popular novels. Published in 1796, the book contains morality themes and violence, common to the Gothic novel.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the one of the novels most often associated with the Gothic Novel. Mary Shelley (wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley) wrote Frankenstein, one the most well-known English novels, and one of the first science fiction novels, at the age of nineteen. The novel started as a short story that was composed over a short span of a few weeks while Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley (Godwin), and her step sister Claire (who was pregnant with Lord Byron's baby) were stuck inside because of the heavy rains in Geneva. The novel has a really interesting origin story, that includes Shelley's "Waking dream" of a student looking over the "Thing" he had created. All of the elements mentioned above as common to Gothic novels can be found in this novel.  

1880's Revival 

Bram Stoker's Dracula: Stoker's novel was published in 1897 as part of the resurgence of Gothic Literature. This novel is about traditional values clashing with new age values, as well as questions of morality, supernatural creatures, and fainting women. The settings of this novel are perfect examples of Gothic Literature settings.

Other novels from this period with Gothic influences include Oliver Twist, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights and The Phantom of the Opera. 

Parodies:

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey: The ever brilliant Austen wrote Northanger Abbey as a parody of Gothic novels. The main character Catherine spends the majority of her time reading Gothic Novels, and her imagination runs away with her. She begins to see the people in her life as Gothic heroes and villains. Interestingly, the publication of this novel and the list of Gothic Novels it contained brought about a new interest in the Gothic, when it was discovered that the book titles mentioned by Catherine were not made up by Austen, but actual books. Catherine was a huge fan of Anne Radcliffe's novels, and fancied that she was a heroine from one of her Gothic romances.

Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey: Peacock's novel satires the Romantic movement and particularly the Gothic movement's obsession with violence and morbidity. Peacock based many of the characters on historical figures that he wished to poke fun at. Many classical authors and novels are alluded to during the course of the novel.

Sources:
The Gothic Novel
Norton's Website

What's your favorite Gothic Novel?

Literary Look: American Romanticism

Last time I discussed European Romanticism, (and I recommend reading that post before this one) so today I'm going to discuss American Romanticism  which is a little complicated (but really, what literature movement isn't?) because it over-laps and combines with some other movements that I will be talking about in later posts.
Before we get started, here's my other Literary Look Posts if you want to get caught up:
European Romanticism
The Harlem Renaissance
The Lost Generation
The Beatnik Movement

General Information: 
As mentioned in the European post, Romantic pieces of art are heavy on emotion. This movement developed as a response to what is known as "The Age of Reason" or the Neoclassical Age, which was a return back to the logical and realistic style used by the ancient Greeks. The original Romantic period occurred in the Medieval Period  (1200-1500) where legends of knights and chivalry were popular- namely The Legends of King Arthur.

America is late to join the Romantic party (1830- 1860), so this movement overlaps with The Victorian Age (1830-1880) and the Transcendentalist Movement (1830's-1860's). Romanticism tends to touch on and favor subjects of high emotion, the importance of the individual, love, solitude, nature, satisfaction of desire, and creative energy/power.    

Nature and Individualism were very important to Romantic writers, and you will see these concepts as a theme in pretty much every work I list below.

Authors and Works: 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Emerson is one of my all-time favorite authors. He is also one of the authors that over-laps into the Transcendentalist movement; therefore, I will talk about him in more detail in that upcoming post. Emerson is most well-known for his essays, but he also wrote poetry. He is a very, very wise man, and his essays are extremely brilliant. I highly recommend reading them all, as well as his letters. His works usually center around the theme of individualism and staying true to oneself. My high school teacher once described him as a 19th century self-help writer. His must reads include, Self-Reliance, The Poet, The American Scholar, and Heroism.   

Henry David Thoreau 

Thoreau is another author who overlaps with the Transcendentalist movement, in fact he and Emerson are considered the fathers of the the Transcendentalist movement. Thoreau is well-known for his essays as well (but he wrote poetry too), and is himself a very interesting guy, He was a naturalist, abolitionist, tax resister, surveyor, and historian. In order to concentrate on his writing, Thoreau decided to "Live simple" and moved to a small cabin owned be Emerson in the woods where he lived for three years alone, and wrote Walden. Upon his return, Thoreau was arrested and spent the night in jail for refusing to pay his taxes because of his disapproval of the Mexican-American War and slavery. This event inspired a lecture that would eventually turn into one of his most well-known essays Civil Disobedience. His works often contain themes pertaining to nature, and the improvements he thought that could be made to humanity and our country through government reforms.     

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe is perhaps one of the best known American authors, and the most prominently Romantic author on this list. Poe is responsible for the first detective fiction with his short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and the first horror fiction. He wrote short stories and poetry, and had quite a tragic life. His father abandoned his family when he was very young, and his mother died of TB the next year. He was taken in by another family, and was troubled by a gambling problem in college. He then dropped out and was later expelled from another school. Pretty much everyone he loved died, his adoptive father, his brother, his wife, and his mother. Some of his work was probably inspired by the death of his wife from TB, and he was extremely unstable after her death. The circumstances of his death are quite mysterious. He was found wandering the streets in the early hours of the morning wearing clothes that did not belong to him, repeatedly calling out the name 'Reyonds'. Poe was never coherent long enough before his death four days later to explain what had happened to him. Must reads include the short stories: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, and the poems: Annabel Lee, The Bells, To Helen, The Raven and A Dream within a Dream. Poe's works are high in emotion, inner desires, and solitude. 

Emily Dickinson 

I have plans for a Poetry Spotlight post on Dickinson, so I will try to be brief here. She never married, which was quite odd for her time, was never recognized for her brilliance while she was alive, and only about a dozen of her poems were published anonymously during her life-time. Dickinson is one of literature's most illusive figures, as not much is known about her, and she has a rather mysterious reputation. All we really have is the approximately 1,800 poems she left behind. Dickinson's style is easily recognizable, as she using dashes for punctuation, capitalizes her nouns, and leaves her poems untitled. Dickinson's poems are characteristically dark, many are about death or dying, and she uses a lot of sea imagery. Interestingly, many of her poems can be sung to the tune of church hymns, such as Amazing Grace, as she used the rhythm to guide her poetry. Must reads: I started Early-Took my Dog, I heard a Fly buzz -when I died, Hope is the thing with feathers-      

Walt Whitman 

Walt Whitman is a notorious American poet. His poems are often very complex and each time you read them, you discover something new about the poem or a deeper meaning you missed the first time. His works often involve nature, and very complex themes relating to the human condition, or finding oneself. If you are having an existential crisis, Whitman will probably be able to help you through it (Emerson too). He wrote the two rather large poetry collections, Song of Myself, and Leaves of Grass (which is featured in John Green's Paper Towns), and they are perhaps his best-known works. I also recommend the individual poems: A Noiseless Patient Spider and When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer- both are brilliant. 

Herman Melville 

I have never read anything by Melville, but he is of course responsible for the monster of a novel (haha) Moby Dick.  Melville and Hawthorne had a profound, but short-lived friendship while Melville was writing Moby Dick. He often drew from his own experience as a seamen for his novels and short stories. He wanted to write a non-fiction novel about whales and the whaling industry, but was told it would not sell so he worked in a plot, and alas Moby Dick was born. His works also focus on nature and contain many allusions. There has also been much thought and study towards homosexual undertones present in the novel, but I have never read it, so I have nothing to add to that debate. If you have read Moby Dick, please let me know what you thought of it. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Hawthorne is known for his novel The Scarlet Letter, but he also wrote the novel The House of Seven Gables, and many short stories such as Young Goodman Brown, and The Birthmark. Hawthorne wrote quite a bit about the Puritan age of American history, and many of his works contain religious themes, characters, and allegories. Young Goodman Brown is a prime example of this, as pretty much everything in the story is symbolic, and the story as a whole is an allegory. I have not yet read The Scarlet Letter, but I have read Young Goodman Brown. Just a warning, Hawthorne's writing can be a bit dry and over-detailed, so prepare yourself if you are a first time reader of his works.  

Fredrick Douglas

Douglas began to write after he escaped slavery, and his numerous anti-slavery works carved him a place as a leader of the abolitionist movement. Douglas was a very large and public supporter of women's suffrage, and held many public offices within his life-time. He was a living counter-argument to the idea that slaves were intellectually inferior to their white masters, as many couldn't believe that such a brilliant speaker and writer had been a slave. Douglas wrote a series of autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas being the most well-known. I have yet to read this autobiography, but I did pick up a used copy not too long ago, and I have heard that it is absolutely brilliant. 

And there concludes another lengthy post on literary movements! If you want some more info on this movement, I suggest this website, which I referred to while writing this post, or this PBS site  which is always good for any American Literature research you may need to do.  

Weekly Wrap-Up: Graphic Novel Overload!

What's New:
Not a whole lot! I'm enjoying not having any homework, and ignoring the few school related things I need to accomplish over the summer in the hopes that they will go away (they won't). I'm trying to get myself to read more, but it seems I'm always busy even though I'm not doing anything! But I got a large stack of graphic novels from the library (more on those below) so I'm hoping I will wiz through those.

What I Got from the Library:
I went on a graphic novel spree at my library this week! I'm hoping to read some to catch up on my reading challenge, and I have been waiting for Summer so I could use my hometown library again. So, here's what I picked up and will be reading and reviewing very soon.

Ms. Marvel Vol 1: No Normal by Wilson Alphona

Vincent by Barbara Stok 

Jane, the Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault

Wonder Woman Vol 1: Blood by Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang, and Tony Akins

Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer

The Shadow Cabinet by Maureen Johnson

What I Posted:
Monday- I reviewed Maas' new novel A Court of Thorns and Roses
Tuesday- I shared Ten Books From my Beach Bag
Wednesday- I asked for your opinion on the things in my Amazon Cart
Thursday- I posted another installment in my Literary Look Series, this one on European Romanticism

Last Week's Wrap-Up

What's Next: 
Lots of graphic novel reviews! That shouldn't be a surprise! Then, I would love to do more Literary Look Posts, now that I have the time to put them together, and I'm thinking about starting a new series where I showcase some of my favorite old editions of books I own; what do you guys think? 

Stacking the Shelves Hosted by: Tynga's Reviews
The Sunday Post Hosted by: The Caffeinated Book Reviewer

Literary Look: European Romanticism

Today's Literary Look post is on European Romanticism. Admittedly, this is a movement that I haven't read much from myself, so I hoped that in doing this post I myself would learn more about the movement and the works and I certainly have. As always, this will be a very long post, so thanks in advance for sticking with me, and please let me know your thoughts on the movement, the works mentioned in this post, or any thing important I forgot.

Links go to the pieces of work themselves, or more information

on a topic or subject.

General Information:
Romanticism was an intellectual movement that moved through out all of Europe in the late 1700's and early 1800's, and the movement impacted all areas of intellectual thinking including art, theology, science, and even politics. The movement was a response to the Neoclassicism movement which included a return to Classical Greek and Roman influences with emphasis on logic, wit, technical precision and order. The Neoclassicism movement was full of satires, essays, and parodies.(Authors such as Alexander Pope and Jonathon Swift were a part of this movement.) The movement has also been said to have been a response to the Industrial Revolution. Romanticism placed an emphasis on feeling and emotion especially feelings of horror, terror, or awe. As you can see, Romanticism is quite the opposite of Neoclassicism, and the feelings of awe and terror were quite often depicted with the help of nature and religious imagery.

The German poet Friedrich Schlegel was the first to apply the term Romanticism to this movement, and he defined it as, "Literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form." American Literature also experienced a Romantic movement that I will discuss in a separate post. 
This website  has a couple of really great definitions of Romanticism and Neoclassicism if you would like to read more.    

Poetry:
The below group of poets are considered to be the key figures in the romantic movement. Romantic poetry can be very difficult to read and extremely lengthy. Poems usually consist of elevated language and mythological and religious allusions that can add to the difficulty of reading these poets.

William Wordsworth- Wordsworth's and Coleridge's collection of poems titled Lyrical Ballads (1798) is widely considered to be the launch of the Romantic Era. Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850. His major works include "I wondered Lonely as a Cloud" and his semi-autobiographical (and very lengthy poem) "The Prelude" is considered his masterpiece.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge- As mentioned above, he aided in the founding of this movement along with Wordsworth, but Coleridge was also a literary critic and philosopher. He published very important critical works on Shakespeare, as well as the poems, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner " and "Kubla Khan." Coleridge's critical works are responsible for many literary terms used today, such as 'the suspension of disbelief'.

Lord Byron- Lord Byron is a very interesting character. He was very well traveled, and was known for his flamboyancy and love of excess, large outstanding debts, and self-imposed exile. He had many love affairs with both genders, fathered a number of children with different women, and there was even rumors of scandalous liaisons with his half-sister. He fought in the Greek War for Independence and died at the age of thirty-six as a result of fever contracted from his time in the war. Byron spent a lot of time with the Shelleys (more on them in a minute) and had an affair with Marry Shelley's stepsister. The Greeks were in anguish over the death of Lord Byron, and it is rumored that his heart remains in Greece, while the rest of his body is buried in England. (Westminster Abbey tuned his body away because of his "questionable moralities,") His most well-known works include, "She Walks in Beauty" and "Don Juan."

Percy Bysshe Shelley- Shelley was considered a radical in both his poetry and political views and did not achieve high recognition until after his death. Many publication were afraid to post his works because of how radical they were. He was married to Marry Shelley (author of Frankenstein) and was an influential poet in the founding of the Romanticism literary movement. Shelley is listed as influential to many writers and poets. Shelley drowned a month before his thirtieth birthday, and there has been much suspicion and speculation surrounding his death. His major works include, "Ozymandias" and "Ode to the West Wind"   

William Blake- Blake was much older than his counterparts in the Romanticism circle, and was a painter, poet, and print-maker. Blake was highly influenced by religion and highly religious himself, although he didn't like organized religion and was hostile towards The Church of England; his works tend to focus on "The body of God and human existence itself." He was influenced by both the French and the American Revolutions. One of his most well-known collections is Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience .

John Keats- Keats is the romantic poet that I am most familiar with. His poetry and letters are notoriously romantic (romantic with a little 'r' refers to love and romance, Romantic with a big 'R' refers to the movement and overall idea of the movement). Keats died very young, at the age of twenty-five, of tuberculous and the letters he wrote to his beloved Fanny Brawne when he knew he was dying are quite touching and arguably some of the best love letters ever written. Keats is well-known for his Odes (a lyrical poem addressed to a particular subject, usually an object or animal, that often has an elevated style and no regular meter) from 1819 which include, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" "Ode on Indolence" Ode on Melancholy" Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode to Psyche." Interestingly, Keats poetry was not well received until after his death, and he is now one of the most widely studied English poets. I recommend checking out his love letters, and his two most widely read Odes: "On a Grecian Urn" and "To a Nightingale." Keats was also very much loved by my favorite person in history: Oscar Wilde.    

Novels:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley- Mary Shelley (wife of Percy who is mentioned above) wrote Frankenstein, one the most well-known English novels, and one of the first science fiction novels, at the age of nineteen. The novel started as a short story that was composed over a short span of a few weeks while Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley (Godwin), and her step sister Claire (who was pregnant with Lord Byron's baby) were stuck inside because of the heavy rains in Geneva. The novel has a really interesting origin story, that includes Shelley's "Walking dream" of a student looking over the "Thing" he had created. Although I have not yet read the original novel, I have read this beautiful Graphic Novel Adaptation, and I understand that the novel is a very complex and powerful piece of writing, that touches on enormous themes. John Green's Crash Course video on this novel is fantastic and I highly recommend you check it out.   

Alexandre Dumas- Dumas is a French author, whom I am rather unfamiliar with besides vague details. I have not read any of his works, but they are of course infamous and highly praised. His life work amounts to approximately 100,000 pages of writing, as he wrote fiction, plays, magazine articles, and travel books. His well known novels include: The Three Musketeers, and The Count of Monte Cristo. In the style of wealthy French-Men, Dumas had many affairs and children out of wedlock. His son, also named Alexandre Dumas would become a well-known and praised author himself.

Art: 

Wander Above the Sea of Fog by Capar David Friedrich

This image often accompanies the text of Shelley's Frankenstein and the Romantic Movement.

Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix 

The French Revolution inspired those who were not witnessing it first hand more than those who were, and the English poets mentioned above were especially influence by the Revolution. This is the painting of the French Revelation and I am sure you recognize it, at least from the Cold Play album if nothing else!  

The Wikipedia page on Romanticism  gives a great overview of the movement and links to each author, plus lots of examples of visual art from the movement.

There is so much more from this movement that I would like to cover, but I highly encourage you to do more research on what interests you, and let me know what you find out!

My American Romanticism Post

Recently Read: The Beats: A Graphic History

Author: Harvey Parker, Ed Pisktor, Paul Buhle and others
Genre: Non-fiction Graphic Novel
Publication Date: 2009
Page Count: 193
Rating: 4/5

This graphic novel is made up of multiple artists and art styles. Each comic gives information on an artist, or some aspect of the Beatnik Movement. Of course, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs have the biggest sections, but this novel has information on so many other artists, places, and events that were important during this time period.

I loved how the different art styles combined in this novel, and the range of information provided. My favorite thing about this graphic novel was that it was HONEST. It  did not shy away from the mistakes and flaws of the authors covered in this novel. It gave facts about their lives and their works without painting them to be heroes or great people. At one point it is stated that Jack Kerouac is a bigot, which is awesome! (and totally true) Usually their is a bias when reading about people who have achieved something, but there was no bias here, just facts.

This novel also did a really great job of showing how people and events were connected during this movement, which can get kind of complicated. It was easy to follow where and when the lives of major contributors converged and what events inspired later events. I learned a lot of new information from this graphic novel, which was awesome.

My one criticism of this graphic novel was it lacked information on female artists of the time. There was a section on Diana Di Prima, a small section on Jay DeFeo and another comic titled Beatnik Chicks and that was it. I loved Beatnik Chicks which covered a few ladies from the time and took a really critically look at what it was like to be a women artist during this movement and the obstacles they faced, but I would have loved for there to be more coverage of the ladies during this time. Another great thing that Beatnik Chicks did was tell the story of these "heroic" writers' lives from the p.o.v of the women they cheated on, and let down. If this graphic novel was anything, it was honest.

I'm on the look out for more graphic novels, especially non-fiction graphic novels so leave me your recommendations down below!

If you're interested in reading more on the Beats check out these posts!
On the Road by Jack Kerouac Review
Literary Look: The Beatnik Generation

Literary Look: The Lost Generation

I'm back with my third installment of my original series, Literary Look. In this series I will discuss a particular movement in brief detail, highlighting the important figures, places, and works of art that defined the movement.

Previous Installments:
The Beatnik Generation
The Harlem Renaissance

Brace yourselves, this is one of my favorite movements- this is going to be a very lengthy post!

Today's movement is The Lost Generation. This movement spanned from approximately 1920 until 1930. The main cause of this movement was World War I. During WWI many young American men signed up to fight overseas with enthusiasm. Patriotism was running wild and many of the young men had never seen or lived through a war. They rushed to offer their lives and vigor for the good of the world, long before America officially entered the war- and were confronted with the horrible reality of war. Many of those who were lucky enough to have come back felt that their suffering and their friends and brother's deaths were for nothing. No real tangible gains had been made for anyone during the war, and this defeated attitude expressed itself in their art and contributed to the live-in-the-moment carefree attitude of the Jazz Age.

Places:
Paris was the hub of the Lost Generation. Although many of the most influential authors from this movement were American, they spent most of the 1920's in Paris, and wrote most of their work there too. Ernest Hemingway would write about his experiences in 1920's Paris shortly before his death in his memoir/essay A Movable Feast. 

Hemingway- far left

        

Major People and Their Major Works:

Gertrude Stein 

Stein was the first to coin the phrase "Lost Generation" and apply it to the younger generation. She was Ernest Hemingway's mentor and used the phrase within a conversation she had with him. Hemingway then used the sentence, "You are all a lost generation" as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises. Stein herself belonged to the generation above the lost generation, and was a very interesting women I would love to learn more about (but I digress). One of Stein's most well-known works is her memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which she wrote about her years in Paris in the voice of her partner Alice.  

Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway is one of the most well-known members of the Lost Generation, and although I don't particularly care for the way he treated the women in his life, I can not deny that he was a very powerful writer. His biography is quite interesting too. He was married four times, and cheated on almost all of his wives. He was very into nature and masculinity, and was fascinated with bull fighting (which just so happened to combine the previous mentioned elements.) Hemingway would have a long and successful writing career, up until he committed suicide at the age of sixty-one. 

Hemingway is well known for his "Iceberg Theory" of writing. His sentences were simple and often times short (representing the tip of the iceberg) but there was a larger and deeper meaning to all of his works (the unseen, submerged part of the iceberg) and let me tell you. critics still love to debate those meanings to this day. 

Major Works 

 

A Movable Feast- This is the non-fiction work I mentioned briefly above; it covers Hemingway's experience in Paris in the 1920's. He was very fond of this time and was well acquainted with Fitzgerald and other large literary names at the time. Hemingway wrote continuously while living in Paris with his first wife. He wrote for a newspaper, and worked on what would become The Sun Also Rises.

The Paris Wife, Paula McLean-- This is a fictional, although pretty accurate, novel told through the voice of Hemingway's first wife of their time in Paris. I read this one a while ago and really loved it. This books really captures the tone of Paris in the 20's, and the personality and attitude of Hemingway. I would recommend checking this out if you are interested in Paris or Hemingway. There is another book Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck which is about Hemingway's maid in the 1930's while he was in the Key West, and married to his second wife, but i haven't read it so I can't properly recommend it yet. (Let me know if you have read it.)

The Sun Also Rises-- This is the Hemingway novel that helped to popularize the term "Lost Generation" with it's epigraph (Mentioned above in Stein's section). This novel takes place in Spain and centers around The Running of the Bulls ceremony. The characters are all based on real people that accompanied Hemingway to Spain to see The Running of the Bulls (The Paris Wife features this trip to Spain), but interestingly enough Hemingway decided to leave his wife out of the novel. 

In Our Time-- This is the final Hemingway work I will mention in this post, although he has many more. This is a collection of short stories, and one of his earlier works, that are strung together by vignettes. I really enjoyed this piece by Hemingway and found it very unique and thought provoking.

 

       

F. Scott Fitzgerald 

F. Scott Fitzgerald is another interesting author. He and his wife Zelda enjoyed lives of luxury beyond their means, and to support this life and pay his wife's psychiatric bills, Fitzgerald was forced to write a lot of short stories for magazines because they offered a quick turn around. Fitzgerald felt this prevented him from concentrating solely on his novel writing and resented his short stories (which is possibly why some of them are so weird). Another man who probably wasn't very nice to his wife, but has a beautiful writing style. Fitzgerald has written some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. Fitzgerald struggled with alcoholism for much of his life, and would die of a heat attack at the age of forty-one. 

Major Works

 

Flappers and Philosophers-- This is a collection of Fitzgerald's short stories, and is very representative of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's most well-known story is most likely The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, which is not in this collection, but is also worth checking out.   

This Side of Paradise-- Fitzgerald's first novel is a semi-autobiographical look at his time at Princeton. This novel offers a great look at the youth in America after WWI, which was the real Lost Generation. Many explain the carefree and reckless behavior of the 20's youth as a side effect of the war. 

The Great Gatsby-- Gatsby is arguable the American novel, and is Fitzgerald's most well-known work. If you haven't read this yet, you should immediately. The themes in this book capture the Roarin' Twenties perfectly (if you're not American, or aren't familiar with the Roarin' Twenties, I highly recommend a bit of research before reading this one.) I could talk about this novel for days on end, but I won't- I will just advise you read it as soon as humanly possible.        

T.S. Elliot  and Ezra Pound

Elliot's poem The Wasteland was published in 1922. Many people read this poem as a representation of the disillusionment that accompanied the post-war generation. I've never read anything by Elliot, but I really want to soon. Elliot was close friends with and often exchanged writings with Ezra Pound, who was very active in politics and a poet.

Evelyn Waugh

Vile Bodies-- If you are familiar with the 1920's, or have read anything by Fitzgerald, I really recommend you check out Vile Bodies. This is a satirical look at the "Bright Young Things" or the youth of the 20's and their total lack of planning for the future. The atmosphere of this book is amazing- and the humor is so witty. There is one page of the book that explained the attitude and reasoning of an entire generation so beautifully and eloquently that it stopped me in my tracks. 

And that's where I'm going to wrap it up for now! I know that was an extremely long post (and I left a lot of things out I would have loved to put in) so thanks for sticking with me.

Leave me any requests for future Literary Looks, and check out my previous ones linked at the top of the post. oh! and leave me your recs. from this era if you have any for me.

Here's a great link to the PBS Literary Movement Timeline if you want more information on literary movements.