1930s - Novelists • Novelists Dissillusioned – Most fiction from 1930s – cynical, critical – Unlike H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis – attack middle class, writers of 1930s go after fundamentals of America society – James T. Farell, Studs Lonigan (trilogy – 1932-1935) – Lonigan can’t make sense of urban working class world, depressing character – John Dos Passos – U.S.A. (trilogy - 1930-1936) – portrait of America as ruthlessly capitalistic, crass, lacking spiritual or social attributes – Nathaniel West – Lonelyhearts (1933) – newspaper advice columnist slips into depression and insanity as a result of the human misery surrounding him • A Cool Million (1934) – Lemuel Pitkin travels to New York to make the big bucks and is exploited, beaten, incarcerated and murdered

1930s - Novelists Novelists Dissillusioned –Most fiction from 1930s – cynical, critical –Unlike H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis – attack middle class, writers

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1930s - Novelists • Novelists

Dissillusioned– Most fiction from 1930s – cynical, critical– Unlike H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis – attack middle class, writers of

1930s go after fundamentals of America society– James T. Farell, Studs Lonigan (trilogy – 1932-1935) – Lonigan can’t

make sense of urban working class world, depressing character– John Dos Passos – U.S.A. (trilogy - 1930-1936) – portrait of America

as ruthlessly capitalistic, crass, lacking spiritual or social attributes– Nathaniel West – Lonelyhearts (1933) – newspaper advice columnist

slips into depression and insanity as a result of the human misery surrounding him

• A Cool Million (1934) – Lemuel Pitkin travels to New York to make the big bucks and is exploited, beaten, incarcerated and murdered

Page 2: 1930s - Novelists Novelists Dissillusioned –Most fiction from 1930s – cynical, critical –Unlike H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis – attack middle class, writers

– Jack Conroy – overtly communist – The Disinherited (1933) – about labor violence in Missouri coalfields (his father and brother had died in a coal mining accident)

Regionalist/Cultural Nationalist– Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England (1936)– Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)

Page 3: 1930s - Novelists Novelists Dissillusioned –Most fiction from 1930s – cynical, critical –Unlike H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis – attack middle class, writers

• John Steinbeck (1902-1968)– Tortilla Flat (1935)– Of Mice and Men (1937)– The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

• Dustbowl– Western Kansas, Western Oklahoma, Northwestern Texas,

Eastern Colorado – hardest hit– Drought, poor soil management, wind storms– “black blizzards”– 3.5 million flee Great Plains 1930-1940– More than 10 million acres lost 5 or more inches of topsoil– Oklahoma’s population falls by 18%– Cimarron County, OK– “Okies”