American modernism: key representatives and evolution

Modernism period in American literature is best described by the words of one of the most significant poets of the time — Ezra Pound, who famously exhorted Make it new. It was a period from the beginning of the XXth century until the start of the Second World War, when writers urged each other to apply new energy to established forms. Modernist authors covered various socially important topics such as race relations, gender roles, and sexuality. The period from the 1920s up to the 1940s is considered to be a peak of American Modernism.

Obviously, most of the themes covered by American modernism were inspired by the situation in real life, which wasn’t all that good. The first World War had a big impact on writer’s minds at the time — many American modernist authors explored the psychological wounds and spiritual scars of the war experience. Another issue that left a mark on American literature is the economic crisis in America at the beginning of the 1930s, as seen in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Related to this is a problem of losing oneself and the need of self-definition as workers who lost their jobs had nothing to do in the big cities. In this sense it is important to mention in The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald illustrated an attempt to “build a self” — a theme which was popular amongst 19th century writers. At the far end of the thematic spectrum was madness as one of the issues in the society as described in Hemingway's The Battler and Faulkner's That Evening Sun. Still there was hope and search for a new beginning in the American literature of the time.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway were the key prose writers of the time. They created a modernist literature that was connected to American...

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...isillusioned.

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is the one who experimented the most of the three novelists. Most of his novels use different characters to tell parts of the story and demonstrate how meaning resides in the manner of telling, as much as in the subject at hand. The use of various viewpoints is a what makes Faulkner more "reflexive," than Hemingway or Fitzgerald; each novel reflects upon itself, while it simultaneously acts as a story of universal interest.

The best of Faulkner's novels are The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930), two modernist works experimenting with viewpoint and voice to probe southern families under the stress of losing a family member; Light in August (1932), which deals with violent relations between a white woman and a black man; and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), about the rise and fall of a self-made plantation owner.