Lost Generation
From ArticleWorld
World War I brought on a second wave on Victorian morals to the states, which artists found confining. In the 1920s and 1930s, American artists complained about America’s materialism and fled to Europe for inspiration and bohemian lifestyles.
However, many see this era as one of America’s greatest creative periods. The youthful idealism of the artists produced such novels as The Great Gatsby and The Old Man and the Sea, movies like The Marx Brothers’ Money Business, and America’s homegrown jazz took over the music scene.
The term derives from a conversation between Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway in which she stated, “You are all a lost generation.” The Lost Generation searched for the meaning of life between long drinking binges and torrid love affairs.
The term Lost Generation is also used to describe Americans born after between 1883 and 2005. These are the parents of the G.I. Generation and the grandparents of the Baby Boomers.
Notable American names
- Sinclair Lewis, writer
- Dorothy Parker, writer
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, writer
- Mae West, actor
- George Burns, actor
- Babe Ruth, baseball player
- Vladimir Babokov, writer
- Norman Rockwell, painter
- J. Edgar Hoover, FBI founder
- Humphrey Bogart, actor
- Ernest Hemingway, writer
- Harry S. Truman, president
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, president
Notable foreign names
- Charles Chaplin, actor
- Al Capone, immigrant and mobster
- Franz Kafka, writer
- Adolf Hitler, dictator
- J.R.R. Tolkien, writer
- Mao Zadong, communist leader
- Aldous Huxley, writer
- Robert Graves, writer
- Pope Paul VI, religious leader