American History - Part 164 - Coolidge - The Arts during the Roaring 20s
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-08-02

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION-- American history in VOA Special English.
Most Americans approved strongly of the economic growth and improved living conditions during the 1920s. They supported the conservative Republican policies of President Calvin Coolidge. And they had great faith in the country's business leaders and economic system.
 However, many of the nation's serious artists had a different and darker view of society. 
 The spirit of protest was especially strong in serious American writing during the 1920s. Many of the greatest writers of this period hated the new business culture.
 One such writer was Sinclair Lewis. He was the 1st American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
 Lewis wrote about Americans living in the towns and villages in the central part of the United States. Many of the people in his books were foolish men and women with empty values. They chased after money and popularity. In his famous book "Main Street," Lewis joked about and criticized small-town business owners.
 
 The work of Lewis, Mencken, and a number of other writers of the 1920s has been forgotten by many Americans as the years have passed. But the period did produce some truly great writing.
 One of the greatest writers of these years was Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway wrote about love, war, sports, and other subjects. He used short sentences and rough words. His style was sharper and different from traditional American writing. And his strong views about life set him apart from most other Americans.
 Another major writer was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald wrote especially about rich Americans searching for happiness and new values. His books were filled with people who rejected traditional beliefs. His book "The Great Gatsby" is considered today to be 1 of the greatest works in the history of American writing.
 A third great writer of the 1920s was William Faulkner.
 Faulkner wrote about the special problems and ways of life in the American south. His books explored the emotional tension in a society still suffering from the loss of the Civil War sixty years before. Some of Faulkner's best books were "The Sound and The Fury," "As I Lay Dying" and "Absalom, Absalom." Like Hemingway, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
 The 1920s also produced the greatest writer of theater plays in American history, Eugene O'Neill.
 O'Neill was an Irish-American with a dark and violent view of human nature. His plays used new theatrical methods and ways of presenting ideas. But they carried an emotional power never before seen in the American theater. Some of his best known plays were "Mourning Becomes Electra," "The Iceman Cometh" and "A Long Day's Journey into Night."
 A number of American writers also produced great poetry during the 1920s. Probably the most famous work was "The Waste Land," a poem of sadness by the writer T. S. Eliot.
 There also were important changes in American painting during the 1920s. Economic growth gave many Americans the money to buy art for their homes for the 1st time. Sixty new museums opened. Slowly, Americans learned about serious art.
 Actually, American art had been changing in important ways since the beginning of the century.
Soon, Charles Demuth, Joseph Stella, and other American painters began to produce excellent art in the new Cubist style. John Marin painted beautiful views of sea coasts in New York and Maine. And such artists as Max Weber and Georgia O'Keeffe painted in styles that seemed to come more from their own imagination than from reality.
 As with writing, the work of many of these serious modern painters only became popular many years later.
 The greatest American designer of buildings during the 1920s was Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright believed that architects should design a building to fit its location, not to copy some ancient style. He used local materials in new ways. Wright invented many imaginative methods to combine useful building design with natural beauty.
 But again, most Americans did not know of Wright's work. Instead, they turned to local architects with traditional beliefs. These architects generally designed old and safe styles for buildings-- for homes, offices, colleges, and other needs.
 Writers and artists now look back at the roaring 1920s as an extremely important period that gave birth to many new styles and ideas.
 Hemingway's style of writing continues to influence American writers. Many painters say the period marked the real birth of modern American art. And architecture students in the United States and other countries now study the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright.
 The changes in American society caused many of these artists much sadness and pain in their personal lives. But their expression of protest and rich imagination produced a body of work that has grown in influence with the passing years.