Awhile back, I posted my thoughts on the interesting project of teaching the 20th century through American novels, 1 per decade. That post proved to be quite popular, so I’m going to go ahead and continue the series!
There are just two criteria to respond to:
1) In the first post in this series, it was suggested that folks choose two possible texts, one being the canonical “dead white [straight/able-bodied] male” option and the other aimed at providing perspective from authors who might be differently gendered, queered, dis/abled, racialized, colonized, and so forth. I really like this strategy, since I see great value in both options, particularly since it’s always productive to read against the grain when teaching a canonical text as a means of resisting the dominating discourses of a given era. (To say nothing of the worst impulses of Cold War Criti- I mean, New Historicism).
2) Give a brief suggestion as to how you see this novel fitting into a narrative arc of the twentieth century as told through the novel. Evolution of form? History of social / political movements? Expansion or recovery of discourses of race or gender? Decidedly non-academic yet perfectly natural, wholesome, and not at all embarrassing literary crushes?
We’re moving on into the 1920s. The era of jazz! Flappers! Crazy stock market fortunes! Sarcastic-but-beautiful dames and dashing, daring, dastardly gents. The boys who couldn’t — or wouldn’t — stay down on the farm after a brief fling with Paris, the girls who sought the bright lights and furious pace of the city rather than leap blindly into “wedded bliss.” The era of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Pound, Eliot…and the first stirrings of the wonderfully vibrant Harlem Renaissance, showcasing the likes of Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Nella Larsen.
Those who know me best also know that I am an unapologetic Hemingway fan, and thus may be anticipating that I will choose either The Sun Also Rises or A Farewell to Arms. But while I consider both novels to be good within the context of the era, the first is also seriously over-hyped and is still “early” Hemingway, while the second has always just left me a little cold. Don’t get me wrong, I consider both to be fine novels, but not at the top of my list from the decade. Ditto Fitzgerald and Gatsby; I think that Scott is unparalleled as a writer during this decade, but Gatsbyhas moved from being a good novel to being a cultural artifact in its own right, and I really would not want to teach it in a survey course as such.
I do feel strongly that any novel included from the decade has to address the aftermath of World War I in terms of economics, the increasing romanticizing of urban life, and of course, race / gender politics. It seems to me to be a difficult task to find a novel that addresses all of those topics, at least in sufficient detail. I was tempted to let nostalgia for my Midwest prairie upbringing win out again, and pick Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, but although I did enjoy that novel the last time I read it, the characters occupy too much of a bourgeois bubble for me to really recommend it for teaching the sort of course I have in mind.
So, I’m going to go with two novels that, fittingly, take up experimental approaches to form and context: John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer and Jean Toomer’s Cane. The first novel neatly incorporates elements of stream-of-consciousness from Joyce and Woolf, while also dealing with the themes of urbanization, wealth, and the shifting cultural landscape of 1920s America. Toomer’s novel seems to me to be the perfect pairing, both in terms of formal experimentation — Toomer plays with poetry, prose and vignette-style techniques throughout the novel — as well as its participation in another crucial aspect of 1920s American culture, the Harlem Renaissance.
Any thoughts / choices of your own?
The Cognitive Turn 
This is hard to do decade-by-decade in sporadic fashion, especially without developing a certain arc beforehand and holding to it. My 1900s choices were: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Iron Heel, and The Land of Little Rain. My 1910s were: Winesburg, Ohio and Herland. My 1920s choices would not fit easily into this arc (thus creating a poorly constructed syllabus), and my favorite books of this decade are not American (Zamyatin, Kafka, Joyce, Brecht, Proust, etc.).
So, in contrast to your personal criteria laid out here, I’d go with Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury as my “traditional” pick. It’s stronger in several ways than any of my possible Hemingway choices (I’d defend TSAR if I had time, but not now), even if it omits WWI and reflects on the Civil War instead in one of several examples of a southern nostalgia. I’m also a bit ambivalent about Fitzgerald (and agree fully on Gatsby fetishism). The Sound and the Fury is also hard emotionally and reading-wise, which is worth a lot to me from a teaching perspective.
As for outside the traditional, I’m going with Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit, which falls outside of both the traditional author type and the usual genre. I can think of few staid books of this era that are more poignantly reflective on the emergent consumer culture of the time.
I do think Cane is an excellent choice, though. I just can’t imagine teaching it (have not read that Dos Passos).
Fair point re: gap between discussions on this topic. When the original post proved popular, I envisioned making it a weekly feature, but got sidetracked by other issues and am just now staging a return to the topic.
We should definitely have a TSAR debate one of these days. I don’t dislike the book (okay, maybe a little), and I certainly get its importance as a representation of its unique cultural moment, but I really feel that “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is Hemingway’s best work. In fact, I’m thinking of repeating an old independent study from my undergrad days and reading back through the Hemingway canon, posting individual reviews as I go. Maybe once summer teaching is over…
I really did think about Faulkner, but here’s my dark secret — I have never finished a single Faulkner novel. I think it’s because Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Woolf, Stein, et al seem so much more pertinent to the culture of the 1920s. But I do have nearly all of his novels sitting on the shelf, so again…possible blog fodder?
Totally understandable the break between your posts; I’m just thinking I might write up a list somewhere so I can more easily formulate a coherent sequence without looking back at what I said before (and later disagree with).
Your Faulkner is my Woolf. I’ve never finished a single novel of hers (though I’ve taught a story and essay by her as a TA), and I’m not inclined to pick one up again anytime soon.
Squeeee!!!! This is my category and I’ve been looking forward to it. Ironically, tho, it’s pretty easy for me to choose the first one. I’m going to go ahead and do it and pick The Sun Also Rises because a. I love it; b. I know a hell of a lot about it at this juncture; and, most important, c. it gets at so much about the era both culturally and artistically. (Josh, I’m torn between TSAR and FWTBT as “best” but completely agree about FTA.)
For my second pick, I’m more divided. On one syllabus, I’d love to teach TSAR alongside Cather’s The Professor’s House (which is, I think, one of the greatest books ever). Conversely, this is the era of the “New Negro Renaissance” or African American modernism as well, and Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem would also play well w/ TSAR. In a reversal, quite antithetical to young (or old) Hem, would be Jessie Fauset and her novel Plum Bum.
Okay, I have to actually choose don’t I? I feel wonky not selecting any black writers in this decade because I think it’s so important to desegregate modernism. So as much as I love the Cather (and because I’ve already chosen O Pioneers! in an earlier decade), I’m going to go the obvious route (“obvious” in terms of my dissertation) and say: Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem.
Okay, all of this has convinced me — time to make a big return to Hemingway and open a dedicated Hemingway series. Which means I need to go back to the beginning and start reading Hemingway again! 🙂 I know I have a copy of “Byline” (short collection of KC Star articles, pre-Paris days) around here somewhere…