33. Послевоенная литература: к.Воннегут.

Post World War II literature sort of continues the themes (or “a theme”) of disillusionment that began in the "Lost Generation" Post WWI writers. American literature becomes increasingly more regional post 1920s – the center of American literature shifts from the East to the Midwest and the South. By mid-century, American literature was becoming increasingly more urban. World War II had enormous impact on American writing, as did many of the other events of mid and late twentieth-century America (explosion of the Atomic bomb in 1945, the emergence of television as a cultural force, the invention and growing dominance of computers, the McCarthyism of the 50s, the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s). The literature that emerges from the experience of World War II is distinctly different from that of WWI – and yet it also seems to be aligned with the themes of dissillusionment that began with the "Lost Generation" (if WWII is considered the "Greatest Generation"); however, it shows a nation that was united and confident in its powers to endure and to lead – transitioned to a new enlightened period of the experience gained; or so it seems.

The period in time from the end of World War II up until, roughly, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw to the publication of some of the most popular works in American history. The last few of the more realistic Modernists along with the wildly Romantic Beatniks largely dominated the period, while the direct respondents to America's involvement in World War II contributed in their notable influence.

Though born in Canada, Chicago-raised Saul Bellow would become the most influential novelist in America in the decades following World War II. In works like The Adventures of Augie March and Henderson the Rain King, Bellow painted vivid portraits of the American city and the distinctive characters peopling it. Bellow went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

From J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories and The Catcher in the Rye to Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, America's madness was placed to the forefront of the nation's literary expression. Émigré Authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, with Lolita, forged on with the theme, and, at almost the same time, the Beatniks took a concerted step away from their Lost Generation predecessors.

The poetry and fiction of the "Beat Generation," largely born of a circle of intellects formed in New York City around Columbia University and established more officially some time later in San Francisco, came of age. The term, Beat, referred, all at the same time, to the countercultural rhythm of the Jazz scene, to a sense of rebellion regarding the conservative stress of post-war society, and to an interest in new forms of spiritual experience through drugs, alcohol, philosophy, and religion, and specifically through Zen Buddhism. Allen Ginsberg set the tone of the movement in his poem Howl a Whitmanesque work that began: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...." At the same time, his good friend Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) celebrated the Beats' rollicking, spontaneous, and vagrant life-style in, among many other works, his masterful and most popular novel On the Road.

Regarding the war novel specifically, there was a literary explosion in America during the post-World War II era. Some of the most well known of the works produced included Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). MacBird, written by Barbara Garson, was another well-received work exposing the absurdity of war.

In contrast, John Updike showcased what could be called the more idyllic side of American life, approaching it from a quiet, but subversive writing style. His 1960 book Rabbit, Run broke new ground on its release by its characterization and detail of the American middle class. It is also credited as one of the first novels to ever use the present tense in its narration.

Ralph Ellison's 1953 novel Invisible Man was instantly recognized as among the most powerful and sensational works of the immediate post-war years. The story of a black man in the urban north, the novel laid bare the often repressed racial tension still prevailing in the nation while also succeeding as an existential character study. Flannery O'Connor also explored and developed the theme of 'the South' in American literature that was dear to Mark Twain and other leading authors of American literary history (Everything That Rises Must Converge 1965).

Sci-fiction

Metafiction

Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007)

Following the war, Vonnegut began publishing fiction about the dangers of technology, but since his work contained elements of fantasy, he was quickly labeled a science fiction writer, and his works were not taken seriously. Vonnegut’s first published novel, Player Piano, depicts a fictional city called Ilium in which the people have surrendered all control of their lives to a computer named, ironically enough, EPICAC, after a substance that induces vomiting.  The Sirens of Titan (1959) takes place on several different planets, including a thoroughly militarized Mars, where the inhabitants are controlled electronically.  Although obvious sci-fi venues, the super-real settings of Vonneguts fictional worlds serve primarily as a metaphor for modern society, which Vonnegut views as absurd to the point of being surreal, as well as a world peopled by the hapless human beings who struggle against both their environments and themselves.

NOTE:

In December 1944, Vonnegut was captured by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge.  He was imprisoned in a slaughterhouse in Dresden, Germany, and forced to work in a factory that manufactured food supplements for pregnant women.  Allied bombers attacked the city on the night of February 13, 1945, setting off a firestorm that burned up the oxygen and killed nearly all of the city’s residents within hours.  Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners survived because they slept in a meat locker three stories belowground.  When they went outside the following morning, they found themselves among few people left alive in a city that had burned to the ground.

While writing these early books, Vonnegut kept trying to work on a novel about the bombing of Dresden.  Finally, in 1967, he published Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) about a man named Billy Pilgrim who experiences the bombing of Dresden and loses his mind, thinking that he has been transported to a planet where time no longer exists. Slaughterhouse-Five was published at the height of the War in Vietnam, and antiwar protestors saw the author as a hero and a powerful spokesperson. 

The Sirens of Titan (1959)

Mother Night (1961)

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade (1969)

Bluebeard (1987)