The Poetry in American Fiction

Abstract

The excitement generated by modern American fiction is only partially suggested by Jean-Paul Sartre's 1946 statement that “The greatest literary development in France between 1929 and 1939 was the discovery of Faulkner, Dos Passos, and Hemingway. … To writers of my generation, the publication ofThe 42nd Parallel, Light in August, andA Farewell to Armsevoked a reaction similar to the one produced fifteen years earlier by theUlyssesof James Joyce.” Sharing withUlyssesthe technical virtuosity that was to mark “modern” fiction wherever it occurred, the novels of these American novelists set precedents that few writers today have forgotten. Faulkner, Hemingway, and Dos Passos became the prototypes for that new animal, the new American artist, the modernist who was fascinated, sometimes to the point of obsession, with method. As Gorham Munson recalled about a party in the early 1920s, the writers had split into two factions, the younger “as usual discussing the everlasting topic of form”; the older airing “their views on anti-religion.”