Literature of the USA at the end of the 19th century. American literature and art in the 19th - early 20th centuries Russian fantastic prose of the 19th - early 20th centuries... Alexander Kuprin

Development of English literature in the 19th century

IN English literature In the 19th century, as in other national literatures of this century, two directions were fighting: romanticism and realism. Romanticism came to England from France (the influence of the revolution of 1789-1794) and subjugated the first half of the 19th century, although some literary scholars believe that true romanticism existed for only a quarter of a century. The beginning of romanticism in England is associated with 1798, when W. Wordsword and S. Coleridge published a book of poems “Lyrical Ballads”. The decline of this direction causes numerous disputes. Some believe that the death of Byron in 1824 brought an end to romanticism, others associate this phenomenon with the work of W. Hazlitt, W. Landor and T. Carlyle, and this is already the middle of the century. Romanticism as a method was most clearly manifested in poetry, and prose invariably contained both features of romanticism and features of realism.

In English romanticism, 3 main movements (generations) can be distinguished:

• 1. poets of the “Lake School” (“Leucists”) - W. Wordsword, S. Coleridge, R. Southey romanticism culture idealism being
• 2. revolutionary romantics - J. G. Byron, P.-B. Shelley, J. Keats
• 3. “London Romantics” - C. Lamb, W. Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt

The founder of English romanticism is William Blake (1757-1827). Blake created his main works back in the 18th century (“Songs of Innocence”, “Songs of Experience”, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”) In the 19th century “Milton”, “The Ghost of Abel”, etc. were written. Blake is considered the founder of the cosmic worldview.

Development French literature in the 19th century

Novels by Prospera Merimee

In his short stories, Merimee tries to embody a positive ideal, which he wants to find among the people and in countries that have not yet been spoiled by bourgeois civilization (for example, in Corsica, Spain). However, unlike the romantics, Merimee does not idealize the heroes and their way of life. He objectively portrays the heroes: on the one hand, he shows the heroic and noble sides of their character, on the other, he does not hide their negative sides, due to their savagery, backwardness and poverty. Thus, in Merimee, the character of the hero is determined by the external environment. And in this the writer continues the traditions of realism. At the same time, Merimee pays tribute to romanticism, and this is manifested in the fact that at the center of the writer’s short stories there is always an exceptionally strong personality.

Unlike the romantics, Merimee does not describe the emotions of the characters in detail. The writer is very laconic and depicts the psychology of a person, his experiences through external signs - gestures, facial expressions, actions. The narration is told on behalf of the narrator, who does it casually, reluctantly, as if bored, that is, the manner of narration is always somewhat detached.

The composition of the short stories is always very clear and logically structured. As a realist writer, Merimee depicts not only the climax, but also tells the background of events, gives concise but rich characteristics of the characters. The contrast in Merimee's short stories is manifested in the collision of real reality and dramatic, extraordinary events unfolding against the backdrop of this reality. In general, all the short stories are built on contrast: on the one hand, human vices and base interests, and on the other, selfless feelings, the concept of honor, freedom, nobility.

American literature of the 19th century

Creativity of O'Henry (real name - William Sidney Porter)

The work of this writer begins to take shape in the late 90s. 19th century - early 20th century. Initially, O'Henry had nothing to do with literature - he worked as a cashier in a bank, but already at that time he was interested in the people around him, and the people were completely different. However, gradually the observation of the future writer and a good sense of humor lead to the fact that he begins to publish weekly humorous magazine Rolling Stone. But soon O'Henry's serene life was turned upside down by a shortage in the bank, and in order to avoid arrest, the writer went to travel and began to engage in professional journalism. Subsequently, these materials will form the basis of the plots of many works. After some time, his wife’s illness forces O’Henry to return, the jury finds the writer guilty and sends him to prison for 5 years. It was there that, during his night shifts, O’Henry was actively engaged in writing stories.

The first story was written in 1899 under the title "Dick the Whistler's Christmas Stocking." In total, O'Henry wrote 287 stories, which were included in such collections as “4 Million” (1906), “The Burning Lamp” (1907), “The Voice of the City” (1908), “Business People” (1910), “The Circulation of Life "(1910). In 1904 he wrote the adventure-humorous novel "Kings and Cabbages."

The United States of America can rightfully be proud of literary heritage, which was left by the best American writers. Beautiful works continue to be created even now, however, most of them are fiction and mass literature that do not carry any food for thought.

The best recognized and unrecognized American writers

Critics still debate whether fiction is beneficial to humans. Some say that it develops imagination and a sense of grammar, and also broadens one’s horizons, and individual works may even change your worldview. Some people believe that only scientific literature containing practical or factual information that can be used in everyday life and develop not spiritually or morally, but materially and functionally, is suitable for reading. Therefore, American writers write in a huge number of the most different directions- America's literary "market" is as large as its cinema and variety scene.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Master of the True Nightmare

Since the American people are greedy for everything bright and unusual, the literary world of Howard Phillips Lovecraft turned out to be just to their liking. It was Lovecraft who gave the world stories about the mythical deity Cthulhu, who fell asleep at the bottom of the ocean millions of years ago and will wake up only when the time of the apocalypse comes. Lovecraft has amassed a huge fan base around the world, with bands, songs, albums, books and films named in his honor. Incredible world, which the Master of Horror created in his works, never ceases to frighten even the most avid and experienced horror fans. Stephen King himself was inspired by Lovecraft's talent. Lovecraft created a whole pantheon of gods and frightened the world with terrible prophecies. Reading his works, the reader feels a completely inexplicable, incomprehensible and very powerful fear, although the author almost never directly describes what one should be afraid of. The writer forces the reader’s imagination to work in such a way that he himself imagines the most terrible pictures, and this literally makes the blood run cold. Despite the highest writing skills and recognizable style, many American writers turned out to be unrecognized during their lifetime, and Howard Lovecraft was one of them.

Master of Monstrous Descriptions - Stephen King

Inspired by the worlds created by Lovecraft, Stephen King created a lot of magnificent works, many of which were filmed. Such American writers as Douglas Clegg, Jeffrey Deaver and many others worshiped his skill. Stephen King is still creating, although he has repeatedly admitted that because of his works, unpleasant supernatural things often happened to him. One of his most famous books, with the short but loud title “It,” excited millions. Critics complain that it is almost impossible to convey the full horror of his works in film adaptations, but brave directors are trying to do this to this day. King’s books such as “The Dark Tower”, “Necessary Things”, “Carrie”, “Dreamcatcher” are very popular. Stephen King not only knows how to create a tense, tense atmosphere, but also offers the reader a lot of absolutely disgusting and detailed descriptions of dismembered bodies and other not very pleasant things.

Classic fantasy from Harry Harrison

Harry Harrison is still very popular in fairly wide circles. His style is easy and his language simple and clear, qualities that make his works suitable for readers of almost any age. Garrison's plots are extremely interesting, and the characters are original and interesting, so everyone can find a book to their liking. One of Harrison's most famous books, The Untamed Planet, boasts a twisting plot, distinctive characters, good humor and even a beautiful romantic line. This American science fiction writer made people think about the consequences of too much technological progress, and whether we really need space travel if we still cannot control ourselves and our own planet. Garrison showed how to create science fiction that both children and adults can understand.

Max Barry and his books for the progressive consumer

Many modern American writers place their main emphasis on the consumer nature of man. On the shelves of bookstores today you can find a lot of fiction telling about the adventures of fashionable and stylish heroes in the field of marketing, advertising and more. big business. However, even among such books you can find real pearls. Max Barry's work sets the bar so high for modern authors that only truly original writers will be able to leapfrog it. His novel "Syrup" centers on the story of a young man named Scat, who dreams of making a brilliant career in advertising. The ironic style, apt use of strong words and stunning psychological pictures of the characters made the book a bestseller. “Syrup” got its own film adaptation, which did not become as popular as the book, but was almost as good in quality, since Max Barry himself helped the screenwriters work on the film.

Robert Heinlein: a fierce critic of public relations

There is still debate about which writers can be considered modern. Critics believe that they can also be included in their category, and after all, modern American writers should write in a language that would be understandable to today's people and would be interesting to them. Heinlein coped with this task one hundred percent. His satirical and philosophical novel “Passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death” shows all the problems of our society using a very original plot device. The main character is an elderly man whose brain was transplanted into the body of his young and very beautiful secretary. A lot of time in the novel is devoted to the themes of free love, homosexuality and lawlessness in the name of money. We can say that the book “Passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death” is a very tough, but at the same time extremely talented satire that exposes modern American society.

and food for hungry young minds

American classic writers concentrated most of all on philosophical, significant issues and directly on the design of their works, and they were almost not interested in further demand. IN modern literature, released after 2000, it is difficult to find something truly deep and original, since all the themes have already been talentedly covered by the classics. This is observed in the books of the Hunger Games series, written by the young writer Suzanne Collins. Many thoughtful readers doubt that these books are worthy of any attention, since they are nothing more than a parody of real literature. First of all, in the “Hunger Games” series, designed for young readers, the theme of a love triangle, shaded by the pre-war state of the country and the general atmosphere of brutal totalitarianism, is attractive. Film adaptations of Suzanne Collins' novels hit the box office, and the actors who played the leading characters in them became famous throughout the world. Skeptics about this book say that it is better for young people to read at least this than not to read at all.

Frank Norris and his for ordinary people

Some famous American writers are practically unknown to any reader far from the classical literary world. This can be said, for example, about the work of Frank Norris, who did not stop him from creating the amazing work “Octopus”. The realities of this work are far from the interests of the Russian people, but Norris’s unique writing style invariably attracts lovers of good literature. When we think of American farmers, we always picture smiling, happy, tanned people with an expression of gratitude and humility on their faces. Frank Norris showed the real life of these people without embellishing it. In the novel "Octopus" there is not even a hint of the spirit of American chauvinism. Americans loved to talk about the lives of ordinary people, and Norris was no exception. It seems like the question social injustice and insufficient payment hard work will excite people of all nationalities in any historical time.

Francis Fitzgerald and his reprimand to unlucky Americans

The great American writer Francis gained a “second popularity” after the release of the recent film adaptation of his great novel"The Great Gatsby". The film made young people read the classics of American literature, and the performer leading role Leonardo DiCaprio was predicted to win an Oscar, but, as always, he did not receive it. "The Great Gatsby" is a very short novel that vividly illustrates the perverted American morality, masterfully showing the cheap human inside. The novel teaches that friends cannot be bought, just as love cannot be bought. The main character of the novel, the narrator Nick Carraway, describes the whole situation from his point of view, which gives the whole plot piquancy and a little ambiguity. All the characters are very original and perfectly illustrate not only American society of that time, but also our current realities, since people will never stop hunting for material wealth, despising spiritual depth.

Both poet and prose writer

America's poets and writers have always been distinguished by their amazing versatility. If today authors can create only prose or only poetry, then previously such a preference was considered almost bad taste. For example, the aforementioned Howard Phillitt Lovecraft, in addition to amazingly creepy stories, also wrote poetry. What is especially interesting is that his poems were much lighter and more positive than prose, although they provided no less food for thought. Lovecraft's mastermind, Edgar Allan Poe, also wrote great poems. Unlike Lovecraft, Poe did this much more often and much better, which is why some of his poems are still heard today. Edgar Allan Poe's poems contained not only stunning metaphors and mystical allegories, but also had philosophical overtones. Who knows, perhaps the modern master of the horror genre Stephen King will also sooner or later turn to poetry, tired of complex sentences.

Theodore Dreiser and "An American Tragedy"

The life of ordinary people and the rich was described by many classical authors: Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Bernard Shaw, O'Henry. The American writer Theodore Dreiser also followed this path, placing more emphasis on the psychologism of the characters than directly on the description of everyday problems. His novel "An American Tragedy" perfectly presented the world with a vivid example of one that collapses due to the wrong moral choices and vanity of the protagonist. The reader, oddly enough, is not at all imbued with sympathy for this character, because only a real scoundrel who causes nothing but contempt and hatred can violate all societies so indifferently. In this guy, Theodore Dreiser embodied those people who want to break out of the shackles of a society that is disgusting to them at any cost. However, is this high society really so good that one can kill an innocent person for its sake?

The 19th century was a time of great changes in the spiritual life of the United States. The industrial revolution and economic success destroyed the strict Puritan injunctions, which condemned art created not by reason, but by feeling. Everything inspired optimistic confidence in the great destiny of America. People naively believed in their unlimited capabilities.

American romanticism

Unlike the European, he was all focused on the future and optimistic. At the same time, he was characterized by longing for what was irretrievably gone, sadness from contemplating the eternal cycle of life. Belief in a better future and prosperity for America reconciled most romantics with the dark sides of life.

The most prominent representatives of romanticism in literature were not similar friend against each other the poet Henry Longfellow and the writer Fenimore Cooper.

Henry Longfellow (1807-1882) - classic of American literature. His work is a milestone in American poetry XIX V. Unlike famous poets and writers, Longfellow fully enjoyed his fame during his lifetime. When he died, mourning was declared not only in the United States, but also in England.

His best work was the poem “The Song of Hiawatha.” It is one of the most famous works of world literature.

“The Song” was written based on Indian traditions and legends. Longfellow sang the Indian in it national hero the fabulously harmonious age of Hiawatha, who preached peace between tribes, taught people agriculture and writing. The poem is imbued with a surprisingly touching description of nature and folk legends, and a spirit of bright sadness. Calls for harmony in relations between people, between nature and man.

The Indian theme is reflected in five novels by Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), united by a common hero - hunter and tracker Natty Bumppo: “The Pioneers”, “The Last of the Mohicans”, “The Prairie”, “The Pathfinder”, “The St. John's Wort”. The action of the novels takes place in the 18th century. during the war between England and France in America. F. Cooper bitterly describes the inhumane extermination of Indian tribes and the destruction of a unique culture. The meeting of two civilizations turned into tragedy. Honest and brave Natty Bumppo and his true friend

Indian leader Chingachgook was also crushed by the world of acquisitiveness and profit.

The book was a great success among readers. She brought the truth about the horrors of slavery in the American South. Contemporaries said that she played a greater role in the fight for the abolition of slavery than hundreds of propaganda pamphlets or rallies. Performances based on Uncle Tom's Cabin were staged in many theaters in the United States. In Boston, the play ran for 100 days in a row, and in New York, only in one of the theaters - 160 days. Fascinating content, a truthful description of the living conditions of slaves and the morals of plantation slave owners made “Uncle Tom's Cabin” one of the most popular books in world literature. It is still read with undiminished interest.

During the period of democratic rise of the 50s, when the United States was shaken by disputes between northerners and southerners and the Civil War was brewing in the country, the poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) appeared.

An ordinary journalist, he published the book “Leaves of Grass” in 1855, which made him a great poet of America and brought him worldwide fame. This single book of the poet was unlike everything that was written before him. People are trying unsuccessfully to solve this amazing creative takeoff, the “Whitman riddle.”

Whitman called himself the prophet of democracy. He sang of America and its working people to the point of oblivion. He sang the movement of the stars and every atom, every grain of the universe. Peering at the people, he distinguished an individual person, bending over the grass, he saw a blade of grass - a leaf of grass. Furiously in love with life, he rejoiced at its slightest growth and merged with the elements of the surrounding world. The image of “grass” and the poet’s “I” are inseparable:
"I bequeath myself to the dirty earth, let me grow my
favorite herb,
If you want to see me again, look for me at your place

under the soles."

Whitman created his own, truly Whitmanian style. His invention is free verse. The poet described the rhythm of free verse in which “Leaves of Grass” was written: “This verse is like sea waves: they roll in and then recede - radiant and quiet on a clear day, menacing in a storm.” Unlike the romantic poets, Whitman's poetic speech is surprisingly human and spontaneous:
"The first person you meet, if you want to talk as you pass
With me, why don't you talk to me,

Why don't I start a conversation with you?"

Whitman glorified not only the beauty of man and the beauty of the nature of his country. He sang the praises of railways, factories and cars.
"...Oh, we'll build a building
More magnificent than all the Egyptian tombs,
More beautiful than the temples of Hellas and Rome,

Well, America's great poet was not particularly insightful. Intoxicated by the dream and delighted by the world, he did not see the danger to man and humanity arising from the powerful march of modern industry.

First warnings

Among American writers of the first half of the 19th century. There were many who criticized the negative aspects of American reality. “Liberty, equality and fraternity” came into conflict with life. It was, as one of the romantics put it, dominated by the “almighty dollar.”

While Whitman praised America, Herman Chalkville said many bitter words about it in his famous novel Moby Dick, or the White Whale. Bourgeois civilization, he believed, brings evil and destruction to people. Melville denounced racism, colonization and slavery. Several years before it began, he predicted the American Civil War.

Another famous American writer, Henry Thoreau, sharply criticized bourgeois civilization. He preached the simplification of man, his harmonious relationship with nature. Here is his famous description of the railroad: “Every sleeper is a man, Irish or Yankee. On them, on these people, the rails are laid... and the cars roll smoothly. The sleepers may someday wake up and stand up,” Thoreau prophetically warned.

American realism

The largest American realist writers in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. there were Mark Twain, F. Bret Harte, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) subjected to merciless criticism and ridicule of his main enemies - the “monarchy of money” and religion. Therefore, some of his books could not be published in the USA for a long time. Mark Twain's best works - "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" - are dedicated to the life of ordinary people in America.

Occupies a special place in American literature Bret Harte (1836-1902). He is famous for his stories and tales from the life of California gold miners. They capture the enslaving power of gold in a fascinating and masterful manner. Harte's works were accepted in Europe as a new word in American literature.

At the end of the 19th century. The short story has occupied a prominent place in American literature. O'Henry proved himself to be a virtuoso master of the short story, a light and cheerful short story. The greatest writer of the early 20th century, Jack London (1876-1916), gained fame with his stories. They described a new and unfamiliar world for Americans - fearless and courageous people, gold miners of the North, the world of romance and adventure. The best works of Jack London are the stories “Love of Life”, “The Mexican”, the novels “White Fang” and “Martin Eden”. The story “The White Plague” is a vision of the catastrophe of bourgeois civilization.

The downside of US economic prosperity is depicted on a grand scale in the novels of America's outstanding writer Theodore Dreiser (1871 -1945). The trilogy “The Financier,” “The Titan,” and “The Stoic” tells the story of a “superman” financier who came to the bitter conclusion about the futility of accumulation and money-grubbing. One of the writer’s best works is the novel “American Tragedy.”

Painting

American painting was strongly influenced Western Europe. It was characterized by romanticism and realism, and from the end of the 19th century - impressionism. Artists of the romantic movement were most interested in two big themes - nature and personality. Therefore it was widespread portrait painting. In times of economic prosperity, artists tended to paint rich people and their families. Some kind of special identity american painting hasn't been different yet.

Heart of the Andes. Frederick Church (1826-1900). In the 1850s visited South America, after which he became famous in the USA for his bright and impressive images of exotic landscapes

Mother and Child, 1890. American M. Cassatt became the first woman to achieve recognition among the Impressionists. Paintings on the theme of motherhood are simple, expressive and full of warmth

Only after the Civil War did American artists cease to feel like uncouth apprentices. Their works are becoming more and more “American”.

The most famous American painters of the 19th century. There were representatives of the romantic trend: Cole, Darend and Bingham. The portrait painter Sargent was very popular. However, Winslow Homer is considered to be a typical American artist of the end of the century.

A Light Breeze, 1878. W. Homer (1836-1910). This painting was hailed as the artist's greatest achievement. Children's themes were popular in the second half of the 19th century, as in the days of Huckleberry Finn

Edward Buat's Daughters, 1882. J. Sargent (1856-1925). Born into a wealthy American family in Italy. He spent his entire life in Europe, occasionally making visits to the USA. Created masterly social portraits

Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the 19th century In the USA, collecting works of European painting began. Rich Americans traveled to Europe and bought art treasures there. In 1870, a group of public figures and artists founded the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the largest art collection in the United States.

Today it houses about 3 million works of world art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art ranks with the largest art museums in the world, such as the Hermitage and Tretyakov Gallery in Russia, the Louvre in Paris or the British Museum in London.

Architecture

American architecture was as eclectic as European architecture. It intricately intertwined elements of the styles you know - Gothic, Rococo and Classicism. In the second half of the 19th century. Americans made a great contribution to the development of world architecture. They are credited with creating steel structures for large industrial and administrative buildings.

It all started with a tragic event. In 1871, the city of Chicago was almost completely burned out by a large fire. It was necessary to rebuild the entire city, which caused a surge of different ideas. A team of architects led by Louis Sullivan designed the skeleton of a commercial skyscraper, based on a steel frame filled with stone and cement. In the 1880s. first in Chicago, and then in other cities, the first skyscrapers appeared, becoming a symbol of America's industrial power.

References:
V. S. Koshelev, I. V. Orzhekhovsky, V. I. Sinitsa / The World History Modern times XIX - early XX century, 1998.

8. AMERICAN PROSE POST-1945 REALISM AND EXPERIMENTATION

In the period after the Second World War fiction eschews generalizations: it is distinguished by its extreme diversity and versatility. It was given a fresh infusion of international literary movements, such as European existentialism and Latin American magical realism, and the rapid development of electronic communications forced her to reckon with such a phenomenon as a village the size of the Earth. Spoken language on television has revived the oral tradition. American prose began to be increasingly influenced by oral genres, the media, and popular culture.

In the past, elite culture influenced popular culture by its status and example; At present, the opposite appears to be the case. Serious writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Joyce Carol Oates, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Alice Walker and E. L. Doctorow borrowed heavily from comic books, movies, fashion, songs and oral traditions about the past, which they relied on in one way or another in their work.

By this I do not mean to say that American literature of the last fifty years has been mired in petty topics. In the USA, writers are raising serious questions, many of which are metaphysical in nature. In the works of prose writers they manifest themselves in highest degree innovative approaches and self-absorption, or “reflexivity.” Often modern authors find traditional methods of literary prose ineffective and want to enliven it with materials that are much more popular. In other words: American writers of recent decades have developed a postmodern sensibility. They are no longer content with the modernist re-interpretation of this or that point of view. In its place must be a renewal of the entire context of vision.

THE LEGACY OF REALISM AND THE END OF THE FORTY YEARS

In artistic prose of the second half of the 20th century, the trend of reflection that emerged in its first half is preserved characteristic features every decade. At the end of the forties, the consequences of the Second World War were still felt, but the Cold War had already begun.

The Second World War provided excellent material for literary creativity. The two prose writers who used it best were Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead, 1948) and James Jones (From Here to Eternity, 1951). Both of them wrote in a realistic manner bordering on severe naturalism; both tried not to sugarcoat the war. The same can be said about Irwin Shaw, who wrote the novel The Young Lions (1948). Herman Wouk also showed in his Caine Mutiny (1951) that human weaknesses are no less evident in war than in peacetime. Later, Joseph Haller satirically depicted war, presenting it to the reader in an absurd manner (Catch-22, 1961). He expresses the idea that war is full of madness. Using sophisticated literary techniques, Thomas Pynchon perfectly realized his idea, parodying and debunking different versions reality (“Gravity Rainbow,” 1973), and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., after the publication of his novel “Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade” (1969), became one of the most prominent representatives of counterculture. This anti-war work describes the Allied incendiary bombing of the German city of Dresden during World War II. The author himself, who was then in a German prisoner of war camp, was an eyewitness to this bombing.

The forties saw the emergence of a remarkable new breed of writers, including the poet, novelist, and essayist Robert Penn Warren, the playwrights Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and the authors short stories Katherine Anne Porter and Eudora Welty. All of them, except Miller, were natives of the South, all devoted their work to the study of the fate of an individual in a family or society, and all focused on the balance between the development of the human personality and its responsibility to a certain group of people.

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)

Robert Penn Warren, one of the Southerners who centered around Fugitive magazine, enjoyed literary success throughout much of the 20th century. Throughout his life he showed interest in the formation of democratic values ​​in the process of historical development. His most famous work, which has stood the test of time, is the novel All the King's Men (1946). It uses the thinly veiled career of a southern state senator - the colorful and sinister Huey Long - to show the dark sides of the American dream.

Arthur Miller (b. 1915)

New York-born playwright, novelist, essayist and biographer Arthur Miller achieved personal success in 1949 with Death of a Salesman, an examination of a man's search for his place in life and how he comes to realize the futility of his attempts. The play takes place in the Loman family, in which the father does not get along with his son, and the wife does not get along with her husband. The play, like a mirror, reflects the literary trends of the forties - a rich combination of realistic techniques with an admixture of naturalism, careful depiction of the characters, completeness of images and a strong emphasis on the value of the individual, despite all his mistakes and failures. "Death of a Salesman" is a moving paean to the common man who, in the words of Willy Loman's widow, "needs to be noticed." At the same time, this smart and sad play is the story of a failed dream. As one of the characters in the play ironically remarks: “A traveling salesman can’t help but dream, my boy. It’s part of his job.”

Death of a Salesman, which played such a prominent role in Miller's work, is just one of a number of dramatic works he wrote over several decades, including the drama All My Sons (1947) and the folk chronicle The Ordeal (1953). G.). Both of the above plays are political in nature. One of them takes place in the present day, and the other during the period of colonization. In the first, the main character is an industrialist who, during the Second World War, deliberately supplied aircraft manufacturing companies with a batch of defective parts, which led to the death of his son and other people. "The Ordeal" depicts the trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in the 19th century, in which Puritan settlers were unjustly executed for allegedly engaging in witchcraft. Despite the fact that a “witch hunt” in which innocent people become victims is completely unacceptable in a democratic society, the mood of this play was in tune with the time it was staged in theater stage- the period of the early fifties, when the crusade of American Senator Joseph McCarthy and a number of other figures against the communists destroyed the lives of innocent people.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

A native of Mississippi, Tennessee, Williams was one of the most complex personalities in American literature of the mid-20th century. His work is mainly devoted to the confusion of feelings and the suppression of sexuality in the family, most often the family of southerners. Williams' works are characterized by the magic of endless repetition, the poetic manner of expressing feelings and thoughts, the unusual setting in which the action unfolds, and the Freudian exploration of sexual desire. As one of the first American writers to openly admit his homosexual orientation, Williams explained that the emphasized sexuality of his restless characters was an expression of their loneliness. The characters in this playwright's plays live an intense spiritual life and experience severe mental anguish.

Williams wrote more than 20 multi-act plays, many of which are autobiographical. He reached the peak of his creativity relatively early - in the forties - in such dramatic works, like The Glass Menagerie (1944) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). None of his works over the next twenty-odd years matched the success and creative richness of the two aforementioned plays.

Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)

Long life and creative path Katherine Anne Porter spans several eras. Her first success was brought to her by the short story “The Judas Tree in Bloom” (1929), which takes place in Mexico during the revolution. The beautifully written stories for which Porter became famous provide a nuanced portrait of a person's personal life. So, for example, in the story “How Granny Weatherall was Deceived,” the author very accurately conveys a variety of manifestations human psyche. Often Porter reveals inner world women and shows their dependence on men.

Porter learned a lot about nuance and nuance from New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Collections of Katherine Anne Porter's short stories include the following: The Judas Tree in Bloom (1930), Afternoon Wine (1937), Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), The Leaning Tower (1944) and Collected Stories (1965). In the early sixties she wrote a long allegorical novel about one of the eternal themes- people's responsibility to each other. The novel, which Porter gave the title Ship of Fools (1962), takes place in the late thirties on board a passenger ship carrying members of the German upper classes and German refugees.

Although not a particularly prolific writer, Porter nonetheless influenced a generation of writers, including her Southern colleagues Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor.

Eudora Welty (b. 1909)

Born into a family of northerners who moved to the South, Eudora Welty was influenced in her work by Warren and Porter. By the way, the latter wrote the preface to Welty's first collection of short stories. In "The Green Curtain" (1941), rich in nuances and shades, the writer imitated Porter, but the young author was more interested in the comic and grotesque. Like the late Flannery O'Connor, she often portrays strange, eccentric or exceptional characters.

Despite the presence of violence in Welty’s works, the writer’s wit is humane, life-affirming, as, for example, is clear from her often included in anthologies of American literature short story “Why I Work at the Post Office,” in which a stubborn and independent daughter leaves home and moves away to a tiny post office. The following collections of Welty's short stories were published: "The Wide Web" (1943), "Golden Apples" (1949), "The Bride of Innisfallen" (1955) and "Moon Lake" (1980). Welty also wrote novels such as Engagement in the Delta (1946), which is about a family living on a plantation in modern times, and The Optimist's Daughter (1972).

THE FIFties: ABUNDANCE LEADS TO ALIENATION FROM SOCIETY

In the fifties, the impact of the process of modernization and technological development on daily life. This process began in the twenties, but was interrupted by the Great Depression, and continued when the Second World War brought the United States out of it. In the fifties, the time of long-awaited material well-being arrived for most Americans. Corporate jobs seemed to provide a good life (usually for suburbanites) with the real and symbolic trappings of success—a house, a car, a television, and appliances—that came with it.

However, the predominant theme in the literature became the loneliness of the upper classes of society; the faceless company official in Sloan Wilson's wildly popular novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955) came to personify a certain cultural stratum. Sociologist David Riesman, in his book The Lonely Crowd (1950), attempted to explain such a typical phenomenon of American life as the alienation of Americans from society. This book was followed by other popular works of more or less research character - from The Hidden Means of Persuasion (1957) and Vance Packard's Quest for Position to The Man Working for the Organization (1956). ) by William White and the higher intellectual works White Collar (1951) and The Power Elite (1956) by C. Wright Mills. Economist and university professor John Kenneth Galbraith contributed to the study of this topic with The Welfare Society (1958). Most of these works advanced the idea that all Americans lead the same way of life. The studies were general in nature, criticizing US citizens for losing the individualism of the first settlers and excessive conformity (for example, Riesman and Mills) or advising Americans to become representatives of a “new class” formed as a result of technological progress and an abundance of free time (as Galbraith did in his writings). ).

Essentially, the fifties were a decade of subtle, pervasive stress. The novels of John O'Hara, John Cheever and John Updike show that stress is hidden under the guise of prosperity. The heroes of some of the best works are people who fail in the pursuit of success. We find similar heroes in the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and the novel Saul Bellow “Seize the Day” (1956). Some writers went further and began to describe those who consciously placed themselves outside of society. This line of creativity was chosen by J.D. Salinger in “The Catcher in the Rye” (1951), Ralph. Ellison in The Invisible Man (1952) and Jack Kerouac in On the Road (1957) At the end of the decade, Philip Roth appeared with a series of stories that reflected his alienation from his Jewish heritage (Goodbye). , Columbus", 1959). The writer's psychological reflections fueled his work until the nineties, providing food first for artistic prose and then autobiography.

Fiction by Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, among other American writers Jewish origin, famous in the fifties and beyond, represents a vibrant and worthy contribution to the history of American literature. For works of three The above-mentioned authors are primarily characterized by humor, increased attention to issues of ethics and morality, and descriptions of Jewish communities of the Old and New Worlds.

John O'Hara (1905-1970)

Having gone through a large journalistic school, John O'Hara is a very prolific writer. He has written numerous plays, stories and novels. He is a master of depicting individual carefully written and expressive details. O'Hara is best known for his realistic novels, written mainly in the fifties , about people who are outwardly successful, but in their souls they feel a sense of guilt or dissatisfaction, which makes them vulnerable. Such novels include Rendezvous in Samarra (1934), 10 North Frederick (1955), and A View from the Terrace (1958).

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

The works of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison reflect the African-American experience of the fifties. The heroes of their works suffer not from excessive ambition, but from a lack of individuality. Baldwin, the eldest of nine children born into a Harlem family, was the adopted son of a minister. In his younger years, he himself preached sermons in church from time to time. This experience contributed to the formation of such qualities of the writer’s prose as brightness and “orality”, most clearly manifested in his wonderful essays, such as “Letter from the Land of My Thoughts” from the collection “Tomorrow is a Fire” (1963). In this moving piece of nonfiction, Baldwin rails against the separation of races.

Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell Me from the Mountains (1953), which is autobiographical in nature, is perhaps the most popular. In him we're talking about about a 14-year-old boy trying to understand himself and find religious faith in the process of independently solving the painful questions of converting to Christianity in a church that occupies a room located on the ground floor of a store. Baldwin's other significant works include In Another Country (1962), a novel exploring racial identity and homosexuality, and Nobody Knows My Name (1961), a collection of impassioned essays on racism and the purpose of the artist and literature.

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994)

Ralph Ellison was born in the Midwest, Oklahoma. He studied at Tuskegee Institute in the southern United States. Writing career Ellison is one of the strangest in American literature - he has only one novel to his credit that was a success with the reader and received high praise from critics. It is called "The Invisible Man" (1952) and is the story of a black American who voluntarily chose a dark dungeon as his habitat, illuminated by electricity stolen from a utility company. The book tells about the hero's fantastic experience, leading him to disappointment in life. When a black college awards the novel's hero a scholarship, he is humiliated by whites; Once he gets to college, he becomes convinced that the black president of this school does not care about the concerns of black Americans. Life is immoral even outside of college. Even religion brings no consolation: the preacher turns out to be a criminal. The novel indicts society for failing to provide its citizens - both white and black - with practical ideals and institutions capable of putting them into practice. This work shows the full depth of the racial problem, since the “invisible man” became such not on his own, but due to the fact that other people, blinded by prejudice, are unable to discern a human being in him.

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

Lupus took the life of Georgia native Flannery O'Connor early. However, this fatal disease did not make the writer sentimental, as evidenced by her humorous, but at the same time harsh and uncompromising stories. Unlike Porter, Welty and Hurston, O'Connor, as a rule, does not identify himself with his heroes, but looks at them from the outside, showing their inferiority and stupidity. Superstition and religious fanaticism of uneducated southerners who “inhabit” the writer’s novels are often lead to violence, as clearly shown in O'Connor's novel Wise Blood (1952), which tells the story of a religious fanatic who founded his own church.

Sometimes the violence is driven by prejudice, as in Displaced Person, where ignorant villagers kill an immigrant who has thwarted them through his hard work and unusual behavior. Often cruelty simply overtakes the characters, as in the story "Good Little People", in which a man seduces a girl only to steal her prosthetic leg.

O'Connor's dark humor connects her with the works of Nathaniel West and Joseph Haller. The writer's works include two collections of short stories, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) and "All Things Are Connected" (1965); the novel "The Kingdom" heavenly power is taken" (1960) and a collection of letters "A Way of Life" (1979). In 1971, "The Complete Stories" of Flannery O'Connor was published.

Saul Bellow (b. 1915)

Russian-Jewish writer Saul Bellow was born in Canada and raised in Chicago. In college he studied anthropology and sociology, which still greatly influences his work today. Bellow himself claimed that he owed a lot to Theodore Dreiser, who significantly expanded his understanding of life and helped him spiritually perceive this accumulated experience. In 1976, the highly respected Saul Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The writer's early, somewhat gritty existentialist novels include The Man Dangling in the Air (1944), a Kafkaesque exploration of the condition of a man awaiting conscription, and The Sacrifice (1947), which explores the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. In the fifties, Bellow's works became more humorous: in some cases, the writer resorted to energetic and exciting first-person narration. Bellow used this technique in The Adventures of Augie March (1953), where he created a Huck Finn-like character of an urban entrepreneur who becomes an underground trader in Europe, and in Henderson, the Rain King (1959), a wonderful, life-filled tragicomic a novel about a middle-aged millionaire whose unfulfilled dreams lead him to Africa. Bellow's later works include Herzog (1964), about the troubled life of a neurotic English professor who explores the idea of ​​romanticizing the self; the novels Mr. Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift (1975), and the autobiographical novel Dean's December (1982).

Bellow's novella Seize the Day (1956) is a brilliant piece of literature that is often included in high school and college curricula as an example of mastery and brevity. The main character of the novel is the failed businessman Tommy Wilhelm, who is trying to pretend that everything is fine with him in order to thus hide his failure. The novella begins with irony: “When it was necessary to hide his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm knew how to do it no worse than anyone.” at least, he thought so..." Paradoxically, it was precisely this kind of waste of energy that contributed to his collapse. Tommy is so absorbed in the consciousness of his own inadequacy that the latter really takes on catastrophic proportions for him - he fails with women, work, cars and, finally, in the market market, where he loses all his money. Wilhelm is an example of what in Jewish folklore is called a shimel - a person to whom misfortunes always happen. The short story "Seize the Day" summarizes a trait inherent in many Americans - the fear of being a loser.

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)

Bernard Malamud was born in New York into a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. In his second novel, “The Helper” (1957), he found themes characteristic of his work as a whole - the desire of man to survive at any cost and the moral and ethical principles of Jewish immigrants who recently arrived in America.

Malamud's first published work was The Nugget (1952), which intertwines reality with fantasy in the mystical world of professional baseball. Among the writer's other novels are "New Life" (1961), "The Craftsman" (1966), "Fidelman's Pictures" (1969) and "Tenants" (1971). In addition, Malamud is a master of the small literary genre, having written many stories. In a number of them, presented in the collections “The Magic Barrel” (1958), “Idiots First” (1963) and “Rembrandt’s Hat” (1973), he managed better than other American-born writers to convey the past and present the life of Jews, giving it real and surreal features and combining fact with fiction.

Malamud's monumental work, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer and National Book Awards, is the novel "The Craftsman." The action in it takes place at the beginning of the 20th century. in Russia and represents only a thinly veiled allusion to a real event - the “Beilis case”, the fabricated accusation in 1913 of the Jew Mendel Beilis of the ritual murder of a Russian boy and the shameful trial that followed, one of the most vile anti-Semitic trials in new history. In “The Master,” as in many of his other works, Malamud emphasizes the suffering of his hero Jacob Bok, who, in spite of everything, tries to withstand all the trials that befall him.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991)

Nobel Prize winner, novelist and master of the short story Isaac Bashevis Singer - a native of Poland who emigrated to the United States in 1935 - was the son of the famous head of the rabbinical court in Warsaw. Throughout his life, Singer wrote in Yiddish, which is a mixture of German and Hebrew and has been the common language of European Jews for the past several centuries. Singer portrayed in his works two specific groups of Jewish residents of shtetls (villages) of the Old World and 20th-century emigrants who crossed the ocean before and after the Second World War in search of a better life. Singer's works cover the entire period of the Holocaust - the extermination of a significant part of European Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices. On the one hand, in such novels as "The Estate" (1967) and "The Estate" (1969), which take place in Russia in the 19th century, and in the story "The Moscat Family" (1950), about one from the families of Polish Jews between the world wars, Singer depicts the now defunct world of European Jews. On the other hand, this is complemented by the writer’s works related to post-war events, such as the novel “Enemies: A Love Story” (1972), dedicated to Jews who went through the Holocaust and are rebuilding their lives.

Vladimir Nabokov (1889-1977)

Like Singer, Vladimir Nabokov emigrated from Eastern Europe. He was born in Tsarist Russia into a wealthy family; moved to the United States in 1940 and received American citizenship five years later. From 1948 to 1959 he taught literature at Cornell University, located in upstate New York; in 1960 the writer moved permanently to Switzerland. Nabokov became famous for his novels, including autobiographical work"Pnin" (1957) about an unadapted Russian emigrant professor and "Lolita" (American edition 1958) about an educated middle-aged European who falls madly in love with an ignorant 12-year-old American girl. Another of Nabokov's successful novels, Pale Fire (1962), styled as a literary study, focuses on a long poem by an imaginary dead poet and the commentary on it by a critic whose writings suppress the poem and suddenly take on a life of their own.

Subtle stylistics, skillful satire and daring innovation in the field of form place Nabokov among the significant masters of words. His work, in particular, influenced the writer John Barth. Nabokov was aware of his role as an intermediary between Russian and American literature; he wrote a book about Gogol and translated it into English language novel in verse by Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". Nabokov's choice of bold, slightly expressionistic themes, such as odd love in Lolita, contributed to the penetration of expressionist movements that originated in the 20th century in Europe into the predominantly realistic tradition of American fiction. In addition, the satirical and nostalgic tone of the writer gave a new, tragicomic emotional coloring to his work. Later, other writers began to use this technique, for example, Pynchon, who combined contrasting tones of defiant wit and fear.

John Cheever (1912-1982)

John Cheever has often been called a "novelist." He is known for his elegant, thought-provoking stories that critically examine the New York business world and its impact on businessmen and their wives, children and friends. In the elegantly written stories in the Chekhovian spirit, presented in the collections "How Some People Live" (1943), "The Burglar of Shady Hill" (1958), "Some People, Places and Things That Won't Be in My Life" the next novel", (1961), "The Foreman and the Widow of the Golf Club" (1964) and "Apple World" (1973), one feels an underlying ironic, melancholic, but never fully satisfied and, judging by everything, a hopeless desire for passion or metaphysical certainty. The titles of Cheever's books reflect his lightheartedness, fun and irreverence, and also hint at the content of the writer's works. Cheever also published a number of novels - The Wapshot Scandal (1964), Bullet Park (1969) and Falconer (1977). The latter is largely autobiographical in nature.

John Updike (b. 1932)

Like John Updike's Cheever, with his interest in the lives of those who inhabit the wealthy suburbs, with his purely American themes, discussions of the boredom and melancholy of existence, with his thoughtfulness and especially with his constant descriptions of the same places located on the eastern coast of the ocean, in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, is also considered a writer of everyday life. Updike is best known for his four Rabbit books, which tell the story of the life of a man named Harry "Rabbit" Engstrom and his rise and fall over four decades of US history against the backdrop of the socio-political development of American society. The novel “Rabbit, Run” (1960) reflected the mood of the fifties, in which Engstrom appears to the reader as a dissatisfied young head of the family who has no goals for himself. In The Healed Rabbit (1971), which focuses heavily on the counterculture of the sixties, Engstrom still has no purpose in life and does not know how to shake off the shackles of everyday life. In the third Engstrom novel, Rabbit Got Rich (1981), Harry receives an inheritance and becomes a wealthy man. The author depicts it against the backdrop of the events of the seventies, when the era of the Vietnam War was gradually fading away and an atmosphere of selfishness inherent in the wealthy strata of society reigned. IN last book from this series "Rabbit on Rest" (1990) Engstrom comes to terms with life and the idea of ​​the inevitability of death. The general picture of the eighties serves as a kind of “artistic decoration” in the novel.

Updike also wrote the novels The Centaur (1963), The Married Couples (1968), and Beck: The Book (1970). Of all modern writers he is the best stylist, and the stories of this master clearly show ample opportunities and the innovation of his style. The following collections of Updike's stories were published: "The Same Door" (1959), "Music School" (1966), "Museums and Women" (1972), "Too Far to Walk" (1979) and "Problems" (1979). In addition, Updike published several collections of his poetry and essays.

J.D. Salinger (b. 1919)

In his works, the harbinger of the phenomena of the sixties, J.D. Salinger, spoke about the attempts of individuals to place themselves outside of society. A native of New York, he achieved enormous success with his novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951), in which he portrayed the sensitive sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, who runs away from an elite boarding school in order to quickly join the adult world, but becomes disillusioned with it. materialism, falsehood and spiritual emptiness.

When asked what he would like to be, Caulfield replies “catcher in the rye,” inaccurately quoting one of Burns’ poems. Holden considers himself a modern white knight, the sole guardian of innocence. In his imagination, he sees a field in which the rye grows so tall that the children playing on it cannot even see where they are running. Caulfield himself turns out to be the only adult among them. "I'm standing on the edge of a crazy cliff. My task is to catch everyone who steps into the abyss." Stepping into the abyss is identified with the loss of childhood and innocence (especially in the sexual sense) - a theme that was constantly touched upon in that era. Other editions of this prolific reclusive writer include Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and the New Yorker collection of short stories, Higher the Rafters, Carpenters. (1963). Since one of Salinger's stories, living in New Hampshire, was published in 1965, the writer has no longer appeared on the horizon of American literature.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Born into an impoverished French-Canadian family, Jack Kerouac also questioned life values middle class. As a final-year student at Columbia University in New York, he met the “broken” members of the literary underground. The writer’s fiction was greatly influenced by the work of the novelist Thomas Wolfe, who worked in the South, whose works are partly autobiographical in nature.

Kerouac's most famous novel, On the Road (1957), depicts the Beatniks roaming America in search of an impossible dream of community and beauty. Vagabonds in Search of Dharma (1958) also features wandering counterculture intellectuals and their fascination with Zen Buddhism. In addition to his novels, Kerouac wrote a book of poetry, Mexico City Blues (1959), and a memoir of his life with such beatniks as the experimental writer William Burroughs and the poet Allen Ginsberg.

THE STORMY BUT PRODUCTIVE SIXties

The alienation and stress that characterized the United States in the fifties found its visible expression in the sixties in the movement for civil rights, feminism, protests against the war, the active struggle of national minorities for their rights and the emergence of a counterculture, the consequences of which are still felt in American society. Noteworthy social works of this era include the speeches of civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., feminist leader Betty Frieden's first book (The Mysterious Female Soul, 1963), and Norman Mailer's journalism, Armies of the Night (1968). g.) about one of the anti-war marches of 1967.

In the sixties, the line between fiction and documentary prose, between novel and reportage, was blurred - a process that continues to this day. Novelist Truman Capote, " terrible child" of the late forties and the entire period of the fifties, which blinded the reader with the brilliance of his works, such as, for example, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1958), amazed the reading public with his documentary novel "In Cold Blood" (1966), which is a fascinating an analysis of a brutal mass murder in the heart of America that reads like a detective story. At the same time, the so-called “new journalism” appeared - entire volumes of non-fiction that combined journalistic techniques with the technique of fiction or often played with facts, reworking them to give them a narrative. more drama and spontaneity. Tom Wolfe's collection "Drug Test with an Electrified Soft Drink" (1968) celebrated the grimaces of novelist Ken Kesey's "countercultural" trip with one of the rock bands, and in the book of essays by the same author, "Radical Chic and the Cutters." holds a candle to itself" (1970) ridiculed many aspects of the mass political activity left. Wolfe later wrote the eloquent, life-affirming and intelligent history of the first phase of the US space program, "The Class Guys" (1979), and the novel "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987), drawing big picture American society in the eighties.

In the sixties, literature kept pace with the rapid development of the era. An ironic, humorous view of its events appeared, which was reflected in the fantastic approach to American reality on the part of some writers. Examples of this approach are found in Kesey's darkly humorous novel Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), which describes life in a mental hospital where the patients are much more normal than the medical staff, and in Richard Brautigan's novel Trout Fishing in America ( 1967). The use of a comic and fantastic approach led to the emergence of a new comic-metaphysical literary genre in the wonderful phantasmagorical novels of Thomas Pynchon "V" (1963) and "The Forty-Ninth Lot Cries Out" (1966), in John Barth's novel "Young Goat Giles" " (1966) and in the grotesque stories of Donald Barthelme, the first collection of which, Come Back, Doctor Caligari, was published in 1964.

In another literary genre - drama - Edward Albee created a number of unconventional psychological works - "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1962), "A Delicate Balance" (1966) and "Seascape" (1975) - reflecting the struggle taking place in the soul of the author himself, and his paradoxical approach to drama.

At the same time, this decade saw the emergence of the talent of one of the authors who had already crossed the forty-year mark - Walker Percy, a doctor by profession, who is the ideal embodiment of a southern aristocrat. In a number of his novels, Percy used his native land as a stage on which unique psychological plays were played out. His novels The Movie Lover (1961) and The Last Gentleman (1966) received especially high recognition.

Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937)

Mysterious and shy of self-promotion and fame, Thomas Pynchon was born in New York and educated at Cornell University, where he was influenced by Vladimir Nabokov. There is no doubt that Pynchon's innovative fantasies used themes of solving puzzles, explaining games, and deciphering codes, which may well have originated in Nabokov's work. Pynchon has a wide range of emotional nuances that can turn paranoia into poetry.

All of this writer's fiction has the same structure. The plot of his novels, as a rule, does not concern at least one of the heroes, whose task is precisely to bring a certain order out of the chaos surrounding him and thus “decipher” the world. The implementation of such a plan, which is the essence of the work of a traditional artist, is transferred to the reader, who has to connect to this process and monitor the discovery of clues and comprehension of meanings. This paranoid vision extends to entire continents and spans time itself, as Pynchon resorts to the metaphor of entropy, that is, the gradual disappearance of the Universe. What is striking in his works is his masterful use of popular culture - especially science fiction and the detective genre.

Pynchon's novel "V" is loosely built around two characters - the loser Benny Profane, constantly embarking on aimless journeys and getting involved in dubious enterprises, and his antipode - the educated Herbert Stencil, looking for the mystical spy V (the words that define this character in English begin with this letter). mysterious woman - Venus, virgin, dummy). The short novel "Lot Forty-Nine Screams" describes a secret system related to the United States Postal Service. Gravity's Rainbow (1973) is set in London during the Second World War, when rockets are falling on the city, and revolves around a symbolic and farcical quest for Nazis and other shapeshifters trying to hide their true colors. The presence of violence, comedy and a penchant for innovation in the works of this writer inevitably connects him with the period of the sixties.

John Bart (b. 1930)

Maryland native John Barth was always less interested in the content of a story than in the nature of the story. However, if Pynchon tried to confuse the reader, leading him aside and asking him riddles, as is done in detective novels, Barthes lures the readership into a kind of funhouse, a kind of kingdom of crooked mirrors that exaggerate certain features of a person’s external and internal appearance and downplay other. Realism is alien to Barthes, who wrote "Lost in the Fun" (1968), a collection of 14 stories that constantly touch on the theme of the very process of writing and reading. Barthes strives to convince the reader of the artificiality of reading and writing and to prevent him from being so carried away by the story that he considers what is happening in it to be reality. Determined to dispel the illusion of realism, Barthes resorts to a whole range of reflective techniques to remind the reader that he is just busy reading.

Like the early works of Saul Bellow, Barthes's first novels are quest-based and marked by an existentialist worldview. They contain the theme of escape and aimless wandering, which was constantly raised in the fifties. In the novel "The Floating Opera" (1956), the hero intends to commit suicide. "End of the Journey" (1958) deals with a complex love story. In Barthes's works of the sixties there is more humor and less realism. The Datura Merchant (1960) parodies the style of 18th-century picaresque novels, and Giles the Goat Boy (1966) is a parody of the world seen as a university. The book "Chimera" (1972) retells fairy tales from Greek mythology, in the epistolary novel Letters (1979), Bart appears as one of the characters, just as Norman Mailer does in his journalistic book Armies of the Night. In the novel On Holiday (1982), Barthes resorts to the popular theme of espionage in fiction; This story is about a female university professor and her husband, a former secret agent turned writer.

Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

Everyone agrees that Norman Mailer is the most prominent representative of American literature of recent decades, capable of writing on a variety of topics and changing his literary style. This writer is reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway in his desire to acquire a wide range of experiences, his energetic style of writing and the contradictory nature of his personality. Mailer's ideas are bold and innovative. He is the complete opposite of writers like Barthes, for whom the topic is not so important, but the main thing is how it is presented. Unlike Pynchon, who prefers to remain in the shadows, Mailer constantly tries to be in the spotlight. A novelist, essayist, sometimes politician, a man who defends the rights of writers and from time to time acts as an actor, he is always in the public eye. From "New Journalism" exercises including Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), an analysis of the major party conventions of the 1968 presidential campaign, to a fascinating exploration of the history of the death penalty for a convicted murderer." The Executioner's Song (1979) Mailer went on to write such ambitious and monumental novels as Old Evenings (1983), set in ancient Egypt, and The Hooker's Shadow (1992), about the CIA. .

NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES

By the mid-seventies, an era of consolidation began. The conflict in Vietnam ended, and soon the United States recognized the People's Republic of China, and then came the celebration of America's 200th anniversary. A little more time passed, and the eighties came into their own - the so-called “era of selfishness”, when people began to care more about their personal needs and pay less attention to serious social problems.

In the field of literature, old trends have been preserved, but pure experimentation has greatly lost ground. New novelists emerged, such as John Gardner, John Irving (The World According to Garp, 1978), Paul Theroux (The Mosquito Coast, 1982), William Kennedy (The Iron Weeds, 1983) and Alice Walker (“The Color Scarlet”, 1982). They wrote novels with a beautiful style, telling the reader exciting stories about human destinies. Their careful attention to setting, character, and theme indicated that the work of these writers marked a return to realism. Realism, abandoned by experimental writers in the sixties, began to regain ground, often interspersed with bold, original elements. Examples of such innovation include such audacity as the construction of a literary work as a novel within a novel by John Gardner in his Autumn Light (1976), and the introduction of African-American dialect into the novel, which appears in Alice Walker's book Color scarlet". The flourishing of literature of national minorities began. The drama moved away from realism, acquired a more cinematic character and became much more dynamic. At the same time, however, the "decade of selfishness" produced new, assertive talent, including Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City, 1984), Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero, 1985), Tama Janowitz ("Slaves of New York", 1986).

John Gardner (1933-1982)

Coming from a farming family living in New York State, John Gardner remained the most significant exponent of moral and ethical values ​​in American literature until the end of his days (he crashed on a motorcycle). He taught English and was a literary historian of the medieval period. Gardner's most popular novel is Grendel (1971), a stylized adaptation of the Old English epic Beowulf from the existentialist point of view of the monster. In this short, bright and often full of comedy novel, the author very subtly opposes existentialism, which instills despair and cynicism in the main exponent of this philosophy.

A prolific and popular novelist, Gardner adopted a realistic approach to his writing, but also used a variety of innovations such as breaking the sequence of action through flashbacks, narration within a narrative, retelling of myths and contrasting stories to reveal the truth in human relationships. . The strengths of this writer’s work are the art of creating characters (he is especially good at portraying ordinary people full of sympathy) and the colorfulness of his style. Gardner's major works include: Resurrection (1966), Dialogues with the Sunny (1972), Nickel Mountain (1973), Autumn Light (1976) and Mickelson's Ghosts " (1982).

In his writings, Gardner preaches the beneficial power of fellowship and encourages the fulfillment of duty and family responsibilities. In this respect he is a deeply traditional and conservative author. Gardner tried to show that certain values ​​and actions lead to a full life. In his book “On the Moral Significance of Literature” (1978), he called for writing novels that affirm moral and ethical values, rather than blinding the reader with empty technical innovation. The book in question created a sensation mainly because Gardner openly criticized prominent contemporary authors in it for the lack of moral and ethical principles in their works.

Toni Morrison (b. 1931)

African-American writer Toni Morrison was born in Ohio into a religious family, studied at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and worked as a senior editor at one of the major Washington publishing houses, and also taught at a number of educational institutions in the country and in this enjoyed a certain reputation.

Morrison's rich and colorful prose has brought her international recognition. In her gripping, energetic novels, the writer takes a comprehensive look at the complex spiritual world of black Americans. In her early work, The Bluest Eye (1970), a strong-willed black girl tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, who manages to survive despite her cruel and abusive father. Pecola believes that her black eyes have somehow miraculously turned blue and that now she will be desired and loved. Morrison said that with this novel she tried to find her “I” and establish herself as a writer: “I was Pecola, and Claudia, and all the other heroes of my book.”

The novel "Sula" (1973) is dedicated to the friendship of two women. Morrison rejects stereotypes and portrays African-American women as unique, one-of-a-kind individuals. The writer's novel "Song of Solomon" was awarded several awards. This work describes a black man, Milkman Pomer, and his complex connections with your family and community. In the novel Tar Man (1981), Morrison depicts the relationships between white and black Americans. "The Darling" (1987) is a harrowing tale of a woman who kills her children to free them from a life of slavery. This novel uses the fantastical element inherent in magical realism, which allows the author to create the mysterious image of the Darling, who returns to live with her mother, who cut her throat.

Morrison argued that her novels, while being complete works of art, at the same time carry a political charge: “I’m not interested in delving into my own imagination ... yes, the work should be political.” In 1933, Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Alice Walker (b. 1944)

African-American writer Alice Walker was born in one of the agricultural regions of Georgia in the family of a sharecropper; She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, where her teachers included political activist and poet Muriel Rueckiser. Walker's work was also influenced by writers Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston.

Walker, a self-described "women's" writer, has been involved with the feminist movement for many years, representing black women within it. Like Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Cade Bambara, and other acclaimed black novelists, Walker embraces an emphatic lyrical realism to better convey the dreams and failures of a gullible and trustworthy people. Her works highlight the struggle for human dignity. Possessing the skill of a subtle stylist, especially clearly manifested in the epistolary novel “The Color Scarlet,” Walker strives for enlightenment in his work. In this way, she is reminiscent of the American novelist Ishmael Reed, whose satirical works draw attention to social and racial problems.

Walker's novel "The Color Scarlet" is a story about the love of two black sisters, which continues despite many years of separation. This love story is interspersed with the story of how, during the same period, a shy, ugly and uneducated sister discovers in herself inner strength thanks to the support of my friend. The theme of women supporting each other brings to mind Maya Angelou's autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), which celebrates the spiritual bond between mother and daughter, and the writings of white feminist Adrienne Rich. In the novel The Color Scarlet, men are portrayed as beings who are generally ignorant of the needs and situations of women.

In the late eighties and early nineties, works by representatives of national minorities took a strong position in American literature. This applies to both drama and fiction. August Wilson, who continues to write a series of plays about the life of black Americans in the 20th century (including the plays "Barriers", 1986 and "Music Lessons", 1989), stands on a par with such writers as Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman and Toni Morrison.

Asian Americans are also beginning to occupy a worthy place in American literature. Maxine Hong Kingston (The Woman Warrior, 1976) paved the way for her Asian colleagues, including Amy Tan, whose brilliant novels (The Joy Luck Club, 1989, and The Kitchen God's Wife, 1991) .) about Chinese life transferred to American conditions in the post-World War II period aroused great interest among readers. California-born son of Chinese immigrants, David Henry Hwang's plays F.O.B. (1981) and M. Butterfly (1986) left its mark on drama.

A relatively new group of Spanish-American writers has emerged on the American literary horizon, including Pulitzer Prize winners Oscar Hijuelos, the Cuban-born novelist and author of The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love (1989); the writer Sandra Cisneros with her collection of short stories, Women Who Scream at the top of their lungs, and Other Stories (1991); and Rudolph Anaya, who published Bless Me, Ultima (1972), which sold 300 copies 000 copies, mostly in the western US.

NEW REGIONALISM

There is nothing new in the regional tradition of American literature. It is as old as Indian legends, as unforgettable as the works of James Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte, and as widely known as the novels of William Faulkner and the plays of Tennessee Williams. However, for some time in the post-World War II era, this tradition seems to have faded into obscurity, unless urban fiction is considered a form of regionalism, which may well be true. However, the past decade or so has seen the triumphant return of regionalism to American literature, allowing readers to gain a sense of time and place and the presence of specific people. Regionalism dominates popular fiction, such as the detective genre, no less than classical novels, stories, short stories and drama.

This phenomenon is explained by several reasons. First, during the last generation, all the arts in America were decentralized. It seems that theatre, music and dance arts in cities located in the south, southwest and northwest of the United States are no less thriving than in largest cities countries such as New York and Chicago. Film companies produce films throughout the United States. Film groups travel to thousands of different places in the country. A similar situation is observed in the literature. Small fiction publishers are thriving outside of New York's "publishing row." Never before have writing workshops and conferences been so fashionable. Literature courses on college campuses are similarly popular across the country. It's no surprise that young talent can emerge anywhere. All you need is a pencil, paper and a point of view.

The most encouraging aspects of the new regionalism are its scope and diversity. He is winning more and more new supporters, spreading from east to west. In the field of literature, his path across the continent begins in the northeast, in Albany, New York, where the interests of his own son William Kennedy, who once worked as a journalist, concentrated, the same Kennedy whose novels written in Albany, including " Iron Weeds (1983) and Very Ancient Bones (1992), elegiacally and often poignantly captured the lives of the inhabitants of the streets and taverns of the capital of the state of New York.

Prolific novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist Joyce Carol Oates was also born in the northeastern United States. In her haunting works, obsessed characters make desperate attempts to find themselves in a grotesque environment, but this invariably leads them to self-destruction. Among the most striking works of the writer are stories collected in the collections “Wheel of Love” (1970) and “Where are you going, where have you been?” (1974). The hugely popular master of horror novels, Stephen King, usually chooses the state of Maine, located in the same region, as the setting for his works that keep the reader in constant suspense.

Further south, on the coast, near Baltimore, Maryland, Anne Tyler talks in laconic and measured language about the unusual lives of her amazing heroes. Novels such as Homesick Lunch (1982), The Accidental Traveler (1985), Breathless Lessons (1988) and Saint Maybe (1991) ), helped her gain a high reputation in literary circles and achieve popularity among the mass reader.

A short distance from Baltimore is the US capital Washington, which also has its own literary tradition. It may not be very visible since this city is mostly about politics. One of the novelists who vividly described the life of those. who stands at the helm of power is Ward Just, a former journalist specializing in international politics who changed his profession and became a writer to depict the world that no one knows better than him - the world of journalists, politicians, diplomats and soldiers. Just's novels "Nicholson at Large" (1975), which is a study of the journalist's activities during the presidency of John Kennedy and after his death, that is, in the early sixties; "In City of Fear" (1982), which recreates political activity in Washington during the Vietnam War, and "Jack Gans" (1989), a sober assessment of a Chicago politician and his path to the US Senate, are just a few from his impressive works. Susan Richards Shreve's 1979 novel Children of Power examines the personal lives of the children of government officials, and popular Maryland-based novelist Tom Clancy uses the military-political landscape of Washington as the launching pad for a series of epic literary works. keeping readers in constant suspense.

In the region south of Washington, Reynolds Price and Gil McCorkle attracted attention. In the seventies, one critic described Price as former mentor Tyler, as being in the position of “a writer living permanently in the South and writing about it,” which is already becoming a thing of the past. This writer first attracted attention with his novel A Long, Happy Life (1962). It describes eastern North Carolina and its people, and in particular a young woman named Rosecoak Mastian. In subsequent years, Price continued to write about his fictional heroine and then moved on to other topics, but then again made one of the women the heroine of his highly acclaimed 1986 Kate Vaden, the writer's only novel written in the first person. Price's latest novel, Calhoun Blue (1992), tells the story of a passionate but hopeless love spanning decades of marriage.

Born in 1958 and therefore part of a new generation, McCorkle dedicates her novels and short stories - set in small towns in North Carolina - to the study of adolescent psychology (Cheer Captain, 1984), intergenerational connections (Going to Virginia", 1987) and some specific problems of worldview modern women Yuga ("Strict Diet", 1992).

This region is also home to Pat Conroy, who wrote life-affirming autobiographical novels about his South Carolina upbringing and his abusive and tyrannical father (The Great Santini, 1976; The Prince of Tides, 1986). ). These pieces perfectly capture the natural beauty of the South Carolina lowlands. Born in Mississippi and living for many years in Memphis, Tennessee, Shelby Foote is a longtime chronicler of the South whose historical writing and fiction have taken him to television, where he has contributed to a series of programs covering the American Civil War.

There are a lot of talented writers in central America. That includes Jane Smiley, who teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. Smiley was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1991 book A Thousand Acres, a setting of Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear on a Midwestern farm where a family feud begins when an aging farmer decides to divide up his land. between three daughters.

Texas chronicler Larry McMurtry depicts his home state in a variety of historical periods and settings, from the defunct 19th-century West (Lonesome Dove, 1985; Anything for Billy, 1988) to the vanishing small towns of the post-war era ("The Last Session", 1966).

Cormac McCarthy, who explored the desert in the southwestern United States and reflected what he saw in his novels Blood Meridian (1985), Horses, Horses (1992) and The Crossing (1994), is a writer- an imaginative hermit who is only just beginning to get his due. Regarded as a worthy heir to the Southern Gothic tradition, McCarthy is equally fascinated by the rugged terrain and the wildness and unpredictability of human nature.

Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko's novel "Ceremony" (1977), set against the backdrop of the amazing landscape of the author's home state of New Mexico, won a wide readership. Like N. Scott Mo-made's 1969 book The Road to Rainy Mountain, this is a "song-novel" modeled on Indian healing rituals. Silko's 1991 novel Almanac of the Dead provides a panorama of the southwestern United States, from the migration of tribes to today's drug dealers and corrupt developers profiting from the misuse of land. Best-selling mystery author Tony Hillerman, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, describes the same region in his works - the southwestern part of the United States. The heroes of his detective stories are two modest, hard-working police officers - Navajo Indians.

North of this region, in Montana, the poet James Welsh in his short, almost flawless novels Winter in the Blood (1974), The Death of Jim Lowney (1979), Ful's Crow (1986) .) and "The Indian Lawyer" (1990) details how Indians try to find themselves in the difficult conditions of life on a reservation, where they suffer from poverty and alcoholism. Thomas McGuane also lives in Montana, who wrote the novels “Ninety-Two in the Shadows” (1973) and “No Change” (1989), clearly aimed at a male readership and reflecting the dream of getting rid of restlessness, finding refuge and establishing connections with society. In neighboring North Dakota, Louise Erdrich, with Chippewa blood in her veins, wrote a number of impressive works. In her 1984 novel Love Potion, she skillfully combines stoicism with adversity and humor in depicting the complex lives of dysfunctional Indian families on reservations.

At one time, two writers exemplified the literature of the Far West. One of them was the late Wallace Stegner, who was born in the Midwest in 1909 and died in a car accident in 1993. Stegner spent almost his entire life in a variety of small communities in the West and acquired a regional worldview long before it entered the mainstream. fashion. His first major work, The Big Candy Mountain (1943), chronicles the wanderings of a family in pursuit of American dream in Western conditions, as the “frontier” disappears. This book covers the American territory, stretching from Minnesota to Washington state, and, in Stegner's words, contains a description of "that indescribably beautiful region that forced the whole country to move westward." His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Time to Think (1971), which depicts spiritual world illustrator and writer of the Old West, is also imbued with the spirit of this region. In fact, Stegner's strengths as a writer lie in his ability to verbalize and describe a character, as well as to convey the harshness of life in the western part of the country.

Joan Didion, who is equal parts journalist and writer, has significantly expanded her creative horizons in recent years, with a collection of her journalism, Stumbling to Bethlehem (1968) and a deep and powerful novel about the meaningless life in Hollywood, Play It Like It. (1970) made us look at modern California in a new way.

The Pacific Northwest, which in the early nineties was one of the richest artistic areas in the overall cultural background of the United States, gave this country, among other cultural and artistic figures, the remarkable master of the short story Raymond Carver. He died tragically at the age of 50 shortly after making a name for himself in American literature. Reflecting in his work the worldview of the inhabitants of this region, in his collections of stories “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (1974) and “Where I’m Calling You From” (1986), he depicted his characters against a picturesque background of mostly still virgin the nature of these places.

One of the greatest achievements of the regional theater movement - non-profit, state-funded or sponsored theater troupes that have become centers of modern culture in many cities throughout the country - is that since the early sixties it has managed to educate a galaxy of young playwrights who have become one one of the brightest imagists on the theater stage. Now you can no longer imagine American theater and American literature without the brilliant, fractured society and turbulent relationships of the characters present in the dramatic works of Sam Shepard (Buried Child, 1979 and A Trick of the Mind, 1985); without the amoral characters of Chicago playwright David Mamet's plays and their highly shocking, crisp, clipped dialogue (American Buffalo, 1976 and Glengarry Glenn Ross, 1982); without the intrusion of traditional values ​​into the life and care of the inhabitants of the Midwest, reflected in the dramas of Lanford Wilson ("The 5th of July", 1978 and "Tolly's Folly", 1979) and without the inherent eccentricities of the Southerners in the plays of Beth Hanley ( "Criminal Thoughts", 1979).

American literature has traveled a long and winding path from the pre-colonial period to the present day. Socio-historical development and technological progress have had a significant impact on it. However, it invariably contains one component - people with all their advantages and disadvantages, traditions and aspirations for the future.

The last decade and a half of the 19th century were marked by the intensification of the country's intellectual life: a whole group of thinkers appeared who tried to resolve both eternal philosophical questions and issues of social justice and humanity. Philosophers Josiah Royce, George Santayana, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes as a legal specialist, economists and sociologists Thorstein Veblen, Herbert Crowley, Lester Frank Ward, Henry George and greatest thinker black America, William DuBois, all lamented the superficial judgments and “vicious ideology” that occupied the “mental space of the United States.”

The new school of American philosophers and psychologists sought to ensure that seemingly abstract discussions of materialism, idealism, determinism and free will became established in the minds of Americans as something that directly concerned them. In this way they tried to prevent the truly human foundations of life from being washed away by the massive flow of mechanistic forces.

The publishing industry in the country continued to develop intensively. Farmers, factory workers, small townspeople, everyone ethnic group, residents of each region now had their own newspaper or magazine.

Simultaneously with the expansion of the readership, its stratification occurred. The discerning reader, who previously lived exclusively in Boston and other cities of the northeast coast and spread throughout all major centers of the United States, always received magazines that suited his spiritual and aesthetic needs and political leanings. Now a mass of publications appeared that served a wide variety of audiences and were oriented towards their cultural level and tastes. The gap in reading habits was so wide that America seemed to be in the midst of a cultural civil war. "Between university ethics and business ethics, between American culture and the American people,<...>between academic pedantry and tabloid slang there is and cannot be anything in common, no “neutral zone,” wrote famous critic beginning of the 20th century V.V. Brooks.

However, reading not only newspapers and magazines, but also fiction has finally become a national habit.

Printing in America, since the period of Reconstruction, was also clearly oriented toward two layers, one might say, two classes of readers. Large bookselling centers—New York, Boston, and Philadelphia—supplied bookstores products for educated city dwellers, while “subscription” publishing houses provided booksellers who spread “culture” throughout the small towns and villages of America. A huge, mostly literate, but not very refined readership: craftsmen, farmers and members of their families - ordered in advance the publication of books on history, moral issues, medical care, patriotic or humorous essays, and only occasionally - works of art.

In these conditions, writers, in order to achieve success, had to “extricate themselves” with all their might: organize public lectures (later - public “readings”), for the sake of popularity, and not just to earn money, publish in cheap magazines, create stage versions of their works, etc. how the public, having watched the “performance,” willingly ordered the publication of “the novel they liked.” A literary career required the talents of a businessman, and in the 1880s, authors increasingly began to resort to the services of literary agents. However, the income of writers has increased noticeably compared to pre-war, which in many ways pushed them to seek reader favor. Ultimately, this, along with other circumstances, hampered the development of literature.

American literature at the turn of the century did not immediately come into line with the scale of economic and social changes in the country. For a long time, the main literary achievements remained associated with romanticism, which continued to dominate poetry. Prose, which undertook to pave the way for realism, was marking time. Firstly, she was in no hurry to free herself from the system of values ​​that had developed under the sign of Puritan ideology.

The vitality of the Puritan worldview was facilitated by the fact that it did not at all contradict the new Protestant ethic of business success, but, on the contrary, even strengthened it: “Make yourself wealthy!” preacher R. Conwell urged. “Honestly acquired wealth is the best way to preach the Gospel.” As a result, Spencer’s popular social-Darwinist ideas (they inevitably penetrated into the United States from Europe and captivated the writers of the younger generation - Garland, London, Dreiser) paradoxically coexisted with the demand for the chastity of literature, in relation to which the new realities of life and even the originality of artistic mastery turned out to be secondary.

In this regard, the creative fate of Kate Chopin (1851-1904), a talented prose writer, a strong master of the short story genre and “local color”, who won reader recognition with two collections of stories from the life of Louisiana Creoles “The Old Timers of Bayeux” (1894) and “Night in Acadia”, is very indicative "(1897). The writer was literally destroyed by criticism and subjected to public ostracism after the publication of the novel “The Awakening” (1899), a psychologically subtle and masterfully executed study of the female soul.

The work was considered provocative and indecent: its heroine, a young married lady Edna Pontilier, commits adultery, is not at all worried about it, and in addition, in the finale, falls into the unforgivable sin of suicide, not even out of repentance, but simply obeying a momentary impulse. The public was outraged by the deep immorality of the heroine, who did not think about the consequences of her actions, and by the author's obvious sympathy for her.

In reality, it was not the philistine (there is not a single explicit scene in the novel) but the artistic courage of K. Chopin that was incredible. She innovatively - without the author's commentary or moralizing - portrayed the not yet fully formed, but only the awakening personality of a young woman, wide open to all the sounds, colors and smells of the world around her. Shocked readers and critics simply did not notice either the beauty and perfection of the style, or the tragic, without melodrama, power of the work. Their verdict was final; the defamed author of a novel ahead of her time, K. Chopin left literature forever, and five years later, from life.

The development of realistic prose was hampered, secondly, by the spread of the “smiling” tradition, recognized as “the most American,” but in fact limiting, narrowing the writers’ vision of such a versatile and often crisis modern life. This “smile” became more and more deliberate and gradually began to be perceived almost as a “grimace of a fool.” The clearest example This includes the work of William Sidney Porter, who wrote under the pseudonym O. Henry (1862-1910).

A brilliant master of the short story and at the same time an author who has no equal in “binding up the wounds” of ordinary Americans, he enjoyed great popularity only among the most indiscriminate readers. The invariably happy endings of his stories eventually became boring to his contemporaries. O. Henry's letters and unfinished manuscripts indicate that he was not entirely willing to remain a “good storyteller,” but dreamed of “simple, honest prose.”

Thirdly, a kind of “limiter” was the almost inevitable desire of writers for commercial success, to which many writers in the USA found themselves victims. For example, Francis Bret Harte(1836-1902), who came from Albany to San Francisco in the 1870s, became for a time America's most famous writer. One of the pioneers of "local color," he, in The Happiness of the Roaring Mill and Other Stories, essentially created the popular image of the Wild West, peopled by sentimental swindlers, brave renegades and fallen women with hearts of gold.

At the age of thirty-five, Bret Harte went to the east of the country as a winner and signed a contract of 10 thousand dollars with the large Atlantic Monthly magazine, after which his literary career quickly ended. His works, in which the writer clearly repeated himself, were not successful, large debts and bitter disappointment ultimately made Harte a voluntary exile. In 1878, he entered the consular service in England and left the United States, as it turned out, forever.

And, finally, the most serious reason for the lag behind American literature both from European literature, and from the pace of socio-political development of one’s own country, was the immaturity of the national realistic tradition, its provincial character, due to all previous circumstances. Having brilliantly mastered the romantic principles of depicting reality, but faced with changed life realities, US literature again had to start practically from scratch, without copying the European experience, which did not correspond to American specifics. Once again, as before, an inspiring idea was needed that could give impetus to artistic development.

A certain fresh breath was the formation and increasingly confident activity of the “local color” schools, which were gradually freed from the inertia of elegant, “decent” writing, the ardent of which remained the highly educated Boston “Brahmins” - Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Who did a lot in his time for national culture, this triumvirate continued to try to define the aesthetic norms of American literature, “as if there had been no Civil War, and there were no other regions in America except New England,” as a contemporary said about him.