Modern American Fiction

In the first half of the 20th century poetry enjoyed a rebirth and drama came of age. However, it is prose fiction that emerged as the major form of literary expression in that period.

There was a new emphasis on realism among prose fiction writers of the 20th century. Literature reflected the various reactions to the new circumstances. Some writers were deeply pessimistic; others viewed the same realities with hope for the future. The writing that seemed most likely to survive emphasized enduring human values and the unquenchable vitality of the human spirit.

In general, the interwar period was marked with the influence of European modernism, with its essential feature – experimenting. Writers tried to incorporate and reflect the new philosophical and psychological interpretations of reality, the new concepts of time and matter. Conventional standards and established authors were questioned and attacked by a new body of writers, who spoke through the so-called 'little magazines' – independent-minded periodicals, more concerned with publishing new authors than with financial success. The general topic for such authors was a revolt against the village and provincialism in general.

One of such experimenting authors in the field of prose was Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) with his collections of short stories Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and The Triumph of the Egg (1921). He was one of the writers who chronicled the escape from small-town America and exposed its hypocrisies. In his short stories and novels he protested against the frustrations of ordinary people and against what he believed to be the narrow-minded conventions of his time. His concern with the unfulfilled lives of "little" people probably came from his early observations of life: his Winesburg, Ohio, is based on Anderson's hometown of Clyde, Ohio, the author’s memories of his storytelling father, early orphanage at 14, absence of formal schooling, and acquaintance with the Chicago writers (Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, and others) that started his professional career.

Another writer, dealing with people living in small Midwestern towns was Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), the first American to receive the Nobel prize for Literature. Hypocritical small-town life in the postwar years is the theme of his novel Main Street (1920). It was admired for its graphic rendering of local Midwest speech and customs and soon became a standard work on American provincialism. Another novel, Babbitt (1922) satirizes the dull, unimaginative life of a middle-class businessman in a small-town and also has added a word meaning "unthinking conformist" to the English language.

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