The Sad Young Menby Rod W. Horton qThey all lived in Paris for a certain period of time and associated with the informal literary saloon of Gertrude Steins Paris home;qThey were all disillusioned with the American tradition of writing as well as the post-war American society.These writersnwere bitterly disappointed by both the war and the post-war social reality. The old morality, the traditional values and the former social ideal of life could no longer be held as sacred or as the guiding beacon for the future. They found they must discard them, but they had not yet found a new spiritual support and was hence “lost”. Why did they move to Europe?nThey moved to Europe to escape from the suffocating realityand to write. The confusion, the pains and the despair suffered by a post-war generation was vividly captured by the writers of the Lost Generation, especially by Ernest Hemingway, the most eloquent spokesman of the group.John Dos Passos (1896-1970n20th century personal and political odyssey of American novelist Sinclair Lewis (18851951)nSinclair Lewis: the first American Nobel Laureate in Literature (1930) for the accuracy and the detail with which he portrayed American life.Sinclair Lewis (18851951)nSinclair Lewis: the first American Nobel Laureate in Literature (1930) for the accuracy and the detail with which he portrayed American life.n“for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters“Babbittry, BabbittnBabbittry: qualities displayed by George Babbitt, a smugly conventional person interested chiefly in business and social success and indifferent to cultural values, Philistine.nBabbitt (1922): an enterprising, moral stereotyped and prosperous real-estate broker.Angry Young Men to its social and political attitudes and mores, and indeed to the whole “bourgeois ethic”.nJimmy Porter, the anti-hero of Osbornes play, was really the prototypal modern “angry young man.”Beat Generationnappeared after WWII in the US.na term applied to a group of American artists and writers, esp. poets whose work became particularly popular in the late 1950s. Generation GapnDuring the 1950s, a phenomenon developed in America known as the “Generation Gap”.Generation GapnYoung intellectuals rejected the ideals, the purpose, and the accepted standards of behavior of their middle class parents. nThe old generation, whose views were formed by the Great Depression and WWII, wanted security, comfort and wealth. nTheir children considered them grossly, selfishly materialistic, and thought that they had betrayed the ideals of a free, truthful, equal society. Generation GapnTheir children considered them grossly, selfishly materialistic, and thought that they had betrayed the ideals of a free, truthful, equal society. nMany of these young people became “social dropouts” and created a “counter-culture”, that is, a way of life unrelated to, and opposite in every way, to that of their parents.The Beat Movement nA revolt against the frightened, conservative political mood, against the conventional values concerning sex, religion, education, politics, and the American way of life in general, against the greedy, money- seeking“respectable life” of the dominant middle class by particularly against the literary formalism of American writing after WWII.The Beat Movement nIn literature they took Walt Whitman as their model, who had broken all the literary rules of his time and lived an exuberant, free life. The Beatsnlooked upon modern American life as so cruel, selfish and impersonal. They wanted to create an alternative, free, loving way of life, i.e. “a counter-culture”. nwanted to write with complete spontaneity and honesty, to express emotion “raw”.Allen Ginsberg and “Howl”nHis poem became the manifesto of the movement.nThe poem combined severe criticism of middle class culture with exuberant praise of the newly emerging counterculture of hipsters or “hippies”. Allen Ginsberg and “Howl”nThe poem was widely read and Ginsberg became famous.nHe explained that tried to write his thoughts not as they would be spoken, but as they were actually thought, in rapid visual images.Words had no relationship with/tonbustle (v.) : qhurry busily or with much fuss and bother繁忙 ，奔忙 nmedium (n.) : qenvironment环境 nbustling business medium: qbusy business worldnbattle for success: qcompete for successncatalytic (adj.) : qacting as the stimulus in bringing about or hastening a result起催化作用的；起刺激作用的 ncatalytic agent: qcatalyst, help to speed upnprecipitate (v.) : qthrow headlong；cause to happen before expected，needed；bring on猛抛，猛投；突 然发生；促使nmass murder: qa world warnrelease: qset freeninhibited: qchecked, repressednshooting: qwarnobsolescent (adj.) :qin the process of becoming obsolete即将过时 的；逐渐被废弃的 nchallenge: qa demanding tasknmores: qcustoms，esp. the fixed or traditional customs of a society，often acquiring the