Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Note to the Paperback Edition
- A Preface in Two Parts
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Sources, Citations, and Bibliography
- PART ONE A DREAM CITY, LYRIC YEARS, AND A GREAT WAR
- PART TWO FICTION IN A TIME OF PLENTY
- PART THREE THE FATE OF WRITING DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION
- Notes
- Bibliographical Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
PART THREE - THE FATE OF WRITING DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Note to the Paperback Edition
- A Preface in Two Parts
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Sources, Citations, and Bibliography
- PART ONE A DREAM CITY, LYRIC YEARS, AND A GREAT WAR
- PART TWO FICTION IN A TIME OF PLENTY
- PART THREE THE FATE OF WRITING DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION
- Notes
- Bibliographical Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE DISCOVERY OF POVERTY AND THE RETURN OF COMMITMENT
When the Crash of October 1929 ended the biggest speculative binge in the nation's history, it brought the Roaring Twenties to a close. Scary economic indicators had been gathering for years. Farm income and industrial wages remained low throughout the twenties, and by 1929, with 35 percent of all personal income going into the pockets of 5 percent of the population, even the middle class was showing signs of stress. Residential construction, consumer spending, industrial production, commodity prices, and employment were going down while business inventories were going up. Looking back on the late twenties from the vantage point of the early thirties, F. Scott Fitzgerald located signs of anxiety in everything from the “nervous beating of feet” and the sudden “popularity of cross-word puzzles” to the remembered faces of Princeton classmates who had disappeared “into the dark maw of violence” before the Crash, including one who had jumped from a skyscraper and another who had “crawled home” to die at the high-toned Princeton Club after being beaten in a Manhattan speakeasy. But it took a crash to counter what Zelda Fitzgerald called “the infinite promises of American advertising.” Borrow to buy was one message, borrow to invest, another. Bankers, brokers, and political leaders directed the campaign; newspapers, magazines, and radios executed it. McNeel's of Boston was one of countless “financial service” operations that specialized in persuading people they could get rich on borrowed money – a message politicians in Washington endorsed.
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- Information
- A Cultural History of the American Novel, 1890–1940Henry James to William Faulkner, pp. 147 - 230Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994