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Twain was born in the state near the Mississippi RiverHis work as a riverboat pilot steering boats up and down the river made the most importantinfluence on him and his books. One ofTwain’s first books is called “Life on theMississippi” (1883). His “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1976) and “Huckleberry Finn”(1884) tell about the lives of young heroes on the Mississippi river. Together with Twain’sromantic tale “The Prince and the Pauper” (1889) they are still read by children all over theworld. At the same time his “Golden Age” (1873) and “A Connecticut Yankee at KingArthur’s Court” (1889), exposing American vanity, corruption and hypocrisy, are full ofstrong satire.
Incomparable depiction of colloquial speech, peculiarities of paradox, humorand wit are characteristic features of Mark Twain’s writing..The third and present stage is marked by a tremendous surge of American creativityin all areas, by a steady self-confidence and by growing international influence of Americanliterature. The American literature of the 20 th century as a mirror of society was opened byPPTheodore Dreiser (1871-1945). In his first realistic novel “Sister Carrie” Dreiser challengedthe American myth that honesty and hard work inevitably lead to success.
He followed thenovel with several other strong social-critical works of fiction “Jennie Gerhard” (1911), “TheFinancier”(1912), “The Titan”(1914), “An American Tragedy” (1925).Later T. Dreiserpublished two collections of stories “Free and Other Stories”(1918) and “Chains: LesserNovels and Stories”(1927). Many of these stories dramatized the theme of love as the mostpowerful force in life.O. Henry (Porter William Sidney) (1862-1910) created a great number of shortstories about the life of simple, poor Americans, collected in his books “Cabbages andKings”(1904),”The Four Million”(1906),“The Gentle Grafter”(1908).The Northern stories by Jack London (1876-1916) were extremely popular both inthe USA and abroad.
His novels “The Son of Wolf” (1900), “ The Sea-Wolf”(1904), “MartinEden”(1909) and many others were translated and published in Europe and Russia.The horrors of World War I and the period following it in the 1920s sparkled theimagination of some of the greatest writers in American literary.
They include Francis ScottFitzgerald (1896-1940), the author of short stories and novels “The Great Gatsby”(1925),“Tender is the Night”(1934), “The Last Tycoon”(1941) about so-called “lost generation” andGertrude Stein (1874-1946). Her most widely read book “The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas” was devoted to her life in Paris, her meeting with famous French artists andexpatriate American writers such as Ernest Hemingway. The great master of the modern prosestyle E.
Hemingway (1899-1961) in his early books “Fiesta”(1926), “ For Whom the BellTolls” (1940) also expressed the frames of mind of the “lost generation”. E. Hemingwayvolunteered for an ambulance unit in Spain during World War I, but was wounded andhospitalized for six months. His first successful novel “The Sun also Rises”(1926) is about thegroup of American expatriates living in France and Spain who had lost their joy in life andfelt wasted. His “Farewell to Arms” (1929) is another work that reflected the growingdisillusionment with war. The main idea of the author is the tragic stoicism of his maincharacters.
According to Hemingway a man must retain courage and dignity under very harshcircumstances, even facing the threat of death. While living in Cuba in the early 1950s, hewrote “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952) about the courage and fortitude of an old Cubanfisherman, awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1954.More than ten other American writers received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Thevery first American to be honored by a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930 was Sinclair Lewis(1885-1951).Inhispopularnovels“MainStreet”(1920),“Babbitt”(1922)and“Arrowsmith”(1925) S. Lewis could describe the lives and values of small town people withsincerity and great understanding.William Faulkner (1897-1962), known for his novels about people living in theSouth “ The Sound and the Fury”(1929),”As I lay Dying”(1930),”Intruder in thatDust”(1948), received the Nobel prize in 1949.
Faulkner`s style is very much different fromthat of Hemingway. While Hemingway wrote in short, simple sentences and used a great dealof conversation, Faulkner’s sentences sometimes carry on for almost an entire page, with a lotclauses strung together by commas.Among the other Nobel prize winners there are a playwright Eugene 0’Neill(1888- 1953),Saul Bellow (1915), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-91) and John Steinbeck (1902-68), notedfor “Grapes of Wrath” and “The Winter of Our Discontent” picturing the complexities of lifein America.John Cheever (1912-82) published the novels and stories “The WapshotChronicle”(1957),”Bullety Park”(1969), “Falconer”(1977) in which he used satire to expresssocio-economic essence of life.
J.D. Salinger (1919- ) achieved great literary success withthe publication of his novel “The Catcher in the Rye”, centered on the character of 16-yearold boy, who flees his elite boarding school for the outside worldonly to becomedisillusioned by its materialism and phoniness A playwright and poet Dubose Hayward(1885-1940) wrote about the life of black American Dockers. His popular novel “Porgy” wasstaged in 1927 and later became the plot of opera “Porgy and Bess”. Black Americans alsowrote about their experiences in American society. The. Black writer Richard Wright(1908- 1960) became well known as the author of the number of novels describing thefeelings and fates of black Americans.During the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s more Afro-Americansbegan to write.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) is well-known writer of that time. His first novel“Go Tell It on the Mountain” (1953) is about his own life as a poor child growing up in NewYork ghetto, Harlem. In protest against racism in American society, J. Baldwin emigrated andlived abroad until 1977.
The life of Harlem inspired the poems of one of the best known blackAmerican poets of the 20 th century Langston Hughes (1902-67). To Hughes it seemed thatPPthe people of Harlem’s hopes of better attitude had been delayed – “deferred” for too long:“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or festerlike a sore-and then run? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?”Maya Angelou is a contemporary black American author and poet. Her first book “IKnow Why the Caged Bird Sings” (1970) has an autobiographical character. In 1993 atPresident Clinton’s first inauguration ceremony, she read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning“on TV to the entire country. Alex Hayley’s epic story of the black experience “Roots”(1976) with the subsequent television special caused white America to stop and investigate its“past sins».
In 1983 Alice Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel ‘The Color Purple”,devoted to her struggle for equality.In the 1950s there appeared a group of unconventional writers and artists “The BeatGeneration” The writers of this generation, called beatniks, wanted to create a new kind ofwriting grown from poetry readings in the form of jazz.
The poetry of Allen Ginsberg (19261997) was considered unconventional because it did not follow the structure of traditionalverse. Jack Kerouac`s (1922-1969) writing had a new spontaneous style. His best-knownnovel “ On the Road” describes beatniks wandering through America seeking an idealisticdream of communal life and beauty. In the 1960s a young writer and singer Bob Dylon usedprotest lyrics to support the anti-war movement of the time. For many young people hebecame the voice of the conscience of his generation.
His lyrics set to old tunes, were ironiccomments on what he saw as the deceit and hypocrisy of those in power.In the 1960s and 1970s a new ethnic literature emerged. Dee Brown’s history of theAmerican West “Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee” (1971) led the way for a serious ofbooks on the American Indian.By the late 1970s and the 1980s science fiction had moved to a generally acceptedform of literature. Popular writers here included Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke. The1980s also saw the rise of popular horror fiction with Dean Koontz, V.C. Andews, PeterStraub, Clive Barker and Stephen King as the most prolific writers.Recent literature included John Updike’s four novels (.“Rabbit at Rest”, “ SelfConsciousness” and others) and Tom Clancy.
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