#23 Novels of the 1920s

Friday – 10:00 a.m.                                                          Fall Term 2008 (14 Weeks)
Coordinator:  Bob Glasser                                           Co-Coordinator:  Renée Hurewitz

Course Description and Topics
The decade of the twenties was a period of great change.  The First World War had a profound effect on the following years, particularly in Europe.  The S/DG is divided equally between books by American and European authors.  These books were not only all written in the 1920s, but they all take place either during WW1 or the twenties (except for The Trial, which is timeless).
The fourteen week program is:
Weeks 1 & 2              Ernest Hemingway.  A Farewell to Arms (1929)
Week 3                       F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The Great Gatsby (1925)
Weeks 4 & 5              William Faulkner.  The Sound and the Fury (1929)
Weeks 6 & 7              Sinclair Lewis.  Dodsworth (1929)
Week 8                       Erich Maria Remarque.  All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
Weeks 9 & 10           Jaroslav Hasek.  The Good Soldier Svejk  (in part) (1923)
Week 11                    Franz Kafka.  The Trial (1925)
Week 12                    Virginia Woolf.  Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
Weeks 13 & 14         E.M. Forster.  A Passage to India (1924)

            The four American authors were easy to select, as they were the leading novelists of twenties.  Sinclair Lewis was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1930).   Following Eugene O’Neill (1936) and Pearl Buck (1938), Faulkner was the fourth (1949) and Hemingway the fifth (1954).  Although Fitzgerald did not win the Nobel prize, The Great Gatsby is considered the quintessential novel of the twenties.
Choosing the five works by European authors was not so straightforward.  I selected All Quiet on the Western Front and The Good Soldier Svejk because they are the two pre-eminent anti-war novels of the period.  All Quiet is generally regarded as the best anti-war novel of the century.  The Trial is representative of some of the disturbing writing that followed the war.  As the three European novels selected so far are by a German author writing in German, a Czech author writing in Czech, and a Czech author writing in German, I chose two English authors for the other two Europeans.
All of the books provide an excellent basis for discussion.  The responsibility of the presenter will be to prepare an extensive list of questions that will be the basis for the discussion.  It usually takes about twenty questions to cover the weekly reading reasonably fully. 
Although it is not necessary for the presenter to read anything other than the book itself, most presenters will want to read additional material.  As all of these books are well known and are considered classic novels, there is a wealth of material both in books and on-line.  Biographies of the authors contain discussion of their books.  Study guides and critical essays are available.  I have found that use of these reference materials has added to my understanding of the books.
The reading per week is about 200 pages, reasonable for novels. 

Pre-Meeting:  Monday, August 11, 2008; 11:00 a.m.

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