Global InformationEchoes of the Jazz Age information
It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Echoes of the Jazz Age"[1]
"Echoes of the Jazz Age" is a short essay by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald that was first published in Scribner's Magazine in November 1931.[2][3] The essay analyzes the societal conditions in the United States which gave rise to the raucous historical era known as the Jazz Age and the subsequent events which led to the era's abrupt conclusion. The frequently anthologized essay represents an extended critique by Fitzgerald of 1920s hedonism and is regarded as one of Fitzgerald's finest non-fiction works.[4][5]
The essay's contents reflect a number of Fitzgerald's opinions previously expressed in newspaper interviews.[6] Fitzgerald had publicly rejected the argument that the meaningless destruction of World War I spawned the Jazz Age.[7] Fitzgerald also did not believe the war affected the morality of younger Americans.[7][8] He likewise rejected other popular claims that either Prohibition in the United States or the advent of motion pictures corrupted the morals of American youths.[9]
Fitzgerald's essay instead posits various technological innovations and cultural trends as fostering the societal conditions which typified the Jazz Age.[9] He attributes the era's sexual revolution to a combination of both Sigmund Freud's sexual theories gaining salience among young Americans and the invention of the automobile allowing youths to escape parental surveillance.[10] Echoing Voltaire's belief that novels influence social behavior,[11] Fitzgerald cites the literary works by E. M. Hull, D. H. Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall, and others as influencing Americans to question their sexual norms.[12][8]
In the essay, Fitzgerald makes a critical and much overlooked distinction between contemporary generations.[13] In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway belonged,[14] Fitzgerald notes the Jazz Age generation were those Americans younger than himself who had been adolescents during World War I and were largely untouched by the conflict's psychological and material horrors.[15][16] It was this hedonistic younger generation—and not the Lost Generation—which riveted the nation's attention upon their leisure activities and sparked a societal debate over their perceived immorality.[17][18] After Fitzgerald's death in 1940, the essay was collected by critic Edmund Wilson in The Crack-Up in 1945.[1]
- ^ a b Fitzgerald 1945, p. 14.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Scribner's Publicationwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
Milford 1970 p. 301was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 311: Bruccoli notes the essay succeeds with "the evocation of unrecapturable emotions—one of the defining qualities of Fitzgerald's best work".
- ^ Mizener 1951, p. 11.
- ^ Fitzgerald 2004, p. 7.
- ^ a b Fitzgerald 2004, p. 7: "I am tired, too, of hearing that the world war broke down the moral barriers of the younger generation. Indeed, except for leaving its touch of destruction here and there, I do not think the war left any real lasting effect."
- ^ a b Fitzgerald 2004, p. 7: "The younger generation has been changing all through the last twenty years. The war had little or nothing to do with it. I put the change up to literature."
- ^ a b Fitzgerald 1945, pp. 15–18.
- ^ Fitzgerald 1945, pp. 15, 18.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Voltairewas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Fitzgerald 1945, pp. 16–17.
- ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 15.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Gray 1946was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 15: "The generation which been adolescent during the confusion of the War, brusquely shouldered my contemporaries out of the way and danced into the limelight. This was the generation whose girls dramatized themselves as flappers, the generation that corrupted its elders and eventually overreached itself less through lack of morals than through lack of taste."
- ^ Fitzgerald 2004, pp. 6–7.
- ^ Butcher 1925, p. 11; Coghlan 1925, p. 11; Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, p. 184.
- ^ Rascoe 1920, p. 11: "As a picture of contemporary life and as an indication of codes of conduct obtaining among the American young, the novel is revelatory and valuable. It is a comment upon the times. It shows definitely that whatever the teachings of our elders, the Victorian checks, taboos, and reticences [sic] are no longer in force among the flappers, the debutantes, and the collegians of the present [Jazz Age] generation."