Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture

McParland (Mark Twain's Audience) fails to deliver on the promise of his book's subtitle, opting instead to demonstrate that some of the most prominent American authors of the 1920s were in fact simply products of their time. Citing Mencken, McParland refers to Fitzgerald as a %E2%80%9Csocial historian" of the period, and goes on to say that %E2%80%9Cthese novelists, in their various ways [are] observers of a bright and unique era." Sinclair Lewis, too, %E2%80%9Cwas one with his readers," the success of Main Street attributable to %E2%80%9Ca receptive audience," while Faulkner %E2%80%9Cshows us a different picture of the 1920s than the ones we have been looking at to this point." The writers who emerge from these pages are all the less interesting for being depicted more as chroniclers of the age than as its arbiters, more shaped by their time than shaping it. MacParland has done an impressive amount of research, but he piles on too many facts without explaining their significance. In place of insight, he offers anodyne observations worthy of SparkNotes: The Great Gatsby contains %E2%80%9Cthe archetypical quest of the American dream"; The Grapes of Wrath %E2%80%9Creminds us of the heroism of the common man and woman." Despite 40 pages of endnotes and bibliography, this book is likely to be of little more interest to the academic than to the lay reader. (May)