"The 1920s were an age of islands, real and metaphorical. An age when Americans by thousands and tens of thousands were scheming to take the next boat for the South Sea or the West Indies, or better still for Paris."
What a joy this book was for me. Like sitting for a long chat with someone who 'was there' and able to tell you all about it in the most interesting and illuminating way.
Escape from machines, and assembly lines, and expected ways of living. The effects of war, bohemianism, individualism, and perceptions of art. Experiencing and realizing the world tilting on its axis. By accident I learned so much more about a time in world history that was missing from my body of knowledge. Might there be a Roaring Twenties 2.0 waiting in the wings? ( )

This is the story of the so-called lost generation of American writers, their alienation from their American roots, their attempts to replace America's "mechanical" values with moral values, by escaping to Europe or into themselves. Of their struggle to reconcile their need for self-expression with their need to make a living. The crass money values of America drove them overseas, but their need for American money always drew them back, back to an America that was changed, in their perceptions.

This is not an easy read. It is literary criticism but also contains strong elements of aesthetics, philosophy, history, and especially, sociology. So many interweaving threads are hard to follow. The isms involved are complex: Bohemianism, Dadaism, Symbolism, etc. But there are flashes of brilliant writing here.

The author was steeped in literature, up to his neck. He lived it, full-time. He knew the big names on both sides of the Atlantic. This book is very much an inside view of the mostly-American literary scene to 1930. ( )

3253. Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s, by Malcolm Cowley (read Oct 8, 1999) I've wanted to read this book for ages, and when I quite by accident came across it in the library of a local college, I had to read it. Most of it was good reading, tho some of the discussion of literary theory was over my head. But most of the book was of interest. ( )