Writers for the Nation : American Literary Modernism

The years between World War I and World War II are commonly seen as the period when international modernism took hold in American art.

C. Barry Chabot, however, argues against the assumption that American modernist writers were preoccupied by artistic innovation and thus indifferent to national social and political life.

He contends that American literary modernists participated actively in a broad conversation about ways to restore or create feelings of belonging among their contemporaries who believed that life was becoming increasingly abrasive and that the United States no longer afforded its citizens a viable sense of community.

Although each writer identified this loss of community, each described it in somewhat different terms, ascribed to it different causes, and differed in ways to redress it. "Writers for the Nation" reconstructs the contributions of representative American modernists to this national conversation.

Through readings of some authors - including Willa Cather, T.S. Eliot, Allen Tate, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes and Wallace Stevens - the author attempts to demonstrate how these writers understood the social situation, how they proposed to correct it, and how each proposed remedy contained its own limitations.

He presents affinities among writers usually assumed to have little in common, writers who all produced significant variants on American literary modernism.