Ever since James Joyce at the beginning of the twentieth
century, Western authors have been searching for new
literary means of expressing the complexities of modern
life. Their often radical experiments culminated in the years after
World War II. In this process, American literature has followed
its own independent path, led by two authors, William Faulkner
(1897–1962) and Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961). Although
both wrote masterpieces before the war, they continued to write
important works in the 1950s and influenced subsequent generations
of authors with their unique styles. Under the impact of
these two masters, postwar writing in the United States omitted
authorial explanation and commentary and made its point by
suggestion rather than assertion, by prying coherence and meaning
from the text.
Faulkner’s world was the Old South. Admired for their stylistic
innovations regarding chronology and inner monologue,
Faulkner’s novels chronicled the history of an imaginary
county in Mississippi from its early settlers to his own
day. In novels such as The Sound and the Fury (1929), Absalom,
Absalom! (1936), and Intruder in the Dust (1948), he expressed
his outrage at the moral decay of the modern-day
South and its failure to solve its social problems.
Hemingway’s world was that of the American expatriate,
roaming the world to find purpose and identity in a larger
global culture. Using his patented laconic style (he once explained
his stripped-down prose by referring to the principle
of an iceberg, that “there is seven-eighths of it underwater
for every part that shows”), his works—including The Sun
Also Rises (1926), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The
Old Man and the Sea (1952)—explored the psychological
meaning of masculinity under the pressures of different aspects
of modern life. Injured in a plane crash on safari in Africa,
he committed suicide in 1961.
Fictional writing in the 1960s reflected growing concerns
about the materialism and superficiality of American culture
and often took the form of exuberant and comic verbal
fantasies. As the decade intensified with the pain of the
Vietnam War and the ensuing social and political turmoil,
authors turned to satire, using “black humor” and cruelty,
hoping to shock the American public into a recognition of
its social ills. Many of these novels—such as Thomas Pynchon’s
V (1953), Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), and John
Barth’s Sotweed Factor (1961)—were wildly imaginative,
highly entertaining, and very different from the writing of
the first half of the century, which had detailed the “real”
daily lives of small-town or big-city America.
In the 1970s and 1980s, American fiction relinquished
the extravagant verbal displays of the 1960s, returning to a
more sober exposition of social problems, this time related
to race, gender, and sexual orientation. Much of the best
fiction explored the moral dimensions of contemporary life
from Jewish, African American, feminist, or gay perspectives.
Some outstanding women’s fiction was written by foreign-
born writers from Asia and Latin America, who examined
the problems of immigrants, such as cultural identity
and assimilation into the American mainstream.
Postwar writing in Latin America has been equally vibrant.
Nobel Prize –winning writers such as Mario Vargas
Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, José Luis Borges, and Carlos
Fuentes are among the most respected literary names of the
postwar half century. These authors often use dazzling language
and daring narrative experimentation to make their
point. Master of this new style is Gabriel García Márquez (b.
1938), from Colombia. In One Hundred Years of Solitude
(1967), he explores the transformation of a small town under
the impact of political violence, industrialization, and
the arrival of a U.S. banana company. Especially noteworthy
is his use of magical realism, relating the outrageous events
that assail the town in a matter-of-fact voice, thus transforming
the fantastic into the commonplace.
Unlike novelists in the United States and Western Europe,
who tend to focus their attention on the interior landscape
within the modern personality in an industrial society,
fiction writers in Latin America, like their counterparts in
Africa and much of Asia, have sought to project an underlying
political message. Many have been inspired by a sense of
social and political injustice, a consequence of the economic
inequality and authoritarian politics that marked the local
scene throughout much of the twentieth century. Some, like
the Peruvian José Maria Arguedas, have championed the
cause of the Amerindian and lauded the diversity that marks
the ethnic mix throughout the continent. Others have run
for high political office as a means of remedying social problems.
Some have been women, reflecting the rising demand
for sexual equality in a society traditionally marked by male
domination. The memorable phrase of the Chilean poet
Gabriela Mistral—“I have chewed stones with woman’s
gums”—encapsulates the plight of Latin American women.
blues, rock, rap, and hip-hop have been the most popular
music forms in the Western world—and much of the
non-Western world—during this time. All of them originated
in the United States, and all are rooted in African
American musical innovations. These forms later spread
to the rest of the world, inspiring local artists, who then
transformed the music in their own way.
In the postwar years, sports became a major product of
both popular culture and the leisure industry. The development
of satellite television and various electronic
breakthroughs helped make spectator sports a global phenomenon.
The Olympic Games could now be broadcast
around the world from anywhere on earth. Sports became
a cheap form of entertainment for consumers, as fans did
not have to leave their homes to enjoy athletic competitions.
In fact, some sports organizations initially resisted
television, fearing that it would hurt ticket sales. However,
the tremendous revenues possible from television
contracts overcame this hesitation. As sports television
revenue escalated, many sports came to receive the bulk
of their yearly revenue from broadcasting contracts.
Sports became big politics as well as big business.
Politicization was one of the most significant trends in
sports during the second half of the twentieth century.
Football (soccer) remains the dominant world sport and
more than ever has become a vehicle for nationalist sentiment
and expression. The World Cup is the most
watched event on television. Although the sport can be
a positive outlet for national and local pride, all too often
it has been marred by violence as nationalistic fervor has
overcome rational behavior.
World History
