Roaring Twenties

FlapperWorld War I changed everything, a fact Hemingway should know very well as a member of the Lost Generation himself. The dawn of the twenties ushered in this vibe that seemed, from the outside, about being a little more uninhibited, a little freer, but that was actually about having become disenchanted with past values almost to the point of being numb to any values at all. I wonder, after reading The Sun Also Rises, what it would have been like to travel during that time. There is a recklessness in Jack and Brett and Bill that I don't think could exist today.
"Hemingway scholars are well aware that, just as he rejected bohemian pretenses, so too did Hemingway reject the "Lost Generation" label made so fashionable by The Sun Also Rises. And yet cultural historians, with the vision of hindsight, have recognized the extent to which a bohemian Lost Generation redefined United States culture at home and abroad, liberating American literary expression from its stubbornly pragmatic roots and its Victorian pieties (or so the usual cliche goes)."
In this excerpt from his article, Michael Soto suggests that to be bohemian is something positive, "liberating". Even in today's culture, bohemia is associated with a kind of artsy lifestyle inhabited by these young, hip nomads for whom travel is only an escape to find inspiration for art that, Hemingway would probably argue, they never actually create because they are too busy talking about their artsy lifestyles. But the bohemians of the twenties always had an element of tragedy to them. Brett is the epitome of the mood this decade came to represent: women cut their hair (well, she slicked hers back like a boy), they upped their hemlines, they generally rejected a lot of the restrictions that had been put upon them in the last century, and so did Brett (she flaunted her sexuality and collected many partners, but was fickle with them nonetheless, treating two divorces as just a few more funny anecdotes to tell over coffee and wine at Le Select). I find it a little frustrating that these expatriates take so much for granted their experiences abroad, and, in Brett's case, they never try to be anything more than an apathetic (albeit charming) floater in a foreign country, the tragic heroine of a travel fiction.