Вторая мировая война и её влияние на литературу США. Новая волна «потерянного поколения». Творчество Нормана Мейлера, Джозефа Хеллера, Курта Воннегута, Уильяма Стайрона

Vonnegut, Kurt. (1922-2007), American novelist, whose breezy style and innovative subject matter gained him a wide following. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and educated at Cornell University, Vonnegut served in the United States Air Force during World War II (1939-1945).

His experience as a prisoner of war, when he witnessed the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, is vividly recounted in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Vonnegut's other major novels include Player Piano (1952), a satire on modern automation; Cat's Cradle (1963), a fantasy about the end of the world; God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), a satire about an idealistic philanthropic foundation and its encounter with greed; and Slapstick ( 1976), a farce about a future American president. Many of Vonnegut's books employ science-fiction and fantasy techniques to communicate his concerns about the destructive capabilities of technology. He suggests that to maintain human compassion and kindness in modern society, there is no choice but to view 20th-century civilization with a mixture of sadness and humor. Vonnegut's other works include the novels The Sirens of Titan (1959), Breakfast of Champions (1973), as well as collections of stories.

Mailer, Norman (1923- ), American writer, whose books frequently explore the unconscious impulses that drive human behavior. Sex and violence often play major roles, and his works frequently express bitterness toward society and a strong liberal philosophy.

Born in Long Branch, New Jersey, Mailer graduated from Harvard University in 1943 and later studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. His service in the United States Army during World War II (1939-1945) provided background material for his naturalistic novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), which was a critical and financial success. Mailer’s next novels were considered by many to be disappointments. He revived his reputation with “The White Negro” (1957), a sociological essay, and Advertisements for Myself (1959), a collection of essays, reviews, notebook entries, and unfinished stories that was an artistic search for alternative modes of expression. Mailer’s next novels, An American Dream (1965) and Why Are We in Vietnam (1967), explored the place of violence in modern American life.

During the 1960s Mailer developed a vivid journalistic style with the intention of presenting actual events with all the drama and complexity found in fiction. His 1968 book Armies of the Night was the culmination of these efforts. The work, which in 1969 won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, was an account of Mailer’s experiences at the Washington peace rallies of 1968, where he was jailed and fined. Mailer’s other works of this era include Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), about the Republican and Democratic national conventions of 1968, and Of a Fire on the Moon (1971), which recounts the first piloted moon landing. Mailer further explored the theme of violence in The Executioner’s Song (1979), a novel about convicted murderer Gary Gilmore. Mailer’s other books include Oswald’s Tale (1995), about Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of United States president John F. Kennedy; and Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: an Interpretative Biography (1995). Mailer’s fictional novel The Gospel According to the Son (1997) sets out to retell the life of Jesus Christ from the first person perspective of Jesus himself. Mailer has also written, directed, and appeared in a number of motion pictures.

Heller, Joseph (1923- ), American novelist, whose comic absurdist novel Catch-22 (1961) is a leading example of the black-humor movement in American fiction. The book served as an antiwar rallying point during the 1960s. Heller is known for showing language to be a frustrating and undependable method of communication in public discourse—military, diplomatic, philosophical, religious, and political—and for creating characters who try to escape the traps and inconsistencies of language.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Heller was educated at New York University. During World War II, he flew more than 60 missions in 1943 and 1944 as a B-25 wing bombardier for the United States Army Air Forces in Europe, earning the rank of first lieutenant. In the 1950s he worked as an advertising writer for high-circulation magazines while writing short fiction and Catch-22. Heller used his combat experiences as background material for Catch-22, which features the airman Yossarian as the hero and moral center of a satirical depiction of life in the army. Yossarian is portrayed as one of the last rational people in an insane war. In the novel, the absurdities of military life are represented by the regulation “Catch-22” (a phrase Heller introduced). The regulation, which prevents airmen from escaping service in bombing missions by pleading insanity, states that any airman rational enough to want to be grounded cannot possibly be insane and therefore is fit to fly. Catch-22 was dramatized as a motion picture in 1970.

The themes and style of Heller's writing have been compared to those of Jewish American writers such as Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth, as well as to those of American satirist Kurt Vonnegut, Heller's grotesque renderings of moral crises are also reminiscent of the works of American author Nathanael West and European writer Franz Kafka, and of such European antiwar novels as All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by Erich Maria Remarque and The Good Soldier Schweik (1920-1923) by Jaroslav Hasek.

Styron, William Clark, Jr. (1925- ), American novelist, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967).

Born in Newport News, Virginia, Styron was educated at Duke University. He grew up in the South, and his powerful rhetoric and treatment of Southern themes, such as sin and decadence in the wake of disintegrating social and family structures, suggest the influence of such Southern writers as William Faulkner. Styron's first novel, Lie Down in Darkness (1951), concerns the disintegration of a middle-class Southern family. His major work, The Confessions of Nat Turner, which he conceived for many years before commencing actual writing, is the story of a black slave revolt in 1831. The work, which examines the motivations of Nat Turner for turning to violence, aroused considerable controversy and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1968. Styron also wrote Set This House on Fire (1960), a story of post-World War II (1939-1945) Americans in Italy; and Sophie's Choice (1979), a best-selling story of a Polish survivor of Auschwitz. In 1990 Styron's book Darkness Visible, an account of his own struggle against severe depression, was published. His book A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales From Youth (1993) focuses on painful moments from his childhood.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-06