American Literature in Transition, 1930-1940

the long version

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in his country's darkest hour. It was February 1936. At that juncture, in the last year of Franklin Roosevelt's first term, the clock must have looked eternally stuck at three in the morning to countless Americans, especially those of Fitzgerald's generation. Around midnight, the most expensive orgy of all generations - the high jinks and careless laughs and reckless speculations, both emotional and financial, of the 1920s - had reached its vertiginously lofty acme. Then, crash! It was the sound of the post-war boom falling apart. Immediately, all the panicked guests fled the party. That was a while ago, and now the time is 3AM, sharp. Hugging their naked souls, they are alone in the dark. The first light, the glimmer of economic recovery and political stability, will be several dark and solitary hours in coming. Will it really come, ever? They are not so sure any more. Down and out but still wide awake, they find themselves suspended in an unaccustomed zone of transition. It's neither night nor day. A buzz from too much champagne is giving way to the onset of a hangover, the piercing headache. They have tumbled down to the bottom of the worst depression in the nation's history, the worst depression of their lives, but they want to believe that the dawn is just around the corner"--