Friday, August 24, 2018

Quips and Quotations (Social History Edition)















The late 1920s were an age of islands, real and metaphorical. They were an age when Americans by thousands and tens of thousands were scheming to take the next boat for the South Seas or the West Indies, or better still for Paris, from which they could scatter to Majorca, Corsica, Capri or the isles of Greece. Paris itself was a modern city that seemed islanded in the past, and there were island countries, like Mexico, where Americans could feel that they had escaped from everything that oppressed them in a business civilization. Or without leaving home they could build themselves private islands of art or philosophy; or else - and this was a frequent solution - they could create social islands in the shadow of the skyscrapers, groups of close friends among whom they could live as unconstrainedly as in a Polynesian valley, live without moral scruples or modern conveniences, live in the pure moment, live gaily on gin and love and two lamb chops broiled over a coal fire in the grate. That was part of the Greenwich Village idea, and soon it was being copied in Boston, San Francisco, everywhere.

--Malcolm Cowley


 

11 comments:

  1. A rare age before airplanes changed travel.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hadn't looked at it that way, Adam, but you're right. If you wanted to across the Atlantic in the 1920s, it took about a week by ocean liner. That type of travel was very much romanticized in movies made from the 1920s into the 1950s, but there must have been a limit to that romance as by the 1960s it had all easily given way to jet travel. Still I suppose the romance survives in cruise ships ("love, exciting and new, come aboard, we're expecting you...")

      Delete
  2. Hi, Kirk!

    This is a marvelous assortment of images from The Roaring Twenties. They reveal a time of prosperity and flourishing art, music and culture. Good times then, but no party lasts forever. At decade's end came the Crash followed by The Great Depression.

    I have a question for you, Kirk. If it were possible, would you choose to trade-in your life in the 2010s for the opportunity to experience life in the period depicted here?

    Have a safe and happy weekend, good buddy Kirk!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shady, I probably would trade my life with someone else who lived in the 2010s, but here's not the place to bitch and moan.

      Seriously though, it would depend on how accessible and how aware I was of the lifestyles that existed, and that's true in any age. Economic disparity was greater in the 1920s than it is now (though increasingly not by much) and most people in the Roaring 20s lived rather mundane lives. As Debra points out in her comment, it may have taken deep pockets. Even in Greenwich Village, where bohemian poverty was somewhat romanticized, many of the artists and writers grew up in well-to-do families, and could have returned to those families if things got too bad.

      That said, Shady, I guess my answer to your question is...maybe

      Delete
  3. I have seen the fifth picture before. It was from that same age when they hand these treehouses that were used for libations and bars along with music. Ahhh those were the days. I did a whole post on them but can't remember what the post was titled. Take care...Im leaving today for vacay.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. maddie, that picture was taken in Greenwich Village. There's another picture from the same website I snagged this one of a waiter climbing up a ladder to serve the guests.

      Enjoy your vacation, maddie, and if you must drink and climb, make sure there's someone below you to break the fall.

      Delete
  4. It was a good era for wealthy lesbians in Paris! A privileged minority had a taste of freedom, foreshadowing what became more widely available for all women later in the 70s and 80s.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. Two in particular, Debra, who you seem to recognize (I don't know who that fellow is--I tried to find a picture of the two ladies with Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but came up empty.) They seem to be on a picnic. I wonder if they had--heh, heh--brownies for dessert.
      Delete

      Delete
    3. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are certainly the two best remembered today, but there was a sizeable lesbian ex pat community in Paris during that era. I don't know who the guy is in the photo either -- some artist or writer, I would imagine.

      Delete

In order to keep the hucksters, humbugs, scoundrels, psychos, morons, and last but not least, artificial intelligentsia at bay, I have decided to turn on comment moderation. On the plus side, I've gotten rid of the word verification.