1. 1930s - Novelists Novelists Dissillusioned –Most fiction from 1930s – cynical, critical –Unlike H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis – attack middle class, writers of 1930s go after fundamentals of America society –James T. Farell, Studs Lonigan (trilogy – 1932-1935) – Lonigan can’t make sense of urban working class world, depressing character –John Dos Passos – U.S.A. (trilogy - 1930-1936) – portrait of America as ruthlessly capitalistic, crass, lacking spiritual or social attributes –Nathaniel West – Lonelyhearts (1933) – newspaper advice columnist slips into depression and insanity as a result of the human misery surrounding him A Cool Million (1934) – Lemuel Pitkin travels to New York to make the big bucks and is exploited, beaten, incarcerated and murdered

2. –Jack Conroy – overtly communist – The Disinherited (1933) – about labor violence in Missouri coalfields (his father and brother had died in a coal mining accident) Regionalist/Cultural Nationalist –Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England (1936) –Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)

3. John Steinbeck (1902-1968) –Tortilla Flat (1935) –Of Mice and Men (1937) –The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Dustbowl –Western Kansas, Western Oklahoma, Northwestern Texas, Eastern Colorado – hardest hit –Drought, poor soil management, wind storms –“black blizzards” –3.5 million flee Great Plains 1930-1940 –More than 10 million acres lost 5 or more inches of topsoil –Oklahoma’s population falls by 18% –Cimarron County, OK –“Okies”