How did Modernism affect American culture?
Ms. Woolf further contends that the "proper stuff of fiction" is not what custom has demanded. Instead, the Modernist writers attempted to come closer to real life and to preserve what truly interested them, even if doing so caused them to cast away conventions. Writers such as James Joyce, Woolf adds, come closest to representing the modern writer. He uses a stream-of-consciousness style and his protagonists feel incoherence, disillusionment, and uncertainty.
In the US, where for the first time its citizens experienced two wars on grand scales, optimism was lost and fragmentation was felt. As a result, many people began to feel unsure about the future and experienced a certain disillusionment. Like Krebs in Ernest Hemingway's short story "Soldier's Home," many no longer trusted the ideas and values of the world that had wrought...
