Twentieth Century America

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Culture in the Twentieth Century? William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound Lament The early twentieth century in the United States was a time of rapid change combined with rapid loss. As new technologies designed to improve everyday living became available to people across the nation, a new culture began rising in America: a culture that both afforded comfort and thrived on capitalism. Job opportunities were opening, much due to improving technology and the Great War. America was becoming a capitalist economy and along with it were Americans who learned to manipulate and abuse the system to their advantage. Despite such a thriving early twentieth century, there were many critics of this new America, including poets Ezra Pound and William Carlos …show more content…
Dr. Peter Monacell, American Literature professor at Columbia University, defends Elsie’s inability to connect with a land so filthy from “pure” American people (“products”) by stating that: “Elsie cannot assimilate into communities and regions to which she is not indigenous [ “reared by the state and/sent out to work in/some hard pressed/house in the suburbs (“To Elsie”, 34-39)]. Imported into Rutherford [where Williams’ family lives and thus where she works], she serves as a constant reminder that industrialization and urbanization have victimized rural people” (Monacell, 130). Without being able to connect to American land, there is loss of an entire culture which cannot be found within urban and industrial cities. Urbanization and industrialization create job opportunities for people like Elsie. Despite possibly being monetarily safe, Elsie, with her “ungainly hips and flopping breasts” creates an image of a sterile, fruitless culture in which there is no cultural progress if she and others like her are not capable of connecting to their past culture (45). The modern America did not just take advantage of its inhabitants, but its inhabitants also began to profit off of one another’s …show more content…
While few writers and artists still wrote to express thoughts and ideas, many found themselves capitalizing on their talents in a commercialized era. Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” satirizes his thoughts on the commodified culture of the twentieth century. In poems such as “Mr. Nixon” and “E.P Ode Pour L’election de Son Sepulchre”, Pound’s persona specifically laments the meretricious quality of written work, whether prose or verse. To illustrate, in “Mr. Nixon”, Mauberley speaks to a writer who gives him writing advice whilst on Mr. Nixon’s yacht, which his owning of a yacht implies that this man is incredibly wealthy since he can afford such a luxury. Mr. Nixon, in giving this advice, continues to tell Mauberley to “Consider, / Carefully the reviewer. / […] and take a column,/ Even if you have to work for free./Butter reviewers […]”(3-10). Nixon is suggesting that Mauberley betray his own set of principles in order to make money because “as for literature/ It gives no man a sinecure” and dissuades him from writing verse because there’s no money to made in it ( “And give up verse, my boy, / There’s nothing in it.”) (16-20). Recognition alone in literature does not yield a plentiful income, which is what people like Nixon seem to be concerned more about. The market of the twentieth century does not pay a writer who is interested in his work, but rather a writer that can
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