Modernity and Postmodernity - Nabokov vs. Vonnegut

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 9 (A-), University of Bucharest (Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures), course: English Literature, language: English, abstract: After the war a group of American writers referred to as the Beat Generation communicated their profound disaffection with contemporary society through their unconventional writings and lifestyle. In the 1950s began the experimentation in style and form that continues even to the present day. As a result of World War II, Nabokov and Vonnegut created texts in which narrators or protagonists are displaced, are 'outsiders' in a sense. The notion of 'home' is altered, especially in Vonnegut's case, as he never feels really 'at home' in post-war America. Both Kurt Vonnegut and Vladimir Nabokov are the products of lost paradises, which reverberate in their work with a nostalgia unmarred by selfpity. Nabokov's idyllic, cushy Russian youth has the advantage of sounding like paradise; Vonnegut's was prewar Indianapolis, which doesn't. His parents didn't have a happy adulthood: his mother finally killed herself not long before Kurt was captured in the Battle of the Bulge. Even so, he's one of the few American writers to have had a happy childhood, which was also a privileged one, until his prosperous family went bust in the Depression.