The Damned and the Beautiful by Paula S. Fass

Their own voices echo in extensive quotations from college newspapers, as Professor Fass (History, Berkeley) provides a valuable new perspective on them and, incidentally, on what they got us into. The Twenties' youth culture was itself the sudden product of enormous social change and these prudent, snappy, singularly unattractive young people led America into the modern age. Fass 0 Ratings 0 Want to read 0 Currently reading 0 Have read Overview View 3 Editions Details Reviews Lists Related Books Publish Date 1977 Publisher Oxford University Press Language English Pages 497 Previews available in: English This edition doesn't have a description yet. Despite the superficial trappings of liberation-from bobbed hair to petting parties-youth of the Twenties were bound to their era, Fass contends, and to one another in self-policed conformity to capitalist ideals and deliberately ''naughty'' behavior, an uneasy mixture of political conservatism and cultural liberalism. The damned and the beautiful American youth in the 1920's by Paula S. Adults who feared losing an ''old America'' regarded youth as damned, while progressives found their ''freedom'' beautiful. Championing individual freedom in private behavior, Twenties' youth dramatically changed American style and sexuality.

Fass describes the youth culture, which flourishes when family influence fades and peer group pressure becomes the main socializing force, as a more complicated phenomenon. The familiar Twenties' characters are here but not as simple symbols of alienation. Another book on the roaring Twenties? Yes, but this careful, somewhat labored study of America's first real youth culture-the white, middle-class college students of the Twenties-deepens our understanding of the Scott Fitzgerald scene.

The Damned and the Beautiful by Paula S. Fass