It has been said there is a cyclical 30-year or generational cycle in American history, evidenced by a return to the original ideals and dreams of the Republic. In the 1930’s, we saw the emergence of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which followed years of rampant capitalism and the crash of the Stock Market in 1929, […]
Wandering through the small, lonely towns of early America. There was Sherwood Anderson, and his small Ohio towns. There was Theodore Dreiser, and Sister Carrie, and a vision of life that portrayed eternity in the passing of seemingly insignificant lives. There was Thomas Wolfe, with his haunting images of America,his hunger for life and America, […]
Meanwhile, while the Dow Jones Industrial Index gains 455 points in its last trading day, the unemployment figures hit a new high of almost 15,000,000 unemployed, which, from the viewpoint of many, does not even reveal the true figure – a figure that puts us back into the dark days of the Depression. States are […]
30,000,000 jobless claims total now, a tip of the iceberg. 1,000,000 people infected with the coronavirus, 60,000 dead so far. Hunger lines, cars lining up for miles, searching for food. A stock market gyrating wildly, searching for solid ground, for a way, any way, towards profit, towards gold, with no connection to the reality of […]
“Studs Lonigan”, by James T. Farrell, is one of the great books of American literature. Written as a trilogy in the 1930s, it tells the story of a young man, William “Studs” Lonigan, growing up in an Irish family on Chicago’s Southside during World War I, the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression. Farrell’s purpose […]