Zero - The Lost Generation

"Bryan, you can't start a blog series off with Zero. One would be okay, and Twenty-One would be acceptable as a continuation of the last twenty. But no, you can't start over at zero."

"Mr. Strawman, you may blame Hemingway for writing a novel with exactly 19 chapters. How am I supposed to evenly divide that into 20? And thusly I shall start this blogging adventure off with blog zero, which does not correspond to any single chapter, but is more of a conglomeration of things that helped me understand the novel as a whole (because after read-through number two, I was still lost). Furthermore, this way, blog post number 1 can correspond with chapter 1, and post 2 with chapter 2, all the way until we end our blogging adventure. So Mr. Strawman, if my simplicity just happens to be unacceptable to you, frankly this is my blog and I do what I want."

So without further ado, what in God's name is the "Lost Generation"?

A: "The "Lost Generation" is a term used to define expatriate artists and writers living in Paris after the end of World War I."

Thanks Wikipedia! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation) So then what's an expatriate?

A: "An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence.

Good Golly Gosh, Wikipedia! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriate) So what you're saying is that this entire novel, The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, is ultimately an illustration of various people like Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, and their various friends and associates who struggle to cope in a world after The Great War, in which their original values of love, romance, honor, and respect have been shattered by the horrors of war, and they all attempt to deal with this aimlessness through various mediums, such as sexual promiscuity, alcoholism, and gambling?

A: "um..."

Thanks Wikipedia, this has been most enlightening. In reality I reached this conclusion right around chapter nine I believe, when I stood up, shook my fists at the ceiling, and rightly declared "This book isn't about anything!!!" Shortly thereafter, I decided that Hemingway is a rather intelligent fellow, and if his book seems to be about nothing, well he probably wants it to be about nothing. Like Seinfeld, except less funny. Anyway, I tried to come up with reasons why his book doesn't seem to go anywhere, and after a bit of research about the Lost Generation alluded to on the back cover, I came to the aforementioned explanation. The book is about nothing, because the characters' lives are about nothing; they simply hop around from bar to bar, or from man to man, not really living their lives, but just simply existing. I suppose I'll go more in-depth with each individual character's aimless life as they appear throughout the course of the novel, so for now I shall simply declare the aimlessness of The Lost Generation to be the overarching theme of this entire novel. Theme? I do declare, that's another literary term. Chalk one up for Bryan F. Cary. Furthermore, this theme reminds me of a song, "The Good Life," by Three Days Grace; you can find it over there, on the left. Anyway, I'll see you all in chapter 1.

This is Seinfeld. It's a show about nothing.


This is Wikipedia. I like to carry on long, intimate conversations with it.