SOURCE: “A Comedy of Exiles,” in The Awakening Twenties, Louisiana State University Press, 1985, pp. 157-188.

In the following essay, Munson, the former editor of the magazine Secession, recalls the writers and editors living in Paris and presents an overview of American critical reaction to the works being published during the 1920s.

The “lost generation” of expatriates permanent and pro tem has been preserved for posterity in Hemingway's first and best novel, The Sun Also Rises. In it one encounters the emotional casualties of World War I, the playboys and young writers of the postwar period, the dabblers in the arts and the cafe sots that infested the Left Bank. The mood of the novel: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, and the earth abideth forever. … The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down.”

One of the first characters we meet in The Sun Also Rises...