Wishes and Wants

For some reason I've always had a predilection for literature from the early 20th century. Most noticeably this preference is for works that take place in the interwar years from 1920-1940. I'm not so sure I can truly put my finger on the reason why. It seems that there is hardly ever a direct causal relationship between reason and preference. There are vaguely descriptive reasons I can give--the level of decadence that seemed to pervade life, the manners, the suppressed simplicity of the worldview. I think, in truth, it perversely seems almost idyllic in my mind. An era seemingly caught between modernity and the Victorian era, the exact point of society before we spilled over into the chaos of "modernity."

With my fear of planes I suppose I've always felt as if I was born in the wrong era, that I was more suited for the leisurely travel norms of that time. Perhaps I'm kidding myself to entertain such notions but I've raced through Forster, Maugham, Greene, and Waugh and continually feel drawn to their world.

Naturally it was not without a sense of irony that I realized the other day that, in a way, I've been living in a new manifestation of that time period. Perhaps this realization should have occurred to me already with the gloom and doom of another depression splashed across the news each day (Unfortunately I tend to be tragically oblivious. For as observant as I feel I can be, this streak of blindness can be somewhat surprising).

It can be quite easy to find parallels between historical eras if one sets out to do so. I imagine it's almost as easy as finding behavioral or moral justifications in the bible. Everything is found for those who care to undertake the search. For my own comparison it's easy to picture the fracturing of a societal naivete, a la the WWI, in the events of 9/11, the roaring 20s in the freewheeling banking practices of the early 2000s, and our own recession as the depression. What is left but a war to bookend the period?

Obviously the time periods of these "parallel" events don't mesh. The later events occur compressed--a naivete that took four years to crack was shattered in only a day. As we were drowning in the forgetfulness of prosperity the world continued to move on around us.

My good friend in California, Matt, made a very valid point during our discussion of the dualities between responsibility and happiness. It serves very nicely has an ending point for this particular post. Matt compared the current state of much of the financial sector with that of our peers. I'm taking the liberty to quote him directly (courtesy of the wondrous gmail)--

"A lot of our generation has been blessed with many great opportunities and not often have we seen the possible negative consequences of the risks we have taken. So we keep on taking the risks, keep on pushing it."

If there is a better analogy that describes the majority of young American adults and their personal struggles between "reality" and the easy almost hedonistic lifestyle they had grown accustomed to, I have yet to see it. Matt's assessment of the situation nails the crux of the issue, for our own age or for the 1920s. In both eras we became tangled up in the illusion of prosperity...so fooled by the hopeful smokescreen of flourishing affluence that we lost sight of reality. We are now stuck with the outcome of our own orgulous Ostrich act. Perhaps it's too ominous and perhaps too obvious to close with a warning, but as they say, "be careful what you wish for." Even if it is as absurd a literary lark as wishing to live through the ups and downs of the interwar period.