It all began in a quotation Ernest Hemingway attributed to his Paris patron, the poet and salonkeeper Gertrude Stein. On the title page of his novel “The Sun Also Rises,” published in 1926, he quoted her saying to her circle of creatively disaffected writers, artists and intellectuals in the aftermath of World War I, “You are all a lost generation.”
In the cultural nomenclature after that, the noun generation was applied to those “coming of age” in an era. Anne Soukhanov, U.S. editor of the excellent Encarta dictionary, observes, “Young people’s attitudes, behavior and contributions, while being shaped by the ethos of, and major events during, their time, came in turn to represent the tenor of the time.”
via generation what? | new york times
In this fascinating article, William Saffire traces the genealogy of the word “generation” and illustrates the complex cultural origins that contribute towards our understanding of its meaning today.
