It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.
[...]
Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth. Sometimes, though, there is a ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones that swings me back into the early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better, and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn't want to know said "Yes, we have no bananas", and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were — and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more.
[...]
Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth. Sometimes, though, there is a ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones that swings me back into the early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better, and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn't want to know said "Yes, we have no bananas", and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were — and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Echoes of the Jazz Age"
There seemed little doubt about what was going to happen. America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history and there was going to be plenty to tell about it.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dudes in hats, machine guns, bullets, booze, and the kind of hot chicks you could still unironically refer to as "broads"...
— Moviebob
No TV, movies suck
I'm here with my gal
Shake your hands, kick around
Wear a suit to breakfast
Underwear that laces up
All girls have a guy's haircut
Crank your car to make it start
You will die of measles!
I'm here with my gal
Shake your hands, kick around
Wear a suit to breakfast
Underwear that laces up
All girls have a guy's haircut
Crank your car to make it start
You will die of measles!
Hello? Yes, it's the 1920s calling. Let's get in a car and drive to a party and listen to jazz on the radio and go to the movies. The economy is great, and it will probably be great forever— just kidding!
Prosperity is more than an economic condition; it is a state of mind. The Big Bull Market had been more than the climax of a business cycle; it had been the climax of a cycle in American mass thinking and mass emotion. There was hardly a man or woman in the country whose attitude toward life had not been affected by it in some degree and was not now affected by the sudden and brutal shattering of hope. With the Big Bull Market gone and prosperity going, Americans were soon to find themselves living in an altered world which called for new adjustments, new ideas, new habits of thought, and a new order of values. The psychological climate was changing; the ever-shifting currents of American life were turning into new channels.
The Post-war Decade had come to its close. An era had ended.
The Post-war Decade had come to its close. An era had ended.
— Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday
