From Here to There

In Praise of the Twenties

Everyone has a formative decade which he finds it forever impossible to escape. My own happened to coincide with the decade of the nineteen twenties, a time in which the individual, far from belonging to a “lost generation,” had everything going for him. Try as I might throughout the thirties and forties to adapt myself to a period of collectivist aims and varying types of group-think, I could never feel comfortable about it. I never felt good about life in America again until the fifties, when individualism—or voluntarism—again started to rear its head.

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

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In Praise of the Twenties

Everyone has a formative decade which he finds it forever impossible to escape. My own happened to coincide with the decade of the nineteen twenties, a time in which the individual, far from belonging to a “lost generation,” had everything going for him. Try as I might throughout the thirties and forties to adapt myself to a period of collectivist aims and varying types of group-think, I could never feel comfortable about it. I never felt good about life in America again until the fifties, when individualism—or voluntarism—again started to rear its head.