Literature
The Roaring Twenties was a period of literary creativity, and works of several notable authors appeared during the period. D. H. Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, was considered scandalous at the time because of its explicit descriptions of sex. American Modernism reached its peak in America between the 1920s and the 1940s. Celebrated Modernists include Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner, and while largely regarded as a romantic poet, Walt Whitman is sometimes regarded as a pioneer of the modernist era in America. The loss of self and the need for self-definition is a main characteristic of the era. American modernists echoed the mid-19th century focus on the attempt to "build a self"—a theme well illustrated in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Influenced by the first World War, American modernist writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, offered an insight into the psychological wounds and spiritual scars of the war experience.