I seem to have a revolving door policy lately when it comes to library books. In and out of the house far too quickly. Three weeks is not enough time to read the books I've been borrowing, especially when they are long biographies that are too heavy to drag around with me on the bus. So, unfortunately Lee Krasner was returned (unfinished) for the next person in line for it. What little I read was interesting, but perhaps I'll wait until it comes out in paper and buy it to read at my leisure. I hate returning library books unread, but I do read as many as I can manage. So far this year almost a third of the books I've read have been library books. However, I think it's time to pick one from my own piles next.
I recently bought Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s. What's interesting about Allen's history is that he wrote it not long after the decade ended. It's meant to be a general overview but he also sets out to interpret the events of the era. Of course over time and at a distance those events will be rethought and reinterpreted, but I like the idea of getting a feel for the period from a participant who's writing from experience. The book covers the years 1918-1929--the end of WWI to the beginning of the stock-market panic. It was published in 1931. I very much enjoyed Joshua Zeitz's Flapper when I read it a few years ago, which covers similar ground, though from a contemporary historian's perspective and perhaps more popular culture than serious history, but still very enjoyable. I love social history and anything about this era is of particular interest to me, so I'm looking forward to making my way through this one.
He begins with a prelude--looking back to May 1919 to see how an average family lived in order to contrast it with how life changed so drastically by the end of the decade. Since I am always interested in women's history my teaser is about how women dressed.
"Mrs. Smith may use powder, but she probably draws the line at paint. Although the use of cosmetics is no longer, in 1919, considered prima facie evidence of a scarlet career, and sophisticated young girls have already begun to apply them with some bravado, most well-brought-up women still frown upon rouge. The beauty-parlor industry is still in its infancy; there are a dozen hair-dressing parlors for every beauty parlor, and Mrs. Smith has never heard of such dark arts as that of face-lifting. When she puts on her hat to go shopping she will add a veil pinned neatly together behind her head. In she shops she will perhaps buy a bathing-suit for use in the summer; it will consist of an outer tunic of silk or cretonne over a tight knitted undergarment--worn, of course, with long stockings."
"Her hair is long, and the idea of a woman ever frequenting a barber shop would never occur to her. If you have forgotten what the general public thought of short hair in those days, listen to the remark of the manager of the Palm Garden in New York when reporters asked him, one night in November, 1918, how he happened to rent his hall for a pro-Bolshevist meeting which had led to a riot. Explaining that a well-dressed woman had come in a fine automobile to make arrangements for the use of the auditorium, he added, 'Had we noticed then, as we do now, that she had short hair, we would have refused to rent the hall'. In Mrs. Smith's mind, as in the manager of the Palm Garden, short-haired women, like long-haired men, are associated with radicalism, if not with free love."
The Twenties must have been very shocking. Dear me--at one time I had ultra short hair. And imagine swimming in long socks--sort of takes the fun out of it! I expect I'll be sharing more of this book as I read as it seems to be filled with all sorts of fascinating information, which I am sure I'll never remember if I don't make notes along the way.