Bearing comparison to the troubles of our own times: > A mood of crisis prevailed in the 1930s, one that some of Fitzgerald’s contemporaries, including John Do

Bearing comparison to the troubles of our own times: > A mood of crisis prevailed in the 1930s, one that some of Fitzgerald’s contemporaries, including John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, struggled more openly to assimilate into their work. There was plenty of evidence that the country was coming apart. The 1932 Bonus Army occupation of Washington ended in a clash with two U.S. cavalry divisions. The Dust Bowl disaster created a mass migration to the West that came with its own politics of hard times. As late as 1938, U.S. unemployment stood at 19 percent.