So, you say “the Lost Generation.” You don’t? Well, say it! No, no — I insist!
And yet, this verdict on an entire generation came about simply because of a broken car. And where did it happen? In Paris.
It all took place after the First World War — or, as the French usually call it, La Grande Guerre, the Great War. The idea being that there was neither a First nor a Second World War, but rather one single World War in two acts, separated by a 21-year intermission. At least, that was General de Gaulle’s view. But I digress.
So, picture this: Paris, the Roaring Twenties are just beginning. Everyone is roaring, everyone is dancing, and the American writer Gertrude Stein, who at the time lived in Montparnasse, finds that her car has broken down. A Ford Model T — the first mass-produced automobile in history. The assembly line works perfectly, but the car doesn’t. What to do?
Stein takes the car to a garage. But — horror of horrors! — when she returns for her trusty steel steed (yes, yes, I know — what a cliché), the engine still won’t start. Furious, she gives the garage owner a proper dressing-down. He, in turn, takes it out on his poor mechanic — a shapeless fellow who had just returned from the front after the armistice of November 11 and had finally managed to swap his army uniform for something more fitting for peacetime.
“You are all a lost generation,” the capitalist tells the worker.
“No, you are all a lost generation,” Gertrude Stein instantly generalizes — pinning the label forever on everyone born around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
(Gertrude Stein. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1934)
At least, that’s how Ernest Hemingway describes the birth of the term in his memoirs, later published posthumously under the title A Moveable Feast.
And you say people overestimate the importance of good service.
And finally, a joke for those who still want more:
What did Jean-Paul Sartre say when Albert Camus knocked on his door?
— No exit for Strangers.