Reading Comprehension: Research activity

Paco and the Lost Generation

After having visited New York, Washington D.C. and Miami, Paco goes northward again in the States: Chicago. This is another interesting city Paco had in mind to visit.

He knew that many relevant literary figures were related to Chicago. He had read at University a short story by Hemingway (born in Oak Park, Illinois) and had also known about John Dos Passos, the author of Manhattan Transfer. Dos Passos, born in Chicago in 1896, was another outstanding writer who belonged to the so-called Literary Lost Generation, together with John Steinbeck, Scott Fitzgerald and other writers. Paco knew a lot about them because many of their novels had been transformed into films, like Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Steinbeck's East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath.

 

By Lloyd Arnold. Public domain.	By Floriang. Public domain.	By U.S federal government. Public domain.

Paco was willing to visit the places he had seen in some postcards in the nearest newsagent's: the Chicago Theatre, the Willis Tower, the University of Chicago, the skyline, the Navy Pier, the Field Museum and Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. As usual, he bought the Chicago Tribune and decided to have his hair cut. But while he was waiting at the hairdresser's, he thought that he had never got his hair dyed, so ..., why not do it now?

By AllyUnion. GNU free documentation license.

 

QUESTIONS ON WRITERS:

1) When was Ernest Hemingway awarded with the Nobel Prize for literature?

2) Did Hemingway take part in any European Civil War as a journalist?

3) What's the title of Dos Passos' novel about life in New York city, which was a commercial success and introduced experimental stream-of-consciousness?

4) Mention the three novels of Dos Passos' major work about U.S.A. trilogy.

5) What is Fitzgerald's most famous and celebrated novel?

6) What was Fitzgerald's posthumously published novel?

Answer the questions above about the three writers' lives and work.

You have to click on the author names' links and look for the information required.