Wallace Stevens started throwing punches at Hemmingway at a party for example.
The Wasteland by Eliot was to make for a bleak vision of the future.
Yes world war two was amazingly destructive and horrifying and the flippers of the jazz age were gone. Also sexual language in literature was widening since the "genius" of Ulysses made it difficult to stop in court.
America was heading torwards the future in a rather dry academic way no doubt to impress the world.
