A reinterpretation of the work of the three most important American writers of the 1920s. In this insightful study, Ronald Berman examines the work of the critic/novelist Edmund Wilson and the art of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway as they wrestled with the problems of language, experience, perception, and reality in the "age of jazz." By focusing specifically on aesthetics--the ways these writers translated everyday reality into language--Berman challenges and redefines many routinely accepted ideas concerning the legacy of these three authors. Fitzgerald is generally thought of as a romantic, but Berman shows that we need to expand the idea of Romanticism to include its philosophy. Hemingway, widely viewed as a stylist who captured experience by simplifying language, is revealed as consciously demonstrating reality's resistance to language. Between these two renowned writers stands Wilson, who was critically influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, as well as Dewey, James, Santayana, and Freud. By patiently mapping the connectedness of these philosophers, historians, literary critics, and writers, Berman opens a brilliant new gateway into the era: This work will be valued by scholars of American literature, philosophy, and aesthetics; by academic libraries; by students of intellectual history; and by general readers interested in Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wilson. It is a seminal work that will prove to be essential to American literary scholarship.