<P> "Lost means not vanished but disoriented, wandering, directionless--a recognition that there was great confusion and aimlessness among the war's survivors in the early post-war years ." </P> <P> The 1926 publication of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises popularized the term, as Hemingway used it as an epigraph . The novel serves to epitomize the post-war expatriate generation . However, Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever"; he believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost . </P> <P> In his memoir A Moveable Feast, published after his death, he writes "I tried to balance Miss Stein's quotation from the garage owner with one from Ecclesiastes ." A few lines later, recalling the risks and losses of the war, he adds: "I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought' who is calling who a lost generation?"' </P> <P> The writings of the Lost Generation literary figures tended to have common themes . These themes mostly pertained to the writers' experiences in World War I and the years following it . It is said that the work of these writers was autobiographical based on their use of mythologized versions of their lives . One of the themes that commonly appears in the authors' works is decadence and the frivolous lifestyle of the wealthy . Both Hemingway and Fitzgerald touch on this theme throughout their novels, The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby . Another theme that is common for these authors was the death of the American dream, which is exhibited throughout many of their novels . It is most prominent in The Great Gatsby, in which the character Nick Carraway comes to realize the corruption that surrounds him . </P>

Who was the lost generation mostly made up of