Good morning, fellow self-flagellaters

[Joe Allonby]

Now where did I leave that cat-o'-nine-tails?

On 4/30/06, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Here's another review of that 1973 nervous breakdown book . . . .
>
>
>
> "It's also true -- it may be cliché by now, but there's no getting around
> it -- that this was a time of deep paranoia in this country from which we
> show little evidence of recovering. The incredible damage that Watergate did
> to the presidency and to popular confidence in governmental institutions;
> the loss of Vietnam and the concomitant "sense that the era of Western
> domination [was] over"; the collapse of the economy and the coming of the
> OPEC-induced gas lines, still further evidence of the decline of the West --
> all of this combined to produce a mood of deep self-doubt, a belief that
> someone out there was trying to "get" us.
>
> The repercussions of all this are still with us. Probably not many people
> read *Fear of Flying* anymore, and it would be amazing if *Gravity's
> Rainbow* is now read anywhere outside of graduate schools or especially
> self-flagellating book clubs, but the sexual revolution of which Erica
> Jong's novel was emblematic continues apace, with ever more distressing
> ramifications, and the paranoia that is at the heart of Thomas Pynchon's
> brilliant and unreadable novel is still a central characteristic of American
> culture and politics."
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/27/AR2006042701958.html?sub=AR
>
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