Norman Mailer, from a 1960 essay on the nomination of JFK...on doubling

[Monte Davis]

Mark Kohut quotes:
 
"Since the First World War Americans have been leading a double life, and
our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground;
there has been the history of politics which is concrete, factual, practical
and unbelievably dull if not for the consequences of the actions of some of
these men; and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely
and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is
the dream life of the nation." 
 
That's a terrific catch w/r/t Against the Day. I 've just tacked it into a
comment at the Chumps of Choice discussion of pp. 1040-1062, about LA as
dream factory. What does it mean that after WWI all the Ameicans we've been
following go either there, or to an equally fictive lost-generation Gay
Paree, or to Shambhala, or to an Inconvenience that "has become its own
destination"? 
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