Reading the Value System of Gravity's Rainbow ...

[alice wellintown]

Monroe wrote,  "... preparation sometimes included reading Herbert Marcuse and
Chairman Mao and the comprehension issues that came along with that
..." (IV, Ch. 17, p. 301)


Marcuse wrote,
I should like to emphasize the vital importance of the work of C.
Wright Mills, and of studies which are frequently frowned upon because
of simplification, overstatement, or journalistic ease - Vance
Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, The Status Seekers, and The Waste
Makers, William H. Whyte's The Organization Man, Fred J. Cooks The
Warfare State belong in this category. To be sure, the lack of
theoretical analysis in these works leaves the roots of the described
conditions covered and protected, but left to speak for themselves,
the conditions speak loudly enough. Perhaps the most telling evidence
can be obtained by simply looking at television or listening to the AM
radio for one consecutive hour for a couple of days, not shutting off
the commercials, and now and then switching the station.

see Hoberek's response to Tanner and Mattessich, Epilogue "The
Postmodern Fallacy" pp. 1120-127,

The Twilight of the Middle Class   Post-World War II American Fiction
And White-Collar Work, Princeton University Press. 2005

see The Big Clock (1948)