Masters of American Lit (except Pynchon)

[Richard Fiero]

David Morris wrote:
>Knowing nothing about this Mark Lawson, I'd only say that Pynchon
>might not really be in the category of "post-WWII American literary
>giants."  I would think the term would apply to authors coming to
>prominence in the close-term aftermath of that event, and thus their
>identities having been intimately formed by that event.  I would think
>that any post-modern author would not be in their ranks.  Maybe
>Vietnam era (and post) American literary giants would be more
>accurate.
>
>David Morris

Post Cold War perhaps.
 From "Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?"
"It [science fiction]was just as important as the Beat movement going 
on at the same time, certainly more important than mainstream 
fiction, which with only a few exceptions had been paralyzed by the 
political climate of the cold war and McCarthy years. Besides being a 
nearly ideal synthesis of the Two Cultures, science fiction also 
happens to have been one of the principal refuges, in our time, for 
those of Luddite persuasion.

By 1945, the factory system -- which, more than any piece of 
machinery, was the real and major result of the Industrial Revolution 
-- had been extended to include the Manhattan Project, the German 
long-range rocket program and the death camps, such as Auschwitz. It 
has taken no major gift of prophecy to see how these three curves of 
development might plausibly converge, and before too long. Since 
Hiroshima, we have watched nuclear weapons multiply out of control, 
and delivery systems acquire, for global purposes, unlimited range 
and accuracy. An unblinking acceptance of a holocaust running to 
seven- and eight-figure body counts has become -- among those who, 
particularly since 1980, have been guiding our military policies -- 
conventional wisdom."