Masters of American Lit (except Pynchon)

[David Morris]

Post Cold War is apt, even though GR preceded the end of the Cold War.
 But many at that time saw the fallacy of the domino theory and a
Super-Other takeover as foundations for our national and foreign
policy.

The MAD model has not completely been put to bed.  Nuclear
proliferation via terrorist-states as suppliers of enriched juice for
their own or others' use undercuts the threat of like retribution.
Some kind of international policing is required for any real nuclear
disarmament.

David Morris

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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."
>