P-related, tangentially

[Markekohut]

we have talked about the paranoia and fear in early Pynchon. We have seen it in historical fear of the Bomb; we have noticed P's indictment of an America of McCarthyism, of spying (on each other) and in general. We try to suss out more of P's overarching historical vision of America. (some of us do anyway)

From Haynes Johnson's The Age of Anxiety. (Same phrase Auden gave to his low dishonest times): (in the postwar Fifties), "nothing in human experience matched the fears that then enveloped the United States" (I know, hyperbolic but..): fear of a Cold War tuning hot; fear of a Soviet Union that had detonated an atomic bomb, ending the United States' monopoly on nuclear weapons; fear of traitors within who were stealing the fruits of victory from the United States. civil defense shelters blossomed inAmerican cities. In cellars and backyards, home bomb shelters were constructed and stocked with essentials. In schools, children crouched under classroom desks, supposedly learning how to safeguard themselves against nuclear attack. "

" So pervasive was this fear that millions of Americans began to believe that civilization, life itself, 
Was teetering on the edge of extinction. Out of this devil's brew of fear, suspicion and paranoia ---and cynical political opportunism---came McCarthyism." 





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