That watershed period, 100 years ago

[Mark Kohut]

Saul Bellow in a 74-75 piece, collected in THERE IS SIMPLY TOO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT, writes about the Great Noise as perhaps the major distraction for writers. ( quotes Wordsworth on it from 200 years ago and then sez, " in a phrase from my youth --he hadn't seen the half of 
It") 
Then sez: " in short, the sounds of the public sphere, the din of politics, the turbulence and agitation that set in about 1914 and have now reached an intolerable volume." 
Around when Virginia Wolf said " human nature changed" .....
Around when the Great War killed much Western optimism ( see Wells as exemplar) 
Maybe around when Pynchon had Against the Day change dramatically ( a simplistic observation I know) 

I think it was the terrif Pynchon appreciator Tony Tanner who started an essay on Augie March by seeing Chicago as the city of the 1893 Fair, THE American city because Crystal Palace, White City, optimism. 

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