A few words are in order about this essay’s title. It is pilfered from that great American man of letters, Edmund Wilson, who used it for his collection of American writing, The Shock of Recognition.
Well, I thought he looked good in the coffin. Had seen him only twice since I left Chicago, once in ‘53 when he and Mom made that trip to California, his last attempt to lure one of us back to the Trophy World, and then in ‘56 when Mom...
PoMo petrifaction has entered into contemporary fiction in an interesting way. Those American writers associated with the postmodern—John Earth, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, John Hawkes, William Gaddis, and so on—are all well over 40...
