In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper of the American Novel of the Nuclear Age

"What was gunpowder?" Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. This atomic bomb is the Second Coming in wrath." – Winston Churchill, July 1945

Commencing earnestly in the 1960s, the American novel began its exploration into how mankind could adjust to life in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, how we could begin to think about the Unthinkable. American writers faced squarely the age birthed by nuclear physics and found in its very darkness difficult avenues to hope by rediscovering that most potent, traditional response to a history in crisis: the apocalyptic temper. Dewey focuses on seven novels that touch the variety of generic experiments and postures of the post-World War II American novel. These novels by Vonnegut, Coover, Percy, Pynchon, Gaddis, and DeLillo represent a significant argument concerning the American literary response to living within the oppressive technologies of the Nuclear Age.

Departing from other studies that veer toward speculative fiction or toward the more narrowly defined religious angles, In a Dark Time defines the apocalyptic temper as a most traditional literary genre that articulates the anxieties of a community in crisis, a way for that community to respond to the perception of a history gone critical by turning squarely to that history and to find, in that gesture, the way toward a genuine hope. Dewey’s new approach consists of applying the theory of apocalyptic literature to a body of essentially secular writings. Dewey resists the traditional approach – studying works dealing with nuclear devastation – to focus on how a generation of literary responses have dealt with the larger questions about how to live with the recognition of End times. Dewey convincingly demonstrates that this literature reminds its moments in history that only in a dark time will the eye begin to see.