We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life 'outside' the story changes the story.
Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.
Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.
The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still 'are' human beings, now. Or can be.
I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art.
This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.
