Americana
I realized over the weekend that although I have a copy, I’ve never read J. P. Marquand’s novel H. M. Pulham, Esq., and since I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the conduct of living, Marquand is probably among the foremost authors to read for an understanding of how this has and has not evolved. Pulham, which I’m about halfway through, is a portrait of a particular class in a peculiar era on its surface, but because it documents a life and a society on the cusp of change and having already seen enough of change. It also exerts a degree of insight that remains useful now. Although the late ‘thirties are certainly Modern, the Postmodern world is underway, so watching Henry Pulham pass away, so to speak, you are not left wondering how his contemporaries manage to stay afloat, but if their awareness does not destroy them all the more thoroughly than H. M.’s dawning understanding will spoil him for the coming age, since they, too, are lost, despite their efforts. Looking back over my own lifetime, what little there is so far, I see the changes that have gone on around me and that have happened to me, and I wonder if every generation is the Lost Generation.