"In 'Jamestown,' it's annihilation without the revelation," Sharpe said. "Certainly revelation is not visited on anyone in the novel. The settlers are really bumbling around, not knowing what the hell they're doing."
The work of William Burroughs, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon and Norman Mailer -- who credited fear of the bomb with the creation of the Beats and other subcultures -- saw destruction as a chance to wipe out a corrupt order, "The System."
Instead of renewal, Schaub said, he picks up "a sense of real limits ... and a kind of regret," from both his students and new fiction.
Have things really gotten worse? "This is the most uncertain time since the early '60s, since the Cuban Missile Crisis," said Erickson, "where it's difficult to have much confidence that things will turn out OK. If the times get any crazier, I think you're going to see more and more of this."
Said Schaub: "There's no question that the country is wealthy, but the middle class has declined since the '70s. There's a general sense of the intractability of our problems. The race problems, the religious problems, in the Middle East and in our country," and the limits offered by resources and the environment. "It's mind-numbing really."
Strikingly, given the dead-serious subject matter, some of these novels are genuinely funny. "You couldn't approach this with a straight face without seeming ridiculous," Adrian said.
Without humor, Sharpe said, "I think it would be unbearable to me as the person who has to sit there writing it every day for several years. I would pause from time to time and say, 'This is really grim, can I go on with this? Why am I writing this?' "
His answer ended up being that however nasty the subject matter, the novel and the future were important. "And I realized," he said, "I had to face up to it."
scott.timberg@latimes.com
