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This book of criticism and explication of five postwar American novels makes little reference to psychoanalysis. The concerns of the author are with a cultural and social critique. Her criticism is focused upon pathologies in the American economic, political, military culture, rather than upon the psychology of individual character.
As many other writers did, Heller, Keesey, Vonnegut, Kosinski and Styron expressed their doubt about finding reason or meaning in a rational
Page 96historical process; in fact they made history a landscape of lunacy and pain, a mirror of psychic inner disorder. (p. 14)
She describes heroes who, in extremity, see with special clarity what in ordinary institutional and political situations is more masked; for any institution is liable to a misuse of power and authority and can become blind to its own narcissistic, self-perpetuating corruptions. Lupack's quote from Emily Dickinson suggests the theme which she sees as dominating the novels she treats:
Much Madness is divinest Sense—To a discerning Eye—Much Sense—the starkest Madness—'Tis the MajorityIn this, as All prevail—Assent—and you are sane—