"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat."
William Faulkner
Stockholm, December 10, 1950
PS--how timely. and how sad that the mental state we were in at the height of the Cold War persists today, albeit in a different form but no less foreboding and oppressive. Yes, William Faulkner was a crazy bastard. But aren't we all?
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