States of Suspense

When the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, it precipitated a nuclear age that shaped the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. States of suspense is about the representation of this nuclear age in United States literature from 1945-2005. The profound psychological and cultural impact of living in anticipation of the Bomb is apparent not only in end-of-the-world fantasies, but also in mainstream and postmodern literature. This book traces the ways in which key motifs - the fragility of reality; the fear of closure; the inadequacies of language to represent the world - move between nuclear and postmodern cultures of the Cold War era. Taking three symbolically threatened environments - the home, the city, the planet - the book explores their recasting as 'nuclear places' in literature, and shows how these nuclear concerns resonate with those of other cultures. States of suspense will be of interest to students and scholars of American literature, and postmodern and technological culture. It will also be interest to those more generally intrigued by the cultural fallout of the nuclear age.

ISBN 0719077125   Pages 192 ISBN13 9780719077128 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Manchester University Press   Weight (grammes) 431 Imprint Manchester University Press   Published in Manchester Format Hardback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 01 Jul 2008   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress PS228   Spine width (mm) 23 DEWEY 810.90054   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate DEWEY edition DC22

Introduction		states of suspense		1
I		The nuclear age
1		The literatures of the nuclear age : fictions of disaster and anxiety		23
2		The sword of Damocles : the psychology and culture of vulnerability		42
II		Nuclear environments
3		Empty cities : nuclear war and the end of civilisation		65
4		Shadows on the hearth : the threatened domestic spaces of nuclear literature		89
5		The fragile planet : articulating global anxieties		109
III		Nuclear reactions
6		Going underground and digging in : the politics of nuclear literature		125
7		Conclusion and epilogue : the legacies of the first atomic age		139
App		Bomb drills in New York 1951-61		155
		Bibliography		157
		Index		169

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