with the technology of all his personal processes, to seenthem, as he sees himself and other people, as objects to benanalyzed and evaluated for their correctness according tonvarious behavioral measurements and sociological surveys.nSince instinct qr simply intelligence can no longer bentrusted as a guide to feeling and conduct, since thenprecedent of the past is considered an inhibition from whichnwe are struggling to escape, only technique is left—ntechnique forced into the service of a profoundly narcissisticnpreoccupation.nThe development—if that it can be called—from selfpreoccupationnas a pervasive psychic condition of ournsociety to novels that are specifically about selfpreoccupationnreaches its logical culmination in novels thatnare themselves self-preoccupied—it being apparently thencase that the overriding concerns of a culture at anynparticular time in history will find their reflection, howevernobliquely, in the kinds of fiction the culture produces. If,nfurthermore, we have, at one extreme, novels (like PhilipnRoth’s) whose subject is self-preoccupation and, at the othernextreme, novels (like John Earth’s) whose subject is preoccupationnwith themselves, then it may well be that we arendiscovering only that the coin of narcissism has, in fact, twonsides. Novels of the first sort seem to be saying that nothingnis real or important except the self and the processes bynwhich the self has become obsessively aware of this fact.nNo’els of the second sort seem to be saying—even belligerentlynproclaiming—that nothing is real or important exceptnthemselves and the processes by which, as artistic constructs,nthey were created—including of course the authors’nlamentations over the bewildering variety of alternahvenways in which they might have been created.nJohn Earth has asserted that reality is a bore and thereforendoes not deserve to be treated in fiction. Yet this is merely anrestatement in other terms of the widespread belief thatnexperience outside the familiar and beloved precincts of thenself—whether as person or as novel—is irrelevant, trivial,ntoo incoherent and grotesque to be understandable, andnindeed very probably a bore as well.nSuch a belief, in whatever terms it is phrased, wouldnseem to prophesy, even herald, the imminent extinction ofnthe novel as a medium for making a realishc statementnabout the nature of our collective social experience, just asnthe arbitrary and often quite cynical use of the Barthiann”ersions” approach to experience would seem to express anfatal loss of respect for the integrity of both experience andnthe novel form. Yet it might be argued that much that passesnfor reality in the contemporary world is in fact a bore—asnis, inevitably, so much of the fiction which reflects itsnboringness or turns away from reflecting it because ofnboredom. The self as a person or as a novel contemplatingnhis, her, or its own intimate processes is deemed by thenwriters of such fiction to be all that remains worthy of theirnregard, even as we recognize that there are others likenBellow, Mailer, and Updike whose work stands in strongnrebuttal to this assumption.nI have written at some length about the various ways innwhich self-preoccupation resulting from the loss of a sensenof personal connection with the environment has become andominant subject matter of our contemporary fiction. Butnfiction has only given imaginative form to what has becomenthe dominant condition of contemporary American life, thensymptoms of which are visible everywhere but perhaps withnthe greatest clarity in the two most populous precincts of thennational neurosis: our twin obsessions with physical healthnand with death—twin because, while seemingly contradictory,nthey are in fact closely complementary.nIt may be commonplace to observe that preoccupahonnwith dying results from a suspicion that one is not and hasnnot been living. And the same might be said aboutnpreoccupation with the state of one’s physical health. It isnwhen the experience of life ceases to be challenging andnadventurous and fails to occupy one’s full attenhon that onenbegins to be concerned about its inevitable termination inndeath, as well as about the condition of the organism whosenefficient functioning is alone capable of postponing thenonset of death. After all, there may be something amiss withnthe muscle tone or the coronary arteries that is causing thisnfeeling that all is not well with the world, that life has lost itsnflavor and direction, along with the consequent feeling ofngeneralized frustrahon and malaise. Presumably HenrynJames knew what he had in mind when, in The Ambassadors,nhe has Lambert Strether beseech Little Bilham to “livenall you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matternwhat you do in particular, so long as you have your life. Ifnyou haven’t had that, what have you had?” But now thensuspicion weighs heavily upon us that not only do we nonlonger understand what it means to live all you can, we nonlonger know whether we are having our lives or how to gonabout having them or what to do if we discover that we arennot having them.nThrough a process parfly of systematic demythificahonnand partly of natural attrition, we have become disassociatednfrom many of the beliefs and psychological connectionsnthat might once have enabled us to answer these questions.nWe have abolished the concept of an afterlife. The shrinkagesnof history and territory have forced us to put aside thendream of secular transformation wherein one was able tonpull up stakes and move on to a frontier of fresh challengenand new becoming or, as was the case with James, to possessnlife fully through deep immersion in the sacramental watersnof the actual, the dream that with the Renaissance began tonreconstitute the psychic vitality of Western Europe and thatnmade the Utopian ideal of the New World both a visionarynpromise and an apparenfly attainable practical goal. Wenhave witnessed in our own hme a profound disillusionmentnwith the values of personal aspiration and the possibilities ofnmaterial improvement, a perhaps worldwide narrowing ofnexpectations in virtually all categories of human endeavor.nOne senses everywhere a recognition that the age as a wholenhas run through its emohonal and spiritual capital, that thenvarious modes of life alternative to our present one have allnbeen tried or are not worth trying, that tomorrow andntomorrow will be no better than or different from thenseemingly endless and pointless today.nIt is not remarkable, therefore, that we should nowninhabit a culture distinguished by its lack of a sense ofnpresent purpose and future direction, by a political doctriiienbased on a worship of the ordinary and a fear of excellence,nand by the magnitude of its obsession with mortality. If allnone can hope to experience is one’s physical life up to thenmoment it is ended in death, then one’s overriding concernnnnOCTOBER 1986/15n