ica, disappearing in the smoke and clangor of wartime. B.F.’srnDaughter (1946), which the author called “a novel of manners”rndrawn from his wartime service in Washington, contains arnscoffing portrait of a New Deal speechwriter, Tom Brett, demoticrnon the surface but walking evidence that “all liberalsrnwere turning into self-righteous, complacent social snobs.”rnTom marries the daughter of a headstrong but honest titan ofrnindustry who, as one fatuous radio chickenhawk puts it, “representedrna way of life and a mechanism of life that is completelyrngone…. It’s gone, and I don’t know where it went, and what’srnmore, I can’t entirely remember what it was, although we allrnlived in it. We’re like fish being moved from one aquarium tornanother.”rnThis idea (minus the piscine metaphor) recurs throughoutrnthe novel. The war is changing America: indeed, “nothmgrnmatters that happened before the war.” A new order is at hand,rndrab and grey and conformist. “No one seems to be an individualrnanymore,” one spirited lady complains, even as the air isrnthick with platitudes about the Four Freedoms and the comingrnMore Abundant Life. “Personally, I thought the world wernused to live in, cockeyed though it was, was better,” says one ofrnMarquand’s gentlemen. So did many Americans.rnBy the 1950’s it was all over. America was remade, from searnto shining sea, and though the Beats noticed this and raised arnfuss (“America was invested with wild self-believing indi’idualityrnand this had begun to disappear around the end of WorldrnWar II with so many great guys dead,” fretted Jack Kerouae),rnthey were condemned as barbarians and then ridiculed andrnthen honored for all the wrong reasons, and finally these holyrnfools were dealt the coup de grace of postwar America: they gotrntenure and won NEA grants.rnBy 1965 Edmund Wilson, despairing that “our country hasrnbecome today a huge blundering power unit controlled morernand more by bureaucracies whose rule is making it more andrnmore difficult to carry on the tradition of American individualism,”rnhad concluded that “this country, whether or not 1 continuernto live in it, is no longer any place for me.” Wilson stayed,rnthough no one much cared, and in his final years he retreatedrnto Talcottville, as secluded a fastness as any Jeffers mountain.rnHe died deeply in debt to the IRS, which needed the money tornfill up yet another blood-lake.rnWilson was one of the luekv ones. He was treated indulgently,rnas a kind of national village crank, but even the PresidentialrnMedal of Freedom that his fellow America Firster JohnrnF. Kennedy awarded him could not keep Wilson from falling—rnwith Masters and Saroyan and the rest—into the slough of despond.rnThe Republic had perished, and these men were quiternunable to revive it. They left us only road maps, soiled upon issuernand now yellowed from years of neglect, but readable justrnthe same. ernUnderwaterrnby Rudolph SchirmerrnLord of what current rules the flowing kingdomrnWhere the lorn Monarch of Mud repinesrnAnd water lilies all but bow in homagernTo the slumberland of make-believe?rnAh, and what subjects—turtles, toads, amphibians-rnProfess their fealty in ribald speech.rnMiring their tributes in a tangent poolrnWhere only the finned Treasurer can find them!rn20/CHRONICLESrnrnrn