Abstract

Recent Fiction

The article analyzes books "The Trumpet Unblown," by William Hoffman and "The Hearth And The Strangeness," by N. Martin Kramer. In the novels of the World War I, war itself was the villain: in the fiction of the World War II, it became little more than environment. Human behavior under conditions of mass slaughter no longer shocked novelists, who confined their treatment of war to clinical-technical reporting, and achieved narrative drama. In the first novel, earlier themes reappear: disillusion, despairs and final indifference. The result is an overture to a Lost Generation. While Kramer in his book, reduces his hapless heroes and thwarted heroines to objects of a rather sophomoric irony, and so eliminates any tension or tragedy which may be lurking in his book.