After the End

Download or read book After the End written by James Berger and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of the cultural pursuit of the end and what follows, Berger contends that every apocalyptic depiction leaves something behind, some mixture of paradise and wasteland. Combining literary, psychoanalytic, and historical methods, Berger mines these depictions for their weight and influence on current culture. He applies wide-ranging evidence--from science fiction to Holocaust literature, from Thomas Pynchon to talk shows, from American politics to the fiction of Toni Morrison--to reveal how representations of apocalyptic endings are indelibly marked by catastrophic histories.