At the End of the Mechanical Age (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Donald Barthelme
- First Published: 1973
- Type of Work: Short story
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Twentieth century, Marriage, Time
“At the End of the Mechanical Age” is Barthelme's teasing meditation on the necessity and impossibility of conceptualizing human existence in the inhuman terms of “age” or “era.” His point of departure is certainly the suggestion, first developed in the 1960's and 1970's, that industrial society was evolving into a state that would be fundamentally different from that which had defined it for the previous two centuries—what some commentators have called postindustrial society. Barthelme pokes fun at this notion without fundamentally overturning it, by having the two main...
[The entire page is 657 words long]
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