Chabon,Lethem, Eggers, and Saunders,Whitehead: the literary luminaries of the nineties made their names on a fantastical escapism, more determined to entertain than they were to provoke. Now that the world’s gone even more to shit, or Sam Sacks wonders whether their appeal has worn thin: “the central dilemma of the nostalgist’s aesthetic: Can a novelist both recapture the innocent pleasures of storytelling and at the same time illuminate the complex realities of experience? In steady and affluent times,truth and entertainment can overlap. But periods of crisis wedge them apart, and being faithful to one compromises the other I find myself missing ambivalence—a quality that rarely squares with entertainment. There must be precious few readers who don’t already feel well disposed to tales of World War II heroes, and fugitive slaves,and Abraham Lincoln.”This and more in nowadays’s culture roundup. (Ilustration: Nathan Fox)
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