Context is a quarterly publication intended to create a historical and cultural context in which to

read modern and contemporary literature. Its goal is to encourage the development of a literary

community.Its latest issue has several dense but thoughtful articles, among them a description by Curtis White of the cultural criticism of George W. S. Trow. Trow’s “real contribution to the

genre is a very persuasive ability to determine

when a social formation is alive and dominant, and when it is dead….Trow argues that for the last fifty years the

United States, at the height of its world dominance and authority, has been caught in a

process of persistent social devolution that has left us with a world dominated by television

and the likes of David Letterman. It is a world emptied of all honor and truthfulness, and

whose only depth is the abysmal depth of self-reflection and ‘ironic self-contempt.’ ” Along the way, he has a very interesting analysis of the failure of the ’60’s counterculture, which he calls “vitalitarianism” insofar as he sees its central force to be the opposition to the “creeping catatonia” of television and the tabloids. In its wake, it left “our moment, …isolated, utterly lacking context, illiterate, illiberal, empty

of useful information, narcissistic,

and incapable of a single serious moment. That’s our post-Reagan, Clinton-in-ascendance,

cultural dominant. And damned if I know why Trow is wrong to say so.” Perhaps caught up in the ironic spirit, White wonders why, “…if Trow has a

brilliant grasp of when a ‘cultural aesthetic’ is alive and when dead (and he does), how is it

that he could, for thirty years, make these critical and intellectually lively distinctions from

within something that is itself dead?” He is referring to Trow’s career as a staff writer for the New Yorker, which White makes a point of explaining why he does not read (he doesn’t find the cartoons funny, among other reasons).