Preface ix PART I Genesis 1 CHAPTER 1 Introduction The "Crisis of Man" as Obscurity and Re-enlightenment 3 CHAPTER 2 Currents through the War 27 CHAPTER 3 The End of the War and After 61 PART II Transmission 101 CHAPTER 4 Criticism and the Literary Crisis of Man 103 PART III Studies in Fiction 143 CHAPTER 5 Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison Man and History, the Questions 145 CHAPTER 6 Ralph Ellison and Saul Bellow History and Man, the Answers 181 CHAPTER 7 Flannery O'Connor and Faith 204 CHAPTER 8 Thomas Pynchon and Technology 227 PART IV Transmutation 253 CHAPTER 9 The Sixties as Big Bang 255 CHAPTER 10 Universal Philosophy and Antihumanist Theory 281 CONCLUSION Moral History and the Twentieth Century 316 Notes 331 Acknowledgments 401 Index 405