ABSTRACT
In their Winter 1967 issue, the editors of Partisan Review published a symposium on the theme, “What’s Happening to America.” One could be certain, even without reading the number, that, with such an open-ended title, a guarantee of publication in Partisan Review, and inclusion of some really way-out social critics, many of the answers would sound like a politicized updating of the Book of Revelation. The ineffable Nat Hentoff has suggested that to achieve social reconstruction, students should go crazy. The Right Reverend Paul Moore, Bishop Coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, also availed himself of the privilege of acting the role of pulpit analyst. Professor Daniel Bell has noted that the major preoccupation of those American novelists “who have touched the nerve of the age” was the theme of madness.
