“The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention.”

—  Saul Bellow

"A Second Half Life" (1991), p. 326
It All Adds Up (1994)
Context: Much of junk culture has a core of crisis — shoot-outs, conflagrations, bodies weltering in blood, naked embracers or rapist-stranglers. The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention.

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Saul Bellow103
Canadian-born American writer 1915–2005

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