There has been much debate as to whether the curse "May you live in interesting times" is really of Chinese origin, as mentioned by Duncan Munro in a sci-fi short story "U-Turn" in 1950, and much before him, by psychoanalyst Carl G Jung in an essay that he contributed to the book The Secret of the Golden Flower in 1931. Interestingly, the said curse is supposed to be the first of the three curses of increasing sternness, the other two being: "May you come to the attention of those in authority" and "May you find what you are looking for."

Whatever be the origin of these curses, the modern American seems to have been struck in equal measure by all three curses. He not only finds himself in interesting bubble-and-bust times, having to contend with the consequent attention of those in authority, but also finds himself, Gatsby-like, on the verge of finding what he was looking for: "A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about ..." (The Great Gatsby, 2000, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 149).

As civilization is wilting under the onslaught of vicious cupidity and hostile conditions of contemporary depravity, the modern man, like the protagonist of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, is torn apart by forces that have become too monstrous for his comfort: urbanization, modernization and materialism. There is a sense of loss and alienation—the haunting loneliness that is not specific to an individual or a particular community, something that has left man confused about his moorings, emotionally as well as spiritually.

However, as Mr. Antolini, in J D Sallinger's The Catcher in the Rye, puts it, "Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them— if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry" (1951, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, p. 189).

And, it's in poetry (literature) that man perhaps has to find his refuge, his lessons. So let us "beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Psychiatric trauma refers to any overwhelming experience that is emotionally painful and disturbing, which often leaves the affected emotionally battered and bruised for the rest of their lives. Trauma studies and literature deal with trauma inducing events and their ineffaceable effect on people. In the first article,"The Narrative of a Fragile and Private American: Betrayal and Double Traumatization in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland," the author, Marlene De La Cruz-Guzman provides an all-new space for viewing the Wieland siblings, Theodore and Clara, as victims of double traumatization—the original trauma that caused the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the betrayal trauma resulting from their trust being violated by the very people on whom they depended for survival.

Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, which takes an uncompromising look at the fetid side of the `American Dream,' has been made into a Hollywood movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Though Sam Mendes' film adaptation of "one of the most depressing novels ever written" (as averred by Blake Bailey, Yates's biographer) has not exactly set the box office on fire, it has won Yates and his works the recognition they richly deserve. In the second article, "Richard Yates and Hollywood," the author, Kate Charlton-Jones turns the spotlight on Yates's now-hot-now-cold relationship with Hollywood and on its false promises that included "an avalanche of money" and an instant ticket to Moviedom's Hall of Fame. Besides underscoring how Yates's writings reflect Hollywood's influence on the common Americans, the author also makes a case for taking a closer look at a few other writings of Yates.

The visuals of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center would easily qualify as one of the most watched TV clips since TV viewing became a staple of our daily lives. However, a report in the journal Psychological Science (April, 2007) indicates that the viewing of 9/11 coverage on TV induced intense stress and emotional disturbance among viewers. In the third article, "Performance as a Postmodernist Art: Don DeLillo's Falling Man," the author, Adrene Freeda D'cruz examines how the falling man in Falling Man, a performance artist, by performatively repeating the falling of someone from the plane-hit skyscraper, constructs a postmodernist critique of essentialist claims in the representation of events, and how the viewer and the media become willing accomplices in the terror act.

John Updike, who passed away a few months back, wore many hats comfortably—a novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, reviewer, and art and literary critic—and was at home writing about sex, religion and art, "the three great secret things in human experience," as he called them. Though he described his subject as "the American Protestant small-town middle class," his immense belief in the possibilities of ordinary life in America paradoxically gave his works a universal appeal. In the fourth article, "John Updike: Dynamics of Cultural Universals," the author, GRK Murty traces the dynamics of the cultural universals in Updike's works, and compares and contrasts the treatment of one such cultural universal—man's attachment to his land—by Updike in his novel Of the Farm and the Telugu novelist Tripuraneni Gopichand in his short story "Mamakaram."

In her poem, "Caution: This Woman Breaks for Memories," Colleen J McElroy writes, "I can turn a phrase or bend a letter/under until o becomes e or 3/evolving to 8 and simpler numbers./No easy girl into gril but loan/into god and home into bog ..." McElroy's "romance with language" began much earlier, which finally turned into a nourishing obsession. In the interview, "Writing, the Great Obsession, Is What Nourishes Us: Conversation With Colleen McElroy," she talks to Nibir K Ghosh about, among other things, her writings, career, racial identity, and the architectural skills of writing.

-- R Venkatesan Iyenger
consulting Editor