‘Facing the Abyss’ explores literary response to 1940s events

The 1940’s saw Nazi concentration camps, the atomic bomb, and the U.S. invasion of South Korea: a pivotal era by any yardstick. In his new book, “Facing the Abyss: American Literature and Culture in the 1940s,” George Hutchinson asks how these epochal moments resonated in literary culture, and how artists brought shape and meaning to the world in the wake of such overwhelming events.