Back to the American future
Caught at a violent turning point in history, the United States is struggling to find a path forward.
by Lyndsey Stonebridge for The New Statesman
In her exquisitely prickly novel, The Vulnerables, published last year, the American author Sigrid Nunez writes: “If it is true that an inability to deal with the future is a sign of mental disturbance, I don’t know anyone who is not now disturbed; who has not been disturbed for some time.” She was talking about how the past decade has swept away political and moral certainties, leaving many existentially high and dry, bewildered by events that seem to stack up before us, obscuring the view of what lies ahead.
