Abstract

John Beck's fine study of the representation of the postwar American West, analyzes the cultural impact of the secret state's establishment of its arsenals, proving grounds and waste disposal sites after the Manhattan Project. The giant Southwest Defense Complex is registered, with acute and telling political energy, in texts by Cormac MacCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Bradford Morrow and Don DeLillo, as a brute invisible energy field at the edges of national experience. This is one of the best studies of the military-industrial complex on record, typified by sharp close reading, blistering and theoretically wise readings, and a sure-footed grasp of difficult and evasive histories and strategies of deception. Beck sketches relations between toxic waste disposal, repressive anti-marginal politics, Cold War megadeath and atomic culture with an eloquence and passion controlled by a cool theoretical head. The review article argues that Beck's study is a major contribution to the analysis of the artificial state of emergency instituted by the AEC and Pentagon deep within the United States.