Generation of Vipers

Dalkey Archive
Philip Wylie
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Perhaps the most vitriolic attack ever launched on the American way of living—from politicians to professors to businessmen to Mom to sexual mores to religion—Generation of Vipers ranks with the works of De Tocqueville and Emerson in defining the American character and malaise.

Wylie's classic, written with devastating wit and a pen as sharp as a barber's razor, wages war on all forms of American hypocrisy. Remarkably, or perhaps not so, what Philip Wylie has to say rings as true today as when he first wrote Vipers, and no doubt it will continue to offend and outrage both the Left and Right. Harsh, bitter, and filled with venom toward those who have corrupted the America that "could have been," Generation of Vipers will be read with pleasure and indignation a century from now.

Contributor Bio

Philip Wylie (1902-1971) was a prolific American writer whose works range from satires to pulp sci-fi, political essays to Hollywood screenplays. He delved into matters of philosophy and social criticism across his many genres and mediums with a caustic, once-in-a-generation voice all his own. A member of the founding staff of the New Yorker, his essays and stories regularly appeared throughout the ’40s and ’50s in Vanity Fair, Redbook, the Saturday Evening Post, and Cosmopolitan.

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