James Morrow et le nucléaire (et son dernier roman)

[jerome]

James Morrow a publié il y a peu Shambling Towards Hiroshima.

Il parle du nucléaire dans une interview.

Extrait :
"That novella fully details the horrors of nuclear war. Your generation grew up with that threat ever present. In fact in his book Bomb Culture, Jeff Nuttall made the claim that it was this very threat that drove popular culture in the 1960s. Today we live in a world where more states than ever possess nuclear weapons, and yet the sense of threat seems absent from the culture (despite the best efforts of our former president and his deputy). I wonder how your son’s generation regards Hiroshima? As history?
James Morrow : You’re right: my son’s generation probably regards Hiroshima more as a discrete historical event than as a immanent tragedy of contemporary significance. (At least, Chris Morrow himself agreed with that generalization.) During the '50s and '60s, as well as the reckless Reagan '80s, the specter of nuclear Armageddon was at the forefront of everyone’s consciousness, but this is no longer the case. It’s worth remembering, however, as you noted in your question, that George W. Bush’s Iraq adventure was sold to us as a stopgap measure against “weapons of mass destruction,” a rubric that presumably includes hydrogen bombs.

Of course, as I argued in Shambling Towards Hiroshima and This Is the Way the World Ends, these devices are not “weapons” at all, but Satanic instruments of indiscriminate murder. But Bush couldn’t call them that, because to do so would be to question the legitimacy of our own obscene arsenals.

At the moment everyone is justifiably concerned about the possibility of Iran and North Korean getting the bomb, along with concomitant delivery systems. There’s no easy solution to this menace, but I suspect the answer — if any — lies in tough-minded sanctions and negotiations. I would not put my money on Republican Party fantasies of zapping incoming missiles with Star Wars lasers: the famous Strategic Defense Initiative, so dear to the cult of Ronald Reagan."