SOURCE: Herron, Jerry. “American Anger and the Lost Art of Liking.” Georgia Review 50, no. 3 (fall 1996): 609-15.

In the following excerpt, Herron compares the portrayals of American society in Rule of the Bone and Witold Rybczynski's City Life, commenting that both novels function as “mirrors” of contemporary social mores.

By this late date in the “American Century,” it is probably unnecessary to point out how angry we are at each other, civically speaking, with Americans robbing, raping, murdering, incarcerating, and executing one another at rates that make us the wonder, if not precisely the envy, of the so-called developed world. And for those not prone to physical expressions of feeling, there are the simulacral beguilements of going down by law, which prove irresistible to an ever increasing number of actionable citizens. A toll-free number (1-800-LAW-SUIT) now offers drive-by litigation twenty-four hours a day. Concomitant with this rambunctious turn...