“We are close to dead. There are faces
and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway,
in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines
who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin,
preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical
wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over
civilization is back again.”
—Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians, 1966