Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity By Eve Tushnet

The understanding has sunk in slowly that the 1950s, far from being a bland decade of picket-fence complacence, were a time of intense social and artistic ferment: In literature alone, you have Invisible Man, Waiting for Godot, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and Goodbye, Columbus. (You also have Howl, but no decade is perfect.)

No matter how artful her prophecies, nobody ever listens to Cassandra until the catastrophe has come—so it shouldn’t be surprising that one of the most prescient, thorough, and hilarious satires of postmodernity fell into obscurity shortly after its publication in 1955. But it’s time we rediscovered that book, for Nigel Dennis’ Cards of Identity was written with so much foresight that it almost reads like this week’s edition of The Onion.

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