NPR–'Rubicon' Boss Henry Bromell, Bringing Jumpy Back

Set against the backdrop of post-9/11 paranoia, with a lead character who has lost his wife and daughter in the destruction at ground zero, Rubicon seems almost designed to fan conspiracy-theory flames among those who believe despite all indications that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job ”” a government conspiracy. Bromell knows that all too well.

“There are a lot of nuts out there,” he says ruefully. “Thomas Pynchon beautifully said in, I think, V, that what we got when we lost religion as a unifying glue in our culture was paranoia. Because we have to have something that suggests there are secret workings going on, and if we decide it’s not God, we have to put something in there. And he may be right: It’s less terrifying to look out into the world and see conspiracy, no matter how kooky it sounds, than to look out in the world and see nothing.”

And frankly, he thinks there are elements of society and the government whose activities could, broadly speaking, be described as conspiracy.

Read or better yet listen to it all (emphasis mine).

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