I've been thinking about your question all weekend (well, not constantly, but sort of off and on). **Note to self: don't make general pronouncements without thinking them through first...**

You know, I realized, thinking about this, that most of the pieces of American literature I've read from this time period are plays. Plays that I've either been in or studied.

Some things that I can identify as having this *quality* (if you can call a feeling or antipathy that I have a quality... the mind reels...):
Hemingway OLD MAN AND THE SEA
Lillian Hellman THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
Jean Rhys GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT
Saul Bellow HENDERSON THE RAIN KING
Eugene O'Neill MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN
LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL (the play, not the novel)
Sinclair Lewis ARROWSMITH
Horton Foote (a playwright)
Arthur Miller
Edward Albee

And I think I'll stop there. I'm sure there are others, but it would be madness to continue. I recognize that many of these works are good (I mean, hell, there's a few nobel prize winners in there), that they are well-crafted pieces of writing. But. BUT I don't really enjoy them.

To which, someone might say, these are works of LITERATURE not ENTERTAINMENT, or something. There's a joy in read well-crafted fiction, but maybe it has something to do with a lack of discovery? Many of these are books that I was instructed to read through some class or other. Is that it? Maybe it's lack of discovery in some deeper sense? Maybe I'm the one lacking, failing to discovery some THING in these works that other people discovered in them long ago. Or maybe it's just not the right time for the reading of these things?

I think if there's anything that's missing from these books and plays, (and I include BLOOD OF THE LAMB here) for me it's a sense of the delicious delirium of language, the hint of things lurking just off the edge of the page...