America was a country dreamed up by religious fanatics and realised through violence. Philip Roth gave a name for this ‘blessed rage for purity’: the ‘indigenous American Berserk’. Granta 176 looks at what’s left of this vicious drive, in all its most virulent and florid strains. The American Berserk is the true psychogeography of the country, its dark underbelly. It’s what’s not fit to print, the stories that cannot be squeezed into the frame of nightly news. For years America has tried to tame itself – commodifying its rage through leisure and politics – but the wild side remains.
