the ubiquitous use of the word “great” for anything that works as well as it was designed to work, great, great, great, the television show was great, and the last waste-water dump, the Saturn performance and the Service Propulsion Motor performance, the burps and the bursts of the thrusters. It was the small-town reaction to the grim miracles of the modern world, everything was great, a bite of steak, a chocolate bar, a movie which made you laugh, a high focus on a television screen—great, great, great, great. The famine of American life was in the sound of the word.
