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Patricia Hampl would go further, claiming that “The Crack-up” should be recognized as signaling “a fundamental change in American consciousness”She sees these essays as a “sharp pivot,” a change in narrative style that was a forerunner of American autobiographical writing:

The publication of the ‘Crack-Up’ essays looks now like a sharp pivot, marking a fundamental change in American conscious- ness and therefore in narrative voice, an evident moment when the center of authorial gravity shifted from the ‘omniscience’ af- forded by fiction’s third person to the presumption (accurate or not) of greater authenticity provided by the first-person voice with all its limitations.’