The Chums of Chance (hear the icthyian reading of the first term) from Pynchon's ATD are a good model for recent times. In the novel, they appear to stand for the pre-disillusionment hale and hearty fellows on the bounding main, serving unknown, or at least undescribed, masters with alacrity, cheer and bonhomie. Then, some buildings fall and everything gets a bit dark, signal-carrying light is split, &c, &c.
But, you know, that's me. I've never really wandered to the dark side of things, I've been too busy reading. (Condor: "I just read books.") And even the colossal and inexplicable adversities occasionally elicit an utterly ingenuous "oh heck" or "gosh darnit".
One can take these things too far, but when the adversities keep getting bigger and bigger and I keep reading Henry James and going to morning Mass, it does seem a bit like a 1950s superhero serial whose ratings are so bad that the writers have decided to just let the fellow have it with both bores every week.