Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk

Joseph Tabbi

Published by Cornell University Press 1996

Postmodern Sublime

Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk

Joseph Tabbi

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501717642

Overview
Contents

About this book

Focusing on works by Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, Joseph McElroy, and Don DeLillo, Joseph Tabbi finds that a simultaneous attraction to and repulsion from technology has produced a powerful new mode of modern writing—the technological...

Author / Editor information

Joseph Tabbi is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is editor of the Electronic Book Review.

Reviews

Tom LeClair, University of Cincinnati:

Tabbi's major contribution is resurrecting a concept of the sublime—which creates a new intellectual arc from Henry Adams to Kathy Acker and an interesting new grouping of American novelists. The chapters on McElroy's Plus and DeLillo's Libra and Mao II are the best criticism I know of these books and Tabbi's original readings of Gravity's Rainbow and An American Dream make it hard to think about Pynchon and Mailer in the same way as before.

William R. Paulson, University of Michigan:

Tabbi offers a subtleimportant, and complex argument, delivered in clear and forceful prose, about some of the most crucial issues in fiction today.

Postmodern Sublime achieves the same goal it sets out for the writers it studies: to move readers.... An intellectual page-turner, this book represents an important and profound insight into the latest incarnation of the 'sacred national order,' the technological sublime, and how one might live with it.

Stuart Peterfreund, Northeastern University:

An important book, one that will be read, reread, and valued for its depth, lucidity, and courage.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Machine as Metaphor and More Than Metaphor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Mailer's Psychology of Machines: Of a Fire on the Moon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
2. "Alpha, Omega" and the Sublime Object of Technology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
3. Meteors of Style: Gravity's Rainbow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
4. Technology and Identity in the Pokier Story, or The Uses of Uncertainty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
5. Literature as Technology: Joseph McElroy's Plus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
6. Fiction at a Distance: The Compositional Self in "Midcourse Corrections" and Women and Men Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
7. From the Sublime to the Beautiful to the Political: Don DeLillo at Midcareer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Epilogue: Postmodern Mergers, Cyberpunk Fictions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Keywords: History Of Science; History

eBook

Published: May 31, 2018
ISBN: 9781501717642