Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk (Gender) - Hardcover

"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." -- Tom LeClair, University of Cincinnati "Tabbi offers a subtleimportant, and complex argument, delivered in clear and forceful prose, about some of the most crucial issues in fiction today." -- William R. Paulson, University of Michigan "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." * Review of Contemporary Fiction * "An important book, one that will be read, reread, and valued for its depth, lucidity, and courage." -- Stuart Peterfreund, Northeastern University

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 sublime.