Blurbs
“The Anxiety of Obsolescence is a clear-eyed look into jittery screens, connecting the moving dots of new media with new considerations of traditional literature to outline ‘the cultural purposes served by repeated proclamations of the novel’s untimely demise.’ It is one of those rare instances when a book you thought someone must have written but no one did suddenly appears in ways you just as suddenly couldn’t imagine any one ever writing differently.”
—Michael Joyce, Professor of English and Media Studies, Vassar College, and author of Afternoon, A Story and Othermindedness: The Emergence of Network Culture
“Smart, savvy and insightful, The Anxiety of Obsolescence asks not whether the novel is obsolete but what cultural and social functions are served by that claim. Fitzpatrick makes a strong connection between the novel’s putative ‘endangered’ status and rear-guard actions to preserve white male hegemony. In so doing, she gives us a fresh and compelling perspective. The Anxiety of Obsolescence is essential reading for anyone interested in the postmodern novel.”
—N. Katherine Hayles, Hillis Professor of Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts
