Part memoir, part cultural criticism, this fast-paced ride through the postmodern landscape of American popular culture explores how our responses to headline events and popular films help script the ways in which we imagine ourselves and the world around us.

"Markey emphasizes the coherence of Calvino's literary production and convincingly and carefully argues that postmodernism--first latent and then increasingly (and exasperatingly) overt--is Calvino's essential muse."--Wiley Feinstein, Loyola University, Chicago "By thoroughly and persuasively interpreting and explaining Calvino's contributions to the postmodern esthetic, this book provides not only a better appreciation of postmodern literature but a better understanding of our postmodern world, where reality and textuality mingle, a world which Calvino anticipated, interrogated, and ultimately helped to fashion, and one which Markey now helps us to perceive and comprehend."--Sante Matteo, Miami University This primer for Italo Calvino fans looks at the international author in English translation, appraising his place in world literature and tracing his development as a postmodern writer from the start of his career during World War II to his death in 1985. Constance Markey, who knew Calvino personally, correlates details of his life with the growth of his thinking and artistry, using summaries and analysis of his novels, short stories, and essays to underscore the link between his life and work. Starting with his early writing as a political neorealist, she traces his move away from realism, first toward modernism and fantasy, eventually toward full maturation as a postmodern writer. Though Calvino chronicled uncommon events during a turbulent era, Markey shows that his writing evolved in a consistent, unified, and logical way. Writing for both the novice Calvino reader and those expert in his work, Markey also examines in depth his ties to other authors such as Conrad, Beckett, Borges, Kafka, and even Twain. She establishes Calvino's influence as a major force in the shaping of 20th-century literature and offers a persuasive account of postmodernism. Constance Markey teaches Italian at DePaul University, where she has served as head of the Italian section. She has written widely on Italian and European authors and on film and has published articles in Italica, Italian Quarterly, and Quaderni d'italianistica, and book reviews in the Chicago Tribune.

In 1966, Peter Handke disturbed the world of German letters with the publication of his first novel and with his attacks on the complacency of German-language writers and their audiences. Since then, Handke--an Austrian whose works include drama, poetry, and critical theory as well as fiction--has become a leading European figure in the internationally established postmodern movement. Klinkowitz and Knowlton survey Handke's progress as a writer, concentrating on his novels, to determine whether his creativity has been exhausted by his persistent assault on the systems that underlie conventional fiction, drama, and poetry. By placing Handke's work in the tradition of Gabriel García Márquez's magic realism and Donald Barthelme's innovative fictions, the authors demonstrate that postmodern writers can create works of art in which content is effaced and the process of composition assumes increasing importance. Indeed, in so doing, Handke has made that process as humanly interesting and as fictionally dramatic as any stories of The Great Tradition: he has learned to address the human condition within the limits of a rebellious aesthetic. The lesson of the postmodern transformation, Klinkowitz and Knowlton argue, is that the abstraction of content is not a loss; instead, it leads directly to the most essential human concerns.

From the editor-in-chief and managing editor of the Babylon Bee! A millenial seeker travels through a twenty-first century take on The Pilgrims's Progress with allegorical versions of all our modern vices tempting him along the way—as well as a few timeless personified virtues that just might see him through. Biting satire and uncommon wisdom from the creators of the internet's most influential comedy site, and an author of national bestsellerThe Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness! Ryan Fleming is a young agnostic reeling from his brother’s death. Though he is deeply angry with God, he makes good on a promise he made to his brother in the final moments of his life: to visit a church at least once. But shortly after his arrival, the slick megachurch’s shoddily installed video projector falls on his head—sending Ryan through a wormhole into another world. After a narrow escape from the City of Destruction, where the comfortably numb townspeople are oblivious to the fire and brimstone falling like bombs in their midst and destroying their homes, Ryan finds himself on a quest: To make it back to his own universe, he must partner with a woman named Faith to awaken a long-sleeping King—the World-Maker who can make all things new. Replete with characters ripped straight from the twenty-first century American church—including Radical, Mr. Satan, the Smiling Preacher, and others—this sometimes-humorous, always-insightful trek parallels Christian’s fictional journey in Pilgrim’s Progress. Prepare to laugh, cry, cringe, feel convicted, and ultimately be changed by the time the story ends. The Postmodern Pilgrim’s Progress is brought to you by Kyle Mann and Joel Berry, the two comedic minds behind The Babylon Bee—which, with 250,000 newsletter subscribers and more than fifteen million page views per month, is the most popular satirical news site on the planet.

This book is a meticulous argument for the contemporary value of Marx's democratic theory as an interpretive key for the postmodernism debates. Landry uses the works of Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard to represent the poststructuralist camp and the writings of Habermas to represent the rationalist camp. Viable social critique, argues Landry, mediates between pure social constructivist and pure realist metaphysics. Postmodernism, although critical of Marx, aided the broader project of critical social theory, particularly Marx's critique of social-material contexts of oppression. Indeed, significant positive affiliations among Marx, Habermas, and the poststructuralists are found in their commitment to criticizing ideological aspects of bourgeois Enlightenment rationality and modernity. Landry employs a fruitful tension strategy as seeking rapprochement among the modern and postmodern positions on hotly debated contemporary issues such as subjectivity, criticism, and the nature of reason. Marxism continues to provide critical tools for articulating productive conflict within the postmodernism debates, advancing of strategies of critique beyond identity politics toward a more self-reflective ideological discussion of the multiple axes of power and oppression in political struggles over democracy. In this unique study, complex philosophical issues are described lucidly and their relevance for today is established compellingly.

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