Beginning in the 1950s with the generation of Pynchon, Burroughs, and Paley up to David Foster Wallace and Kathy Acker, Postmodern American Fiction is the first anthology to richly represent the diversity of experimental fiction in postwar America. A deep and wide collection of short fiction, novel excerpts, cartoons, hypertexts, creative nonfiction, and theoretical writings by sixty-eight writers, Postmodern American Fiction conveys the wit, inventiveness, and edgy skepticism of fiction that grows out of and refracts five decades of profound political, technological, and cultural change in America.

The editors' lucid Introduction explores the modernist roots and cultural contexts of postwar America that gave rise to postmodern fiction and offers a window into the complicated, turbulent connections between postmodern fiction and literary theory. Section introductions and brief author headnotes frame the selections. A final section, "A Casebook of Postmodern Theory" -- with writings by Cixous, Berube, Eco, hooks, and others -- provides valuable contexts for reading the works.