Hyperbolic Realism

<p>What comes after postmodernism in literature? <p/><i>Hyperbolic Realism</i> engages the contradiction that while it remains impossible to present a full picture of the world assessing reality from a planetary perspective is now more than ever an ethical obligation for contemporary literature. The book thus examines the hyperbolic forms and features of Thomas Pynchon's <i>Against the Day</i> and Roberto Bolaño's <i>2666</i> - their discursive and material abundance excessive fictionality close intertwining of fantastic and historical genres narrative doubt and spiraling uncertainty - which are deployed not as an escape from but a plunge into reality. Faced with a reality in a permanent state of exception Pynchon and Bolaño react to the excesses and distortions of the modern age with a new poetic and aesthetic paradigm that rejects both the naive illusion of a return to the real and the self-enclosed artificiality of classical postmodern writing: hyperbolic realism.</p>