ABSTRACT
The term "de-automatization," with its connotations of dismantling the machine or resisting technology, is thoroughly appropriate to Joseph Mcelroy’s novel and can be generalized to other postmodernist fiction. It names precisely the thematic intent of the peculiar style of Plus, a style which is perfectly congruent and complementary to the story about a human brain rejecting the tyranny of the mechanical role assigned it. The abstraction and difficulty of the style of the passage, and of all of plus, result from two closely allied devices that operate throughout. The first is what the Russian formalists called "deautomatization," and the second is a positive feedback loop in words and images, a stylistic feature that mirrors nicely the growth of Imp plus in his capsule. We can follow the development and coherence of Joseph McElroy's monomyth from work to work, and artificially decide to view plus as a culmination of the cybernetic theme.
