ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the work of Jennifer Egan, a currently underdiscussed author whose body of work includes an exciting and in-depth discussion of digital culture and the legacy of postmodernism. Egan’s work recreates the book for the digital age, utilizing alternative technologies such as PowerPoint and Twitter in the formation and publication of her works. Further than this, the content of her fiction traces the incorporation of technology into the human experience and the human body, asking how our reliance on technology alters our definition of humanity. Egan’s position in the literary canon as a contemporary American author and her adoption of various postmodern techniques ties this question of technology to the place of fiction in commenting upon and critiquing the state of culture: as the postmodernists ironized their consumerist, information-obsessed landscape. This chapter will track the development of this conversation across Egan’s various novels and illustrate her important contributions to the current landscape of fiction and to the legacy of postmodernism.
