New media and the transformation of postmodern American literature : from cage to connection How has American literature after postmodernism responded to the digital age Drawing on insights from contemporary media theory this is the first book to explore the explosion of new media technologies as an animating context for contemporary American literature. Casey Michael Henry examines the intertwining histories of new media forms since the 1970s and literary postmodernism and its aftermath from William Gaddiss J R and Bret Easton Elliss American Psycho through to David Foster Wallaces Infinite Jest. Through these histories the book charts the ways in which print based postmodern writing at first resisted new mass media forms and ultimately came to respond to them Introduction. The inoperable machine : a media history of late postmodernism The tiny box wherein everything is solved : new media narrative communication technology and the conversation Grooves on the feeling knob : systematic transgression in William T. Vollmanns The rainbow stories and Bret Easton Elliss American psycho Way closer to the soul than mere tastelessness can get : David Foster Wallace and transcendent extra textuality.