End of American Literature

The End of American Literature explores the dynamics and stakes of the late age of print. A time when one day it seems like printed books and bookstores are on the decline, whereas on another it is ebooks and the digital utopia showing signs of slippage. The feeling that something is ending—not that something is beginning—is seen both in our prognostications on the fate of capitalism, democracy, and America as well as in declarations of the end of the book, literature, and theory. The essays here take up these timely topics not with a nostalgic nod to the past or utopian utterances to the future, but rather firmly situated in the expansiveness of the present.

"Jeffery R. Di Leo writes with genuine narrative flair and knows how to tell a story. The End of American Literature offers a penetrating and incisive view of the sad disorder of American publishing. I would call it essential for readers today." - John Tytell author of Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano, "Jeffery R. Di Leo's informative interventions on the state of contemporary publishing and writing offer a voice of reason in a perio d of unsettling transformation in our media environment." - Charles Bernstein recipient of the 2019 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, "Jeffrey R. Di Leo's affably mordant, penetratingly droll, and consistently perspicacious reports from The End of American Literature bring to mind the waiter at Douglas Adams' "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" who promises his patrons that "the Universe will explode later for your pleasure." De Leo's essays, however, require no such deferrals but like a string of firecrackers explode at gratifying intervals into assurances that the pleasure of the text, like the fireworks of the aurora borealis, still retain their place along Paperwhites. If this is the late of print (and it is), Di Leo has not just left the lights on, but more importantly shone a light toward a path forward." - Michael Joyce author of the pioneering hypertext fiction, afternoon.

Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English and Philosophy at the University of Houston-Victoria. He is editor and founder of the critical theory journal symploke, editor and publisher of the American Book Review, and Executive Director of the Society for Critical Exchange. He resides in Victoria, Texas.