Critifiction

"I like the way this book makes available critical reflections on postmodern or 'experimental' literature from the perspective of one of its central practitioners in the West today. We hear Federman's voice speaking from both inside and outside the scholarly and pedagogical discourse on postmodernism—a discourse to which he brings the intensity, engagement, vitality of the fiction writer for whom the 'fate' of the postmodern novel is not merely an academic question. I love the informal, provocative style of Federman's ruminations as he alternately immerses himself in and emerges from the texts of others without encumbering the book with what are so often perfunctory footnotes."— Jean Walton, Fordham University

"Critifiction is not just an important book, it is an important idea in itself: that a key innovator in contemporary fiction is able to cross so many boundaries and undertake brilliant commentaries on those leaps and bounds even as they happen. I cannot think of another figure who is so essentially both a fiction writer and seminal critic, so much an American while still retaining a European flavor, so interesting a thinker while remaining a vibrantly entertaining writer on such matters as current fiction and postmodern culture. Raymond Federman has always managed to place himself at the center of his work, and his Critifiction essays are a natural vehicle for making the most of this impulse for writer and reader alike." — Jerome Klinkowitz, University of Northern Iowa