Rob Turner is a Lecturer in twentieth and twenty-first-century Literature at the University of Exeter. He studied for his doctorate at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. His research is focused on American literature, with particular interests in the epic mode, and the poetics of hip-hop. He is a regular contributor to the Wire magazine.

• Introduction: America and the 'way to the devil'; 1. Marguerite Young's flood of consciousness; 2. William Gaddis and the 'novel-writing-machine' of Andy Warhol; 3. 'Paper reality': William S. Burroughs and the cut-up method; 4. 'Bad history': Thomas Pynchon and the apocryphal epic; 5. 'History shambles on': William T. Vollmann and the Seven Dreams Cycle; Conclusion: 'every story has two tails'; Bibliography; Index.

'Citing leaders in contemporary postmodern scholarship, and with repeated and acute references to American literary history (particularly Emerson and Melville), Turner (Univ. of Exeter, UK) revisits the complex, multivalenced, postmodernist works of Marguerite Young, William Gaddis, William S. Burroughs, and Thomas Pynchon … Turner does a good job of situating these authors' works in contemporary scholarship … This is a timely treatment of American postmodernist prose.' C. B. Ewing, Choice