The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Cognitive Fictions, by Joseph Tabbi
reviewed by Christian Moraru

Joseph Tabbi. Cognitive Fictions. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2002. 166 pp. Paper: $17.95.

Like Tabbi’s first book, Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk, Cognitive Fictions is an interdisciplinary project, building its argument at the crossroads of fiction and postmodern studies, systems and electronic media theory, and cognitive science. The critic is here in distinguished company: Brian McHale, for postmodern fiction criticism and “fictional (possible) worlds” theory, and in relation to the latter, Thomas Pavel, Marie-Laure Ryan, and David Herman, who have made significant contributions to narratology and cognitive science; also N. Katherine Hayles, John Johnston, Silvio Gaggi, and Scott Bukatman, for systems theory, cyberculture, hypertext, and “mediality” in relation to postmodern/cyberpunk prose. But Tabbi’s book is, to my knowledge, the first to approach recent American fiction from a cognitive-science angle. The approach is systematic and focuses on relevant authors: Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers, Paul Auster, David Markson, Harry Mathews, and others. There are some usual suspects on this list, but also names that speak to Tabbi’s interests in more electronically oriented avant-pop/experimental writers, some of whom have found a hospitable forum in Tabbi’s cool electronic book review. Any conspicuous—unavoidable—absences? Maybe DeLillo (White Noise, Underworld), who is mentioned but not analyzed? More important, I find Tabbi’s discussion of post-1980 American “cognitive fictions” persuasive, well articulated, showing elegantly how contemporary fiction acts out the systemic workings of cognition. The critic lays out the homologies obtaining among mind, literary works, the media, and the reader’s own cognitive apparatus as texts rise and are processed mentally in our media-saturated world. Breaking new ground, Cognitive Fiction makes a strong case for the cognitional materiality of writing and reading.