With his customary wit and erudition, one of America's most celebrated and distinguished critics examines the response of literary Modernism to environmental changes caused by technology. Focusing on Eliot, Pound, Joyce, and Beckett, Hugh Kenner explores how inventions as various as the linotype, the typewriter, and the computer altered the way these writers viewed and depicted the world.

'splendid exploration of the relation between the mechanization of society and the literary imagination ... Immensely readable.' Washington Times Magazine