Jenn Phillis, writing at electronic book review, really gets what I’m after in Digital Modernism. She writes, “The question at the heart of Digital Modernism is why we read literature, especially difficult literature, at all.” Yep.

She is also one of the only reviewers to focus on my writing about Erik Loyer’s wonderful Chroma, a story about the quest for a universal language in which “the fantasy of universal language is revealed to be fundamentally anti-universal, itself encoded with specific ideas about race, gender, culture, and class.”

I am grateful to this reviewer for seeing an ethical dimension in my book:
“Digital Modernism reveals that even the most innovative contemporary works of digital literature wrestle with what some might see as old-fashioned questions: what constitutes communication? How does representation work? Or, more basically, how did this artist manage to put this thing—this difficult, inscrutable thing—together, and why did she do it? Our profession should—as Pressman does throughout Digital Modernism—refuse to subordinate these aesthetic questions to utilitarian measures and remember that reading, writing, and repeating all take critical stances toward contemporary culture and politics.”

Truly honored to have found such a good and generous reader.