Christopher Donovan is Dean of Gregory College House at the University of Pennsylvania, where he lectures in the departments of English and Critical Writing and oversees residential programs in Modern Languages and Film Culture.

• I: Postmodernism, Liberal Ironism, and Contemporary Storytelling II: Social Realism in the Postmodern Age III: Middle Class Realism and the Acceptance of the Reader IV: Morality and Solidarity in the Ironic Novel V: Evil is the Movement Toward Void: Self-Absorption, Play, and the Ambiguous Gift of Genre in the Earlier Novels of Don DeLillo VI: Entropy and Efflorescence: To and From the Zero in the Early Novels of Paul Auster VII: Nobody Would Believe a Word: Earnestness in the Face of Postmodernism Terror in the Early Novels of Tim O'Brien VIII: Father's Gift of Mythopoesis and Love: Conflicted Voices in the Early Charles Johnson IX: The Days of Being a Shadow are Over: The Ironic Narrative in Practice X: Others First: Approaching Solidarity Bibliography