The Ruins of Urban Modernity examines Thomas Pynchon's 2006 novel Against the Day through the critical lens of urban spatiality. Navigating the textual landscapes of New York, Venice, London, Los Angeles and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Against the Day reimagines urban modernity at the turn of the 20th century. As the complex novel collapses and rebuilds anew the spatial imaginaries underlying the popular fictions of urban modernity, Utku Mogultay explores how such creative disfiguration throws light on the contemporary urban world. Through critical spatial readings, he considers how Pynchon historicizes issues ranging from the commodification of the urban landscape to the politics of place-making. In Mogultay's reading, Against the Day is shown to offer an oblique negotiation of postmodern urban spaces, thus directing our attention to the ongoing erosion of sociospatial diversity in North American cities and elsewhere.

Utku Mogultay is an independent scholar based in Berlin. He received his PhD from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He was a research fellow at the Ruhr Center of American Studies in the research project "Spaces-Communities-Representations: Urban Transformations in the U.S.A." and at the main research area "Urban Systems" at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text
Introduction
1. Explorations and Mappings
2. Learning from Venice
3. Movements and Machines
4. The White City
5. The Urban Frontier
6. The Unreal City
7. A Tale of Three Cities
8. The Doleful City
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index