A Perfect Vacuum

A Perfect Vacuum is a spectacular literary experiment and a byword among serious readers. It is a metafictional collection of book reviews of nonexistent works of literature -- works which, in some cases, could not even be written. As the modernist "art for art's sake" has given way to postmodern "games for games' sake, " Stanislaw Lem joins the game with hilarious and grotesque results. Most stories in A Perfect Vacuum target the postmodern infatuation with antinarratives by lampooning their self-indulgent canons and brilliantly exploiting their mannerisms. Leto exposes the limits of postmodern fiction, showing how its studious self-consciousness frequently conceals a deeper intellectual paucity.