"Crossing Boundaries" examines experimental novels about travel by William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon as precursors of innovative contemporary travel narratives, represented by the work of authors such as Bruce Chatwin, William Least Heat-Moon, and William T. Vollmann, among others. While these texts may be read as cultural criticism--functioning as a collective portrait of the world at a time when global space seems exhausted, dominated by multinational corporations and threatened with ecological devastation--they also serve as new "Waldens."
