A. G. Mojtabai opens Mundome with an image of dissolution and decay. The landscape she describes—like those of Pynchon, Barth, and Barthelme—is in the process of breaking down, losing its vitality and wearing away…. Through her initial depiction of the moldering library, Mojtabai effectively juxtaposes external setting and internal psychology, providing the reader with access to the mind of her protagonist, Richard Henken. For the library in which Richard works … is at once a symbol of the deteriorating consciousness of modern man and an objective correlative for Richard's own psychological condition. Mojtabai's discussion of the corrosion of collective memory and the debilitation of the human spirit mirrors the impoverishment of Richard's own inner being and the "attrition" of his mental stability.

Mundome is in the tradition of what has been called the waste land novel in which "all energies are inverted and result in death and...