Since the 1960s, academics have theorized that literature is on its way to obsolescence or, at the very least, has lost part of its power as an influential medium of critique. This work argues against that misconception and maintains that contemporary American literature not only is alive but has grown in significant ways in recent years. The author's use of "hybrid" is similar to that of Mikhail Bakhtin, for whom language is a hybrid form and novels permit the blending of opposing social languages. The author considers hybrid fictions from Modernists to Gen Xers, hybrid desires, hybrid identities, ethnicities and conflicting relationships, hybrid technologies, and hypertext, the Internet, and the future of printed fiction. David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, Neal Stephenson, Douglas Coupland, Sherman Alexie, William Vollmann, Michele Serros and Dave Eggers are among those Gen Xers whose works are discussed.