The ends of America, the ends of postmodernism

    I no longer looked for a resolution to the loose threads hanging off
    my storylines. If I had begun to understand anything, I now knew
    they were simply the warp and woof of a fraying net of conspiracies
    in an expanding universe where the holes only seemed to get larger
    and larger. (249)

Although these holes are no closer to being filled by the novel's end, Gabriel has come to accept the uncertainty of his chaotic, transitional environment by recognizing its likeness to the ubiquitous technology of the internet.

The figure most closely associated with a postmodern worldview in Tropic of Orange is Gabriel's girlfriend Emi, the hip, hypercontemporary TV producer who is "so distant from the Asian female stereotype--it was questionable if she even had an identity" (19). Emi loves speed, surfaces, and the newest technologies. Disdainful of Gabriel's passion for film noir, she has a television that can project four different stations simultaneously so that "at any moment, she could judge which channel had the more exciting screen" (125). A woman whose reality is confirmed only when she sees it on the evening news, who rejects tradition and declares that "cultural diversity is bullshit" (128), Emi seems to represent the future that many critics have associated, for better or worse, with Southern California. (7) That is, until she becomes the casualty of a drive-by shooting while sunning herself on the roof of the Newsnow van. Caught on film, her demise will be endlessly replayed for TV viewers so that "in this sense, she would never die" (250). Ironic to the very end, her final question is yet another stab at Gabriel's beloved film noir: "what color is blood in ... black and ... white?" (252). Her last words are a comic recognition of her failure to interface completely with the computerized technologies that have defined her life: "Abort. Retry. Ignore. Fail ... "The shallow theatricality of Emi's death could not be more postmodern. But her unsentimental elimination also suggests that she is no longer useful, that the future belongs instead to characters like Gabriel or the community organizer Buzzworm, who are both more respectful of the past and willing to harbor utopian visions of the future. Indeed, Yamashita's decision to kill off her character seems to repudiate the postmodern "waning of affect" famously described by Fredric Jameson (10) by leaving the world to those with deeper commitments and belief in the possibility of social change.