With the Publication of His Seminal Novel White Noise, Don Delillo Was Elevated Into the Pantheon of Great American Writers

Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-69089-8 - The Cambridge Companion to Don DeLillo Edited by John N. Duvall Frontmatter More information

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO

DON DE LILLO

With the publication of his seminal novel White Noise, Don DeLillo was elevated into the pantheon of great American writers. His novels are admired and studied for their narrative technique, political themes, and prophetic commentary on the cultural crises affecting contemporary America. In an age dominated by the image, DeLillo’s fiction encourages the reader to think historically about such matters as the Cold War, the assassination of President Kennedy, threats to the environment, and terrorism. This Companion charts the shape of DeLillo’s career, his relation to twentieth-century aesthetics, and his major themes. It also provides in-depth assessments of his best-known novels – White Noise, Libra, and Underworld – which have become required reading not only for students of American literature, but for everyone interested in the history and the future of American culture.

A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO DON DELILLO

EDITED BY JOHN N. DUVALL

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB28RU,UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521690898

# Cambridge University Press 2008 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2008

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data The Cambridge companion to Don DeLillo / edited by John N. Duvall. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-521-87065-8 – ISBN 978-0-521-69089-8 (pbk.) 1. DeLillo, Don.–Criticism and interpretation. I. Duvall, John N. (John Noel), 1956– PS3554.E4425Z57 2008 8130.54–dc22 2007051672

ISBN 978-0-521-87065-8 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-69089-8 paperback

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CONTENTS

Notes on contributors page vii List of abbreviations ix Chronology of DeLillo’s life and work x

Introduction: The power of history and the persistence of mystery JOHN N. DUVALL 1

PART I AESTHETIC AND CULTURAL INFLUENCES 11

1 DeLillo and modernism PHILIP NEL 13

2 DeLillo, postmodernism, postmodernity PETER KNIGHT 27

PART II EARLY FICTION 41

3 DeLillo and media culture PETER BOXALL 43

4 DeLillo’s apocalyptic satires JOSEPH DEWEY 53

5 DeLillo and the political thriller TIM ENGLES 66

PART III MAJOR NOVELS 77

6 White Noise STACEY OLSTER 79

CONTENTS

7 Libra JEREMY GREEN 94

8 Underworld PATRICK O’ DONNELL 108

PART IV THEMES AND ISSUES 123

9 DeLillo and masculinity RUTH HELYER 125

10 DeLillo’s Dedalian artists MARK OSTEEN 137

11 DeLillo and the power of language DAVID COWART 151

12 DeLillo and mystery

JOHN A. M C CLURE 166

Conclusion: Writing amid the ruins: 9/11 and Cosmopolis JOSEPH M. CONTE 179

Select bibliography 193 Guide to further reading 195 Index 199

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

PETER BOXALL is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction (2006) and is currently complet- ing a book on Samuel Beckett’s influence on contemporary literature entitled Since Beckett: Contemporary Writing in the Wake of Modernism. He is co-editor of The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory and the reviews editor for the journal Textual Practice.

JOSEPH CONTE is Professor of English at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He is the author of Unending Design: The Forms of Postmodern Poetry (1991)andDesign and Debris: A Chaotics of American Fiction (2002). His current book project explores the relationship of compositional method and poetic texture in modern and postmodern poetry.

DAVID COWART, the author of Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language (2002), teaches contemporary American literature at the University of South Carolina. His other books include Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion, History and the Contemporary Novel (1980)andTrailing Clouds: Immigrant Fiction in Contemporary America (2006). His current project is a book on the post-Pynchon, post-DeLillo generation of American novelists.

JOSEPH DEWEY, Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, is the author of In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age(1992), Novels from Reagan’s America: A New Realism (1999), and Understanding Richard Powers (2002) and Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo (2006). He also co-edited UnderWords: Perspectives on Don DeLillo’s ‘‘Underworld’’ (2001).

JOHN N. DUVALL is Professor of English and editor of Modern Fiction Studies at Purdue University. He is the author of Faulkner’s Marginal Couple: Invisible, Outlaw and Unspeakable Communities (1990), The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison: Modernist Authenticity and Postmodern Blackness (2000), and Don DeLillo’s ‘‘Underworld’’ (2002). He and Tim Engles co-edited Approaches to Teaching DeLillo’s ‘‘White Noise’’ (2006).

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

TIM ENGLES is Associate Professor of English at Eastern Illinois University. He has co-edited Critical Essays on Don DeLillo (2000) and Approaches to Teaching DeLillo’s ‘‘White Noise’’ (2006).

JEREMY GREEN is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is author of Late Postmodernism: American Fiction at the Millennium (2005) and is currently working on a book examining contemporary British poetry and cultural politics.

RUTH HELYER, whose research focuses on contemporary fiction and film, visual culture, and gender studies, is Senior Lecturer at the University of Teesside. In addition to her work on DeLillo, she has published essays on such contemporary novelists as Bret Easton Ellis, Zadie Smith, and Salman Rushdie.

PETER KNIGHT teaches American Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Conspiracy Culture: From the Kennedy Assassination to ‘‘The X-Files’’ (2000) and The Kennedy Assassination (2007).

PHILIP NEL is the author of The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks (2002), Dr. Seuss: American Icon (2004), and The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (2007). He has also co-edited (with Julia Mickenberg) a forthcoming reader, Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature. He is Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University.

PATRICK O’ DONNELL is Professor of English at Michigan State University. He has written several books on modern and contemporary fiction, including Passionate Doubts: Designs of Interpretation in Contemporary American Fiction (1986) and Latent Destinies: Cultural Paranoia and Contemporary U.S. Narrative (2000), and co-edited Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction (1989). Currently he is working on two books: The New American Novel: Reading American Fiction Since 1980 and When Seen: Henry James Through Contemporary Film.

STACEY OLSTER is Professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is the author of Reminiscence and Re-Creation in Contemporary American Fiction (1989) and The Trash Phenomenon: Contemporary Literature, Popular Culture, and the Making of the American Century (2003), and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to John Updike (2006).

MARK OSTEEN, Professor of English at Loyola College in Maryland, is the author of The Economy of Ulysses: Making Both Ends Meet (1995) and American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo’s Dialogue with Culture (2000). He edited the Viking Critical Library edition of DeLillo’s White Noise, as well as a forthcoming collection of essays, Autism and Representation.

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ABBREVIATIONS

Citations to DeLillo’s novels are made parenthetically in this volume. Full publication information for these novels appears in the Select Bibliography.

A Americana (1971) BA The Body Artist (2001) C Cosmopolis (2003) EZ End Zone (1972) FM Falling Man (2007) GJS Great Jones Street (1973) L Libra (1988) M Mao II (1991) N The Names (1982) P Players (1977) RD Running Dog (1978) RS Ratner’s Star (1976) U Underworld (1997) WN White Noise (1985)

CHRONOLOGY OF DELILLO’S LIFE AND WORK

1916 Don DeLillo’s father emigrates with his family from Italy to the USA at the age of nine, eventually becoming an auditor for a life insurance company. 1936 Don DeLillo is born on November 20 in a working-class, Italian-American, North Bronx neighborhood of New York City. 1951 Soviet Union develops the atomic bomb; DeLillo is a sophomore in high school. 1954 DeLillo graduates from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. 1958 DeLillo earns his BA in Communication Arts from Fordham University. 1959 DeLillo takes a job at Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising agency, as a copywriter. 1963 President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22. 1964 DeLillo leaves Ogilvy & Mather to become a freelance writer. 1965 USA begins saturation bombing and a major troop build-up in Vietnam. 1966 DeLillo begins working on his first novel. 1971 DeLillo’s first novel, Americana, is published. 1972 DeLillo’s second novel, End Zone, is published. 1973 DeLillo’s third novel, Great Jones Street, is published.

CHRONOLOGY OF DELILLO’ SLIFEANDWORK

1974 Richard Nixon resigns as President of the USA on August 8. 1975 DeLillo marries Barbara Bennett; USA withdraws from Vietnam. 1976 DeLillo’s fourth novel, Ratner’s Star, is published. 1977 DeLillo’s fifth novel, Players, is published. 1978 DeLillo’s sixth novel, Running Dog, is published. 1979 DeLillo wins a Guggenheim Fellowship that allows him to spend the next two years in Greece, which forms the setting for his next novel, The Names. DeLillo publishes a short play, The Engineer of Moonlight. 1982 DeLillo’s seventh novel, The Names, is published. 1985 DeLillo’s eighth novel, White Noise, is published. 1986 White Noise wins the National Book Award. DeLillo’s play The Day Room is published. 1988 DeLillo’s ninth novel, Libra is published; it is a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. 1991 DeLillo’s tenth novel, Mao II, is published in the USA; DeLillo completes the screenplay for Game 6. 1992 DeLillo’s novella ‘‘Pafko at the Wall’’ (which becomes the Prologue to Underworld) is published in Harper’s Bazaar. 1997 DeLillo’s eleventh novel, Underworld, is published. 1999 DeLillo is awarded the Jerusalem Prize at the Jerusalem International Book Fair; DeLillo’s play Valparaiso is published and premie`res at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2000 The American Academy of Arts and Letters awards DeLillo the Howells Medal for Underworld. 2001 DeLillo’s twelfth novel, The Body Artist, is published. DeLillo’s essay ‘‘In the Ruins of the Future,’’ on the terrorist attacks on the USA on September 11 appears in Harper’s in December. 2003 DeLillo’s thirteenth novel, Cosmopolis, is published.

CHRONOLOGY OF DELILLO’ SLIFEANDWORK

2005 Game 6 (directed by Michael Hoffman) premie`res at the Sundance Film Festival. 2006 DeLillo’s play Love-Lies-Bleeding is published and premie`res in Chicago. 2007 DeLillo’s fourteenth novel, Falling Man, is published on June 5.

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