DOCSLIB.ORG

Stark Realities of End Zone

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Stark Realities of End Zone CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Cardinal Scholar Stark Realities of End Zone An Honors Thesis (HONRS 499) by Ryan K. Hilton Patti White, Ph.D. Ball State University Muncie, Indiana Submitted: April 1996 Graduation: May 1996 LV ~)lr~" ? • 7.:,'f : :"t~ .455 - We are speaking on this occaSIOn, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species man, whose continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts, and overshadowing all conflicts is the titanic struggle between communism and anti-communism. Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about these issues. But we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire. We shall try to say no single word which shall appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and if the peril is understood there is hope that we may collectively avert it. --Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein September 1955 - %esis Statement End Zone (1972), by Don DeLillo, is about nuclear war and college football; here, metaphor is used to show the interchangeability between the two. Gary Harkness is the narrator, a man obsessed with nuclear war. Preparation and escalation are key concepts used to describe the winning season Harkness and his teammates are having at Logos College in Texas, until they lose the "big game." Then a sense of the unspeakable permeates Logos, as no one wants to discuss the results of the game. DeLillo brilliantly conceals the fact that the United States has entered a nuclear war. Metaphor becomes literal after physical signs of nuclear blast and fallout become apparent. My purpose is to explain many of the physical signs--disguised and blatant-­ that the unspeakable has occurred. Events suggesting that thermonuclear war has occurred include: refugees, a blasted landscape, the walking wounded, war games, hair loss, suicide, and refugees. - Start~a[ities of 'EndZone That's it, the Zone! And immediately such a chill over my skin... Every time it's that chill, and even now I still don't know if that's how the Zone receives me or if it's the Stalker's little nerves playing tricks. --Iurii Shcherbak (Chernobyi) End Zone (1972), by Don DeLillo, is about college football and nuclear war. Gary Harkness, the narrator of the novel, is fascinated by nuclear war. Since he is a football player, he is also fascinated by football. And in the words of Coach Emmett Creed, the entire football team at Logos College lives for football: "It's only a game, but it's the only game" (15). But Harkness's fascination with nuclear war is hauntingly abnormal. He not only associates nuclear war with football, but with everyday life. From the start, Harkness wastes no time in providing the details of his football history. He has true ability as a halfback, since he attests that he won all­ state honors at that position and received 28 athletic scholarship offers from colleges around the country. He accepted a scholarship at Syracuse University, but reveals he was thrown out: They threw me out when I barricaded myself in my room with two packages of Oreo cookies and a girl named Lippy Margolis ... For a day and a night we read to each other from a textbook on economics. She seemed calmed by the incoherent doctrines set forth on those pages. (18) Other schools accepted Harkness, but he simply did not fit into their programs. He finally settles at Logos where he "like[s] the idea of losing [himself] in an obscure part of the world." He discovers that his life means "nothing without Hilton--2 football" (22). As the book opens, the Logos football team has gathered for practice two weeks before school begins. No one else is at the small Texas campus. The desert sun and grueling practices take a toll on all the players, but the isolation bothers Harkness the most. /lOf all the aspects of exile, silence pleased me the least" (30). He further expounds on silence and exile: Exile in a real place, a place of few bodies and many stones, is just an extension (a packaging) of the other exile, the state of being separated from whatever is left of the center of one's own history. (31) One way that Harkness and the players deal with the silence and isolation is by playing /lBang, You're Dead," the game every juvenile has played in which the player's hand assumes the shape of a crude pistol and fires at other players. The Logos football teams enjoys this game because /lit [brings] men closer together through their perversity and fear, because it enable[s] [them] to pretend that death could be a tender experience, and because it [breaches] the long silence" (34). Part One WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH THE TOUGH GET GOING (17) The first page of the first chapter piques the reader's interest: Harkness mentions there were /lintonations to that year... " (3), but he never defines those intonations. Harkness is evasive and speaks of metaphor. He hints at an impending doom or sense of failure: he implies that something will go amiss in the story. For example, Harkness foreshadows the fall of Taft Robinson, the star running back: - In time he might have turned up on television screens across the land Hilton--3 endorsing eight-thousand-dollar automobiles or avocado-flavored instant shave ... But this doesn't happen to be it. There were other intonations to that year, for me at least, the phenomenon of anti­ applause--words broken into brute sound, a consequent silence of metallic texture .... (3) Much later in the book, Harkness tells us that Robinson eventually drops off the team, shaves his head, and begins wearing dark sunglasses. But Harkness never tells us why the star running back at Logos College in west Texas changes, and never asks Robinson about his drastic changes, nor does Harkness--who is usually ruminative--speculate. Furthermore, Robinson does not speak of his changes. In Part One, End Zone focuses on the football practices at Logos College and on the conversations among the players, coaches, and professors. The reader sees the preparation, repetition, and anguish involved in trying to perfect the team. Harkness sums up Part One concisely in his narrative, naming four aspects of football and the practices associated with it: "(1) A team sport. (2) The need to sacrifice. (3) Preparation for the future. (4) Microcosm for life" (19). These are also aspects of thermonuclear war. Fighting a war is a team effort by the armed forces; a great deal of preparation and sacrifice are essential. Clearly, football is a microcosm for life--or more precisely, football is a metaphor for the currently escalating nuclear confrontation in Harkness's world. Part One could easily be subtitled "Preparation." Logos practices in the unbearable heat and deftly defeats inferior opposing teams, while Harkness carries on strange, elusive conversations with his teammates. Just as Logos must prepare for the "big game," so must the United States prepare for nuclear war with a foreign country. For instance, Harkness reveals that before leaving for Logos College, he - Hilton--4 noticed something of military significance in his home town: In late spring, a word appeared all over town. MILITARIZE. The word was printed on cardboard placards that stood in shop windows. It was scrawled on fences. It was handwritten on loose-leaf paper taped to the windshields of cars. It appeared on bumper stickers and signboards. (20) As the book progresses, particularly after the big game, the reader sees that Harkness is not simply comparing football and nuclear war. In actuality, he is cloaking a nuclear war crisis beneath an lIall-important" college football game, or the IIbig game." Unfortunately, the nuclear big game is a reality in which people take their lives, or become deathly ill, while others flee the consequences. The horror is unspeakable; therefore, football is the only thing left for Harkness and the players at Logos College to speak about. Despite the fact that little attention is paid to the small games (or skirmishes) Logos plays in Part One, Harkness reveals that the Logos College football team enjoys a winning season playing mediocre teams. Before the team's biggest game, which is narrated in painstaking detail, Logos has IIscored 246 points and given up 41" (95). Obviously, Logos has a good team, but Harkness informs us that the team faces a game IIthat [will] make or break the season" (95). Since football constitutes the teammates' lives, the big game will yield splendid results if they are to win, and dire, lasting consequences if they are to lose. The big game is against West Centrex Biotechnical Institute. The name of Logos's nemesis--West Centrex Biotechnical Institute--is unlike the names of schools that have football programs. For one thing, the name is - devoid of life, implying a robot-like student body and football team. Further, the Hilton--5 name conceals the word centre in "Centrex," intimating its centrality of the book. "Biotechnical" is somewhat of a paradox: bio means "life"; technical, "mechanical" or "automated." Further, Centrex is not a college or a university; instead, Centrex is an Institute, a sterile and brutal world. The nature of the opponent is unknown, wicked, and subhuman: This is a bunch of head-hunters. They like to hit. They have definite sadistic tendencies ...
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 'Little Terrors'
    Don DeLillo’s Promiscuous Fictions: The Adulterous Triangle of Sex, Space, and Language Diana Marie Jenkins A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of English University of NSW, December 2005 This thesis is dedicated to the loving memory of a wonderful grandfather, and a beautiful niece. I wish they were here to see me finish what both saw me start. Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 2 Chapter One 26 The Space of the Hotel/Motel Room Chapter Two 81 Described Space and Sexual Transgression Chapter Three 124 The Reciprocal Space of the Journey and the Image Chapter Four 171 The Space of the Secret Conclusion 232 Reference List 238 Abstract This thesis takes up J. G. Ballard’s contention, that ‘the act of intercourse is now always a model for something else,’ to show that Don DeLillo uses a particular sexual, cultural economy of adultery, understood in its many loaded cultural and literary contexts, as a model for semantic reproduction. I contend that DeLillo’s fiction evinces a promiscuous model of language that structurally reflects the myth of the adulterous triangle. The thesis makes a significant intervention into DeLillo scholarship by challenging Paul Maltby’s suggestion that DeLillo’s linguistic model is Romantic and pure. My analysis of the narrative operations of adultery in his work reveals the alternative promiscuous model. I discuss ten DeLillo novels and one play – Americana, Players, The Names, White Noise, Libra, Mao II, Underworld, the play Valparaiso, The Body Artist, Cosmopolis, and the pseudonymous Amazons – that feature adultery narratives.
    [Show full text]
  • Historicizing the Iraq War in Don Delillo's Point Omega
    Journal of American Studies, (), , – © Cambridge University Press . This is an Open Access article, distributed unde r the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . 1 ), w h ic h p er m i t s u n re s t r ic t e d r e -u se , d is t r i/b u ti o n , and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:./S First published online August “Too many goddamn echoes”: Historicizing the Iraq War in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega MARTIN PAUL EVE This piece provides a detailed engagement with Don DeLillo’s depiction of the Iraq War in his latest novel, Point Omega. Framed through both formal aesthetic signposting of the interrelations between modernist and postmodernist practice and also through explicit thematic comparison between the conflicts, I trace DeLillo’s treatment of Iraq in Point Omega back to his earlier writing on the Cold War in Underworld and focus upon the ways in which this comparative historical metaphor can be read with particular emphasis upon its implications for the nation-state. Wherever one’s political sensibilities lie in relation to the Iraq War there is a different mode of politics with which it seems imperative that all who value art must continue to engage: the politics of representation. Indeed, the act of representing war and individual, lived, real horror is intensely problematic and raises ethical issues that are well framed in Theodor Adorno’s widely known remark that “the aesthetic principle of stylization ..
    [Show full text]
  • The Silence That Attends Her Pauses
    Scribner An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2020 by Don DeLillo All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. First Scribner hardcover edition October 2020 SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected]. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Interior design by Erich Hobbing Jacket design and Photography: Office of Paul Sahre Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 978-1-9821-6455-3 ISBN 978-1-9821-6457-7 (ebook) To Barbara Bennett “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Albert Einstein PART ONE -1- Words, sentences, numbers, distance to destination.
    [Show full text]
  • Geologies of Finitude: the Deep Time of Twenty- First-Century Catastrophe in Don Delillo’S Point Omega and Reza Negarestani’S Cyclonopedia
    Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction ISSN: 0011-1619 (Print) 1939-9138 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vcrt20 Geologies of Finitude: The Deep Time of Twenty- First-Century Catastrophe in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega and Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia Bradley J. Fest To cite this article: Bradley J. Fest (2016) Geologies of Finitude: The Deep Time of Twenty-First-Century Catastrophe in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega and Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 57:5, 565-578, DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2016.1138446 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2016.1138446 Published online: 15 Jul 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=vcrt20 Download by: [67.165.107.150] Date: 15 July 2016, At: 12:19 CRITIQUE: STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION 2016, VOL. 57, NO. 5, 565–578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2016.1138446 Geologies of Finitude: The Deep Time of Twenty-First-Century Catastrophe in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega and Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia Bradley J. Fest Department of English, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The twenty-first century has seen a transformation of twentieth-century Anthropocene; Cyclonopedia; narrative and historical discourse. On the one hand, the Cold War national deep time; Don DeLillo; fantasy of mutually assured destruction has multiplied, producing a diverse geology; Point Omega; Reza array of apocalyptic visions. On the other, there has been an increasing Negarestani; novel; War on sobriety about human finitude, especially considered in the light of emer- Terror ging discussions about deep time.
    [Show full text]
  • Prologue 1. from Robert Faurison, a Lifelong Holocaust Denier From
    Notes Prologue 1. From Robert Faurison, a lifelong Holocaust denier from France, to David Duke, the American white supremacist politician and former Ku Klux Klan leader, who contended that no gas chambers or exter- mination camps were actually built during the war on the grounds that killing Jews by that method would have been cost-prohibitive and much too bothersome. “The number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp could be about 2,007. The railroad to the camp did not have enough capacity to transfer large numbers of Jews,” said another speaker. The conference included an exhibition of various photos, posters, and other materials meant to contradict the accepted version of events, that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews and other “undesirables” in death camps during the war. Some familiar pho- tos of corpses at the camps bore new captions in Persian arguing that they were victims of typhus, not the German state. This dis- cussion of the Holocaust denial conference is based on “Iran Hosts Holocaust Deniers,” Associated Press, December 12, 2006; Nazila Fathi, “Holocaust Deniers and Skeptics Gather in Iran,” New York Times , December 11, 2006; “Rogues and Fools,” Editorial, New York Times , December 15, 2006; Tammy Bruce, “This Weekend: Iran’s Holocaust Denial Conference.” Blog. : <http://tammybruce. com/2006/12/this_weekend_irans_holocaust_d_html>; “Hatred on Parade,” Editorial, Daily Camera , December 14, 2006. 2. Minow 123. For an extended discussion of various manifestations of justice ensuing from trials, truth commissions, and reparations, see Minow 123–33. 3. In 1995 Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch ever to make an official apology.
    [Show full text]
  • Allegories of American Authorship in the Age of Terrorism
    DEATH THREAT LETTERS: ALLEGORIES OF AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM by JONATHAN ROSS MCKAY A thesis submitted to the Department of English In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen‘s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (April, 2011) Copyright © Jonathan Ross McKay, 2011 Abstract This dissertation examines novels that use terrorism to allegorize the threatened position of the literary author in contemporary culture. Allegory is a term that has been differently understood over time, but which has consistently been used by writers to articulate and construct their roles as authors. In the novels I look at, the terrorist challenge to authorship results in multiple deployments of allegory, each differently illustrating the way that allegory is used and authorship constructed in the contemporary American novel. Don DeLillo‘s Mao II (1991), first puts terrorists and authors in an oppositional pairing. The terrorist‘s ability to traffic in spectacle is presented as indicative of the author‘s fading importance in contemporary culture and it is one way that terrorism allegorizes threats to authorship. In Philip Roth‘s Operation Shylock (1993), the allegorical pairing is between the text of the novel and outside texts – newspaper reports, legal cases, etc. – that the novel references and adapts in order to bolster its own narrative authority. Richard Powers‘s Plowing the Dark (1999) pairs the story of an imprisoned hostage, craving a single book, with employees of a tech firm who are creating interactive, virtual reality artworks. Focusing on the reader‘s experience, Powers‘s novel posits a form of authorship that the reader can take into consideration, but which does not seek to control the experience of the text.
    [Show full text]
  • Thinking with Delillo on Terror and Mourning
    The Loss of Language, The Language of Loss: Thinking With DeLillo On Terror and Mourning J. Heath Atchley Western New England College This essay is a philosophical reading of Don DeLillo’s novel, The Body Artist, and his essay, “In the Ruins of the Future.” Focusing on the issues of loss, mourning, and terror after the attacks of September the 11th, I argue that DeLillo gives a picture of mourning as something that occurs through a loss of language. This loss does not end language; instead, it occurs through language. Silence may only be the tying of the tongue, not the relinquishing of words, but gagging on them. True silence is the untying of the tongue, letting its words go. —Stanley Cavell (44) I. What more is there to say? Is there anything left that is unsaid? Time has passed now, almost two years as of this writing. Have we not said all there is to say about the events that have come to be known simply as “September the 11th”? The most obvious (and perhaps the most responsible) answer is: Of course not. A tragedy of this magnitude is inexhaustible in our minds. It constantly produces thought, emotion, and concern. How could we not continue talking about September the 11th? Could we allow ourselves to stop thinking about it? Is there not some obligation to pursue insight if not understanding in the face of horror? Yes, but . there is the lingering suspicion, the disturbing thought, that maybe we have said it all, or at the very least, that we are repeating ourselves.
    [Show full text]
  • Strong Words, Weak Subjects: a Critical Examination and Theoretical and Historical Contextualisation of the Novels of Don Delillo
    STRONG WORDS, WEAK SUBJECTS: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION AND THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTUALISATION OF THE NOVELS OF DON DELILLO JAMES CHRISTIAN THOMAS A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Bath Spa University College Faculty of Humanities, Bath Spa University College October 2001 Contents Acknowledgements 3 Abstract 4 Introduction 5 Chapter One - An 'Assimilation of Perspectives': DeLillo in Theory 25 Postmodern (Hyper)Realism. Survival in a Baudrillardean Environment 27 "Bang, You're Dead" - Language, Violence and the Return of the Real 48 The Battle Over Human Consciousness: The Writer and the Terrorist 69 Chapter Two - Ghostwritten into the Historical Sublime: Libra and the Textual Manipulation of an Assassin 85 Chapter Three - "Language is the mirror of the world." Ratner's Star. Reflections of the Inexpressible 115 Controlled Monologism and Collapsed Oppositions 117 Cognitive Mapping and the Chronotopic Genre of Ratner's Star 134 Chapter Four - Mystical Twins: Waste and Warfare in Don DeLillo's Underworld 162 Chapter Five - Conclusions - DeLillo in Context 186 References 211 Bibliography 220 Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank my supervisors - Richard Kerridge, Gavin Cologne- Brookes and Neil Reeve - for their enthusiastic and informed backing of this work. Without their help, advice and support the project might have foundered in its early stages. Thanks must also go to Tracy Brain for persuading me to continue with my studies at the end of my degree; Jeff Rodman for 'theoretical inspiration' and useful references; William Hughes for his friendly guidance; and Jean Gardiner and all who reside in the Academic Office for providing me with a warm and sympathetic temporary home.
    [Show full text]
  • DECONSTRUCTING and RECONSTRUCTING the TOWERS: ALLEGORICAL FIGURES of 9/11 by Brian J. Phelps in the Wake of the 9/11 Terrorist
    DECONSTRUCTING AND RECONSTRUCTING THE TOWERS: ALLEGORICAL FIGURES OF 9/11 By Brian J. Phelps In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Americans grasped for ways to understand and represent the incomprehensible trauma, in part because, as many philosophers and cultural critics acknowledged, it was not just physical destruction or a political challenge, but also a semiotic rupture that challenged the efficacy of language itself. Consequently, common modes of working through the trauma, such as narrativization and temporal contextualization, have failed to provide closure. At the confluence of photographic theory, trauma theory, and deconstruction, the images of 9/11—particularly Richard Drew’s “Falling Man” and images of Philippe Petit’s 1974 WTC tightrope walk—have become allegories for the failures of these old methods and the need for new modes of working through the trauma. A close look at the Falling Man of Don DeLillo’s eponymously titled novel reveals the myth of shared (collective) trauma in the event of 9/11 and the inherent re-experiencing caused by its mediation. Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close places the blame for these on the failure of language. In response, the resurgence of popularity in the figure of Philippe Petit is in direct relation to his symbolic role. In Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, his performance provides healing for characters who suffer from different traumas by championing the healing effects of shared witness (rather than shared experience) and artistic representation (rather than chronological narrativization). In the film Man on Wire, James Marsh uses the heist genre to, likewise, show the power of artistic representation—this time, in its ability to re-establish working binaries and provide meaning to the absence of the towers.
    [Show full text]
  • The "Ruins of the Future": Counter-Narratives to Terrorism in the 9/11 Literature of Don Delillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Ian Mcewan
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-2009 The "Ruins of the Future": Counter-Narratives to Terrorism in the 9/11 Literature of Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Ian McEwan Matthew Francis Carlini University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Carlini, Matthew Francis, "The "Ruins of the Future": Counter-Narratives to Terrorism in the 9/11 Literature of Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Ian McEwan. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2009. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/28 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Matthew Francis Carlini entitled "The "Ruins of the Future": Counter-Narratives to Terrorism in the 9/11 Literature of Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Ian McEwan." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in English. Amy J. Elias, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Mary E. Papke, Margaret Lazarus Dean Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R.
    [Show full text]
  • Death and Metafiction: on the “Ingenious Architecture” of Point Omega
    orbit. Delillo Special Issue How to Cite: Chappell, B 2016 Death and Metafiction: On the “Ingenious Architecture” of Point Omega. Orbit: Writing around Pynchon, 4(2): 6, pp. 1–25, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.16995/orbit.133 Published: 31 May 2016 Peer Review: This article was peer-reviewed internally by the guest editor and by a member of the Orbit editorial team. Copyright: © 2016 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and repro- duction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org /licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: Orbit: Writing around Pynchon is a peer-reviewed open access journal. Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. The Open Library of Humanities is an open access non-profit publisher of scholarly articles and monographs. Brian Chappell, ‘Death and Metafiction: On the “Ingenious Architecture” of Point Omega’ (2016) 4(2): 6 Orbit: Writing around . orbit Pynchon, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.16995/orbit.133 DELILLO SPECIAL ISSUE Death and Metafiction: On the “Ingenious Architecture” of Point Omega Brian Chappell Georgetown Preparatory School, US [email protected] This essay proposes a method for re-reading Don DeLillo’s 2010 novel Point Omega. While criticism of the novel focuses on DeLillo’s recent metafic- tional gestures toward ineffability and existential despair, this essay reads the novel as a metafictional gesture toward the necessity of fiction in the twenty-first century.
    [Show full text]
  • The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories Free
    FREE THE ANGEL ESMERALDA: NINE STORIES PDF Don DeLillo | 224 pages | 30 Aug 2012 | Pan MacMillan | 9781447207566 | English | London, United Kingdom The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® Account Options Sign in. Top charts. New arrivals. The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories. Don DeLillo Nov Switch to the audiobook. Nuns, astronauts, athletes, terrorists and travelers, the characters in The Angel Esmeralda propel themselves into the world and define it. These nine stories describe an extraordinary journey of one great writer whose prescience about world events and ear for American language changed the literary landscape. More by Don DeLillo See more. The Silence: A Novel. Don DeLillo. From one of the most dazzling and essential voices in American fiction, a timely and compelling novel set in the near future about five people gathered together in a Manhattan apartment, in the midst of a catastrophic event. Don DeLillo completed this novel just weeks before the advent of Covid The Silence is the story of a different catastrophic The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories. Its resonances offer a mysterious solace. It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. Then something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed. What follows is The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories dazzling and profoundly moving conversation about what The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories us human.
    [Show full text]