Running Dog by Don Delillo Running Dog Delillo’S Running Dog, Originally Running Published in 1978, Follows Moll Robbins, a New York City “

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Running Dog by Don Delillo Running Dog Delillo’S Running Dog, Originally Running Published in 1978, Follows Moll Robbins, a New York City “ Running DogRunning By Don Delillo DeLillo’s Running Dog, originally Running published in 1978, follows Moll Robbins, a New York city “. not so much a novel as a swift and skillful journalist trailing the activities of exhibition of landscapes, characters and Dog an influential senator. In the precarious situations. DeLillo handles all process she is dragged into the this material with a great deal of verve black market world of erotica and and invention. shady, infatuated men, where a - The New York Times cat-and-mouse chase for an erotic film rumored to “star” “Running Dog (the title refers to a Rolling Adolf Hitler leads to trickery, Stone–like underground newspaper) is scary maneuvering, and bloodshed. and paranoid and lighthearted and sex-ob- With streamlined prose and a sessed simultaneously, but this time the mad thriller’s narrative pace, scientist doesn’t quite get the formula right. The Running Dog is a bright star in characters can feel a little stock, and the book the modern master’searly career. never explodes out of itself to become its own universe. Still, its depiction of a politico-military-industrial complex spinning Don DeLillo is the author of fourteen out of control—and its use of Hitler as a comic novels, including Falling Man, Libra plot device—anticipates some of his best-loved and White Noise, and three plays. He later work.” has won the National Book Award, -nymag.com the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Jerusalem Prize. In 2006, Underworld was named one of “This is a third review. This person had some- the three best novels of the last thing very nice to say about this book. That is twenty-five years by The New York why you should buy this book.” Times Book Review, and in 2000 it - Quoted person won the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the most distinguished work of fiction of the past five years. By Don Delillo.
Recommended publications
  • The Bounds of Narrative in Don Delillo's Underworld
    humanities Article The Bounds of Narrative in Don DeLillo’s Underworld: Action and the Ecology of Mimêsis Andrew Bowie Hagan Independent Scholar, Atlanta, GA 30309, USA; [email protected] Abstract: The interrelationship of natural and cultural history in Don DeLillo’s Underworld presents an ecology of mimesis. If, as Timothy Morton argues, ecological thought can be understood as a “mesh of interconnection,” DeLillo’s novel studies the interpretation of connection. Underworld situates its action in the Cold War era. DeLillo’s formal techniques examine the tropes of paranoia, containment, excess, and waste peculiar to the history of the Cold War. Parataxis and free-indirect discourse emphasize the contexts of reference in the novel, illustrating how hermeneutics informs the significance of boundaries. DeLillo’s use of parataxis exemplifies the conditions that propose and limit metaphor’s reference to reality, conditions that offer the terms for meaningful action. I utilize Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to demonstrate how Underworld situates the reference to reality in its temporal and narrative condition. The historical situation of the novel’s narrative structure allows DeLillo to interrogate the role of discourse in producing and interpreting connection. Underworld offers layers of significance; the reader’s engagement with the novel’s discourse reaffirms the conditions of a meaningful relationship with reality in the pertinence of a metaphor. Keywords: contemporary fiction; ecocriticism; temporality; reference; metaphor; parataxis; epic; Citation: Hagan, Andrew Bowie. novel; immanence 2021. The Bounds of Narrative in Don DeLillo’s Underworld: Action and the Ecology of Mimêsis. Humanities 10: 40. https://doi.org/10.3390/ 1. Introduction h10010040 Figurative conditions present an ecology in Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel, Underworld.A work of fiction, the novel is grounded in the history and historiography of the Cold War Received: 1 January 2021 era.
    [Show full text]
  • Journal of Arizona History Index, M
    Index to the Journal of Arizona History, M Arizona Historical Society, [email protected] 480-387-5355 NOTE: the index includes two citation formats. The format for Volumes 1-5 is: volume (issue): page number(s) The format for Volumes 6 -54 is: volume: page number(s) M McAdams, Cliff, book by, reviewed 26:242 McAdoo, Ellen W. 43:225 McAdoo, W. C. 18:194 McAdoo, William 36:52; 39:225; 43:225 McAhren, Ben 19:353 McAlister, M. J. 26:430 McAllester, David E., book coedited by, reviewed 20:144-46 McAllester, David P., book coedited by, reviewed 45:120 McAllister, James P. 49:4-6 McAllister, R. Burnell 43:51 McAllister, R. S. 43:47 McAllister, S. W. 8:171 n. 2 McAlpine, Tom 10:190 McAndrew, John “Boots”, photo of 36:288 McAnich, Fred, book reviewed by 49:74-75 books reviewed by 43:95-97 1 Index to the Journal of Arizona History, M Arizona Historical Society, [email protected] 480-387-5355 McArtan, Neill, develops Pastime Park 31:20-22 death of 31:36-37 photo of 31:21 McArthur, Arthur 10:20 McArthur, Charles H. 21:171-72, 178; 33:277 photos 21:177, 180 McArthur, Douglas 38:278 McArthur, Lorraine (daughter), photo of 34:428 McArthur, Lorraine (mother), photo of 34:428 McArthur, Louise, photo of 34:428 McArthur, Perry 43:349 McArthur, Warren, photo of 34:428 McArthur, Warren, Jr. 33:276 article by and about 21:171-88 photos 21:174-75, 177, 180, 187 McAuley, (Mother Superior) Mary Catherine 39:264, 265, 285 McAuley, Skeet, book by, reviewed 31:438 McAuliffe, Helen W.
    [Show full text]
  • The Subversion of Nature in Don Delillo's Underworld
    The Subversion of Nature in Don DeLillo's Underworld Erik Kielland-Lund University of Oslo Abstract: This article focuses on one of the main themes ofDon DeLillo's complex and critically acclaimed novel Underworld.fimn 1997, namely the cen/ralily and ubiquity ofga rbage and other forms of was le in hoth the physical world and in people '.I· minds in the second ha(f ofthe 20'i. century. II is both a brilliant salire and a scary cautionary tale Iha! si1uates itself squarely in !he tradition of "!oxic narralives" recently made famous by Cormac McCar1hy'.v The Road. Pre-apocalyplic rather than pos1-apoca­ !yp1ic, the landscape of Delillo'.v novel is disturbingly familiar both in its mundane recognizability and in its outla11dish strangeness, as 1he reader is tn111spor1ed from monster landfills in New York City, described in oddly romantic ter111s, lo the di.ms­ /mus consequences of nuclear waste in !he .former Soviet republic of Khazakstan, horribly realistic in its depiction of the human cost of this ultimate tampering with the natural order. Throughout this tale of hubris in the name of progress and con­ sumption, Delillo weaves a narralive of human fallibility and desire Iha! is a pe1fect counterpoint to the enormous global issues that will ulti111ately decide the survival of life as we know it on this planet. Keywords: Satire-toxic narratives-waste 111anagement-exploitatio11- pre-apoca­ lyptic-nuclearfallou1- "eve1ythin.g's connected" - capita/ism - consumption Don DeLillo's Underworld from 1997 is one of the truly seminal works of contemporary American literature, by many critics singled out, along with Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow from 1973, as the high point of postmodernist literary achievement in America.
    [Show full text]
  • Postwar Media Manifestations and Don Delillo Joshua Adam Boldt Eastern Kentucky University
    Eastern Kentucky University Encompass Online Theses and Dissertations Student Scholarship 2011 Postwar Media Manifestations and Don DeLillo Joshua Adam Boldt Eastern Kentucky University Follow this and additional works at: https://encompass.eku.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Boldt, Joshua Adam, "Postwar Media Manifestations and Don DeLillo" (2011). Online Theses and Dissertations. 09. https://encompass.eku.edu/etd/09 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at Encompass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Online Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Encompass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Postwar Media Manifestations and Don DeLillo By Joshua Boldt Master of Arts Eastern Kentucky University Richmond, Kentucky 2011 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Eastern Kentucky University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May, 2011 Copyright © Joshua Boldt 2011 All rights reserved ii Table of Contents Introduction: The Hyperreal, Hypercommodified American Identity 1 Chapter One: Postwar Advertising, Mass Consumption, and the 14 Construction of the Consumer Identity Chapter Two: News Media and American Complicity 34 Chapter Three: The Art of the Copy: Mechanical Reproductions and 50 Media Simulations Works Cited 68 iii Introduction: The Hyperreal, Hypercommodified American Identity This study examines the relationship between American media, advertising, and the construction of a postwar American identity. American media manifests itself in several different forms, all of which impact the consciousness of the American people, and the postwar rise to power of the advertising industry helped to mold identity in ways that are often not even recognized.
    [Show full text]
  • '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]
  • Transatlantica, 1 | 2002 Don Delillo : Une Bibliographie Sélective 2
    Transatlantica Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal 1 | 2002 Jeune République Don DeLillo : une bibliographie sélective Aaron Smith Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/523 DOI : 10.4000/transatlantica.523 ISSN : 1765-2766 Éditeur AFEA Référence électronique Aaron Smith, « Don DeLillo : une bibliographie sélective », Transatlantica [En ligne], 1 | 2002, mis en ligne le 23 mars 2006, consulté le 29 avril 2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/ 523 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/transatlantica.523 Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 29 avril 2021. Transatlantica – Revue d'études américaines est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. Don DeLillo : une bibliographie sélective 1 Don DeLillo : une bibliographie sélective Aaron Smith Oeuvres de Don DeLilloRomans 1 Americana. 1971. London : Penguin, 1990. 2 End Zone. 1972. New York : Penguin, 1986. 3 Great Jones Street. 1973. New York : Penguin, 1994. 4 Ratner’s Star. 1976. London : Vintage, 1991. 5 Players. 1977. London : Vintage, 1991. 6 Running Dog. 1978. London : Picador, 1992. 7 The Names. 1982. New York : Vintage, 1989. 8 White Noise. 1984. London : Picador, 1985. 9 Libra. 1988. London : Penguin, 1989. 10 Mao II. 1991. London : Vintage, 1992. 11 Underworld. 1997. New York : Scribner, 1997. 12 The Body Artist. 2001. New York : Picador, 2001. 13 Cosmopolis. New York : Scribner, 2003 (à paraître) Théâtre 14 The Engineer of Moonlight. Cornell Review 1 (1979) : 21‑47. 15 The Day Room. 1986. New York : Penguin, 1989. 16 The Rapture of the Athlete Assumed into Heaven.
    [Show full text]
  • An Animated Look at Kazakh National Identity J
    e Allegorical Aĭdaḣar 43 e Allegorical Aĭdaḣar: An Animated Look at Kazakh National Identity Jake Zawlacki Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, USA Abstract e little-known Kazakh animated film, Why the Swallow’s Tail is Forked (1967), written and directed by Amen Khaydarov, not only holds the position as the first example, but is also acclaimed as the greatest work of Kazakh animation by critics, academics, and contemporary animators. Je film, based on the traditional Kazakh folk tale of the same name, was significantly altered by Khaydarov in his auteurist direction resulting in a radical retelling. Despite these alterations, Khaydarov’s variant of the folk tale resonated with viewers of the period as well as today. In this paper I argue how certain motifs are changed, added, and removed from the original folk tale by Khaydarov, consciously or unconsciously, to incorporate new allegorical elements in the folk tale. Jis essay takes an “animated look” at the film in that it performs a close reading of a folk tale through a film medium. After performing a shot by shot analysis, I deconstruct alleged “traditional” Kazakh elements, then analyze the dreamlike nature of pastoral national identity, the interplay of film, written, and spoken folklore, and the rhizomatic structure of folklore through audio and visual elements. Ultimately, I return to the film and display it as a construction of a specific nationalist narrative thus shedding light on the broader pastoral nationalist vision. Introduction While touring the grounds of Kazakhfilm studio with Gali Murzashev, a contemporary Kazakh animator who once worked under the late Amen Khaydarov in the 1980s, Why the Swallow’s Tail is Forked (1967) (1) arose in our conversation.
    [Show full text]
  • Weekend Warriors: Delillo's “The
    orbit. Delillo Special Issue How to Cite: Luter, M 2016 Weekend Warriors: DeLillo’s “The Uniforms,” Players, and Film-to-Page Reappearance. Orbit: Writing around Pynchon, 4(2): 2, pp. 1–20, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.16995/orbit.134 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, distri- bution, and reproduction 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. Matthew Luter, ‘Weekend Warriors: DeLillo’s “The Uniforms,” Players, and Film-to-Page Reappearance’ (2016) 4(2): 2, Orbit: Writing . orbit around Pynchon, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.16995/orbit.134 DELILLO SPECIAL ISSUE Weekend Warriors: DeLillo’s “The Uniforms,” Players, and Film-to-Page Reappearance Matthew Luter Webb School of Knoxville Knoxville, TN [email protected] This article argues that what DeLillo refers to as the “radical intent” attached to the early short story “The Uniforms” does not point to political radicalism but instead to a new way of thinking about adaptation.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sublime in Don Delillo's Mao II
    International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Online: 2015-03-23 ISSN: 2300-2697, Vol. 50, pp 137-145 doi:10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.50.137 CC BY 4.0. Published by SciPress Ltd, Switzerland, 2015 The Sublime in Don DeLillo’s Mao II Niloufar Behrooz, Hossein Pirnajmuddin Department of English. University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran Email address: [email protected], [email protected] Keywords: Don DeLillo; postmodernism; the sublime; technology; violence; spirituality ABSTRACT The world that DeLillo’s characters live in is often portrayed with an inherent complexity beyond our comprehension, which ultimately leads to a quality of woe and wonder which is characteristic of the concept of the sublime. The inexpressibility of the events that emerge in DeLillo’s fiction has reintroduced into it what Lyotard calls “the unpresentable in presentation itself” (PC 81), or to put it in Jameson’s words, the “postmodern sublime” (38). The sublime, however, appears in DeLillo’s fiction in several forms and it is the aim of this study to examine these various forms of sublimity. It is attempted to read DeLillo’s Mao II in the light of theories of the sublime, drawing on figures like Burke, Kant, Lyotard, Jameson and Zizek. In DeLillo’s novel, it is no longer the divine and magnificent in nature that leads to a simultaneous fear and fascination in the viewers, but the power of technology and sublime violence among other things. The sublime in DeLillo takes many different names, ranging from the technological and violent to the hollow and nostalgic, but that does not undermine its essential effect of wonder; it just means that the sublime, like any other phenomenon, has adapted itself to the new conditions of representation.
    [Show full text]
  • An Examination of Conspiracy and Terror in the Works of Don Delillo
    Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Theses Department of English Spring 5-7-2011 For the Future: An Examination of Conspiracy and Terror in the Works of Don Delillo Ashleigh Whelan Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_theses Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Whelan, Ashleigh, "For the Future: An Examination of Conspiracy and Terror in the Works of Don Delillo." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2011. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_theses/104 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FOR THE FUTURE: AN EXAMINATION OF CONSPIRACY AND TERROR IN THE WORKS OF DON DELILLO by ASHLEIGH WHELAN Under the Direction of Dr. Christopher Kocela ABSTRACT This thesis is divided into two chapters, the first being an examination of conspiracy and paranoia in Libra, while the second focuses on the relationship between art and terror in Mao II, “In the Ruins of the Future,” Falling Man, and Point Omega. The study traces how DeLillo’s works have evolved over the years, focusing on the creation of counternarratives. Readers are given a glimpse of American culture and shown the power of narrative, ultimately shedding light on the future of our collective consciousness. INDEX
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Grief and Nothing: a Reading of Don Delillo, by Joseph Dewey
    Joseph Dewey. Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006. 172p. Randy Laist University of Connecticut Don DeLillo has been relatively quiet in the last ten years. Since the publication of the celebrated tome Underworld in 1997, his output has included two uncharacter- istically diminutive novels and two rarely discussed (although very excellent) plays. When God withdraws, the priests come out, and so since the turn of the millennium, the number of full-length studies devoted to DeLillo has swelled from two to seven, with 2006 being the first year to see two such publications. The general trend in 21st-century DeLillo criticism has been to try to rescue DeLillo from the postmodern theorists who busily laid claim to him in hundreds of scholarly journal articles from the 1980s and 1990s. Recent books by Cowart (2003) and Kavadlo (2004) have aspired to return DeLillo to the people by emphasizing his underlying humanism, his predilection for mysticism, and his rich delight in the communal satisfactions of language and narrative. Dewey’s Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo continues this push by articulating the thesis that DeLillo’s career represents a development through cynicism and postmodern quietism toward a spiritual vision of the resurrection and reclamation of “the human soul itself” (148). The very idea of a meta-narrative adumbrating DeLillo’s evolution is unique to Dewey’s book. Other DeLillo studies tend to take as their starting point DeLillo’s stylistic consistency over his 35-year career, or to attribute any development in his outlook to historical shifts in the social climate of the America he has been writing in and about.
    [Show full text]
  • Tion of Don Delillo
    ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Delirious USA: the representation of capital in the fic- tion of Don DeLillo https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40479/ Version: Full Version Citation: Travers, Thomas William Lynn (2020) Delirious USA: the repre- sentation of capital in the fiction of Don DeLillo. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email Birkbeck, University of London Delirious USA: The Representation of Capital in the Fiction of Don DeLillo Thomas William Lynn Travers Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 1 Declaration I, Thomas William Lynn Travers, declare that this thesis is my own work. Where I have drawn upon the work of other researchers, this has been fully acknowledged. 2 Abstract In this thesis I offer a new reading of Don DeLillo’s fiction through an engagement with contemporary Marxist literary theory and political economy. Beginning in the 1960s, the thesis traces the launch, expansion, and shattering of DeLillo’s narrative apparatus as it recomposes itself across the genres of the short story, the conspiratorial thriller, the historical novel, and the novel of time. Developing on theories of the novel as a capitalist epic, the thesis takes the insistent appearance of surplus populations in DeLillo’s work as an opportunity to reflect on, but also to revise and reconceptualise, Marxist accounts of the novel and its philosophy of history.
    [Show full text]