Don DeLillo

In Episode Eighteen, DDSWTNP wish our author a happy 88th birthday and talk about the international life he led between the mid-1970s and early 1980s. We follow DeLillo abroad, covering his year in Canada (1975) and his much-discussed time living in Athens (1978-1982), tracing influences of these experiences on portrayals of national identity and language in The Names especially but other works too. Central to understanding this period is the powerful change in method that DeLillo made at his manual typewriter that inspired slower, more “serious” work. For those who already know the biography pretty well we also have in this episode some surprising details garnered from his letters in these years to editor and friend Gordon Lish, the remarkable story of DeLillo’s response to a Utah banning of Americana in 1979, and connections between the 1981 Athens earthquakes DeLillo lived through and the 1988 short story “The Ivory Acrobat.” We end by considering the “toxic spill” of the news that greeted DeLillo on his return to America in 1982 and energized the writing of White Noise , and we announce too some upcoming episodes that will close out 2024! As is often true, we get significant help in this episode from interview excerpts and more collected at Don DeLillo’s America: http://perival.com/delillo/delillo.html Texts referred to and quoted from in this episode: Ann Arensberg, “Seven Seconds” (1988), in Thomas DePietro, ed., Conversations with Don DeLillo , University of Mississippi Press, 2005, 40-46. Adam Begley, “Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction CXXXV,” The Paris Review 128 (1993): 274-306. Don DeLillo, The Engineer of Moonlight , Cornell Review 5 (Winter 1979), 21-47. [Incorrectly placed in Epoch in episode.] ---, “The Ivory Acrobat,” Granta (Issue 108, 1988) (and collected in The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories ). Robert Harris, “A Talk with Don DeLillo” (1982), in DePietro, ed., 16-19. Gordon Lish Manuscripts (1951-2017), Lilly Library, Indiana University (https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAC9786). Mervyn Rothstein, “A Novelist Faces His Themes on New Ground” (1987), in DePietro, ed., 20-24. Jim Woolf and Dan Bates, “Davis Official’s Action Dismays, Horrifies Author of ‘Americana.’” The Salt Lake Tribune , August 31, 1979.

In Episode Sixteen: “DeLillo’s Sentences,” DDSWTNP take a brief break from analyzing full novels to do some very close reading of single sentences from across DeLillo’s career. Style and craft, sound and rhythm, and what makes DeLillo (as one critic puts it) a poet writing prose—these are subjects we consider as we look closely at the lines noted below and try to figure out what DeLillo means when he says in 1997, “At some point you begin to write sentences and paragraphs that don’t sound like other writers’.” This episode is a deep dive into DeLillo’s language but also a pretty good introduction for those just starting to read him. #donutmaker #thehemingwayand DeLillo lines analyzed in this episode: “Much of the appeal of sport derives from its dependence on elegant gibberish. And of course it remains the author’s permanent duty to unbox the lexicon for all eyes to see—a cryptic ticking mechanism in search of a revolution.” End Zone (113) “New York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague.” Great Jones Street (3) “Around the great stadium the tenement barrens stretch, miles of delirium, men sitting in tipped-back chairs against the walls of hollow buildings, sofas burning in the lots, and there is a sense these chanting thousands have, wincing in the sun, that the future is pressing in, collapsing toward them, that they are everywhere surrounded by signs of the fated landscape and human struggle of the Last Days, and here in the middle of their columned body, lank-haired and up-close, stands Karen Janney, holding a cluster of starry jasmine and thinking of the bloodstorm to come.” Mao II (7) “The last sentence was, ‘In future years, of course, men and women, in cubicles, wearing headphones, will be listening to secret tapes of the administration’s crimes while others study electronic records on computer screens and still others look at salvaged videotapes of caged men being subjected to severe physical pain and finally others, still others, behind closed doors, ask pointed questions of flesh-and-blood individuals.” Point Omega (33) Other texts cited in this episode: “Tom LeClair.” Interview by Andrew Mitchell Davenport. Full Stop , May 19, 2015. https://www.full-stop.net/2015/05/19/interviews/andrew-mitchell-davenport/tom-leclair/ “‘Writing as a Deeper Form of Concentration’: An Interview with Don DeLillo.” Interview by Maria Moss. Conversations with Don DeLillo . Ed. Thomas DePietro. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2005. 155-68. “Exile on Main Street: Don DeLillo’s Undisclosed Underworld.” Interview by David Remnick. Conversations with Don DeLillo . 131-44.

In Episode Twelve, DDSWTNP interview Curt Gardner, creator and keeper of “Don DeLillo’s America,” a prolific and comprehensive website that for nearly 30 years has been the go-to spot for information about DeLillo, from reviews, appearances, and novel publication histories to news of film adaptations and play performances. We cover Curt’s stories of first discovering DeLillo in 1981, what he learned about the writing of Amazons at the Harry Ransom Center, and the letters he’s exchanged with the man himself as he’s built his site. We had a really fun time trading stories, insights, and interpretive connections with Curt. After listening to this in-depth interview, check out the riches of “Don DeLillo’s America” at http://www.perival.com/delillo/delillo.html Support our work: https://buymeacoffee.com/delillopodcast Mentioned and discussed in this episode: Ant Farm, “The Eternal Frame” (1975): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg1FCjvZ_jA DeLillo, Don. “Notes Toward a Definitive Meditation (By Someone Else) on the Novel ‘Americana.’” Epoch 21.3 (Spring 1972): 327-29. ---. “The Sightings.” Weekend Magazine (Toronto) 4 August 1979: 26-30. ---. “Total Loss Weekend.” Sports Illustrated Nov. 27, 1972. https://web.archive.org/web/20090210115257/http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1086811/index.htm “Is cyberspace a thing within the world or is it the other way around? Which contains the other, and how can you tell for sure?” ( Underworld ) Game 6 : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425055/ LeClair, Thomas. “Missing Writers.” Horizon Oct. 1981: 48-52.

Happy 87th birthday, Don DeLillo. In Episode 5: The Lives of DeLillo (1), the first in a planned series about biography, DDSWTNP offer long-time and first-time readers alike new avenues into his work by discussing the first 30 years of his life, as he grew from the son of Italian immigrants and student of Jesuit scholars to the writer of his first published stories. This episode’s many topics include teenage DeLillo reading the modernist canon in a New York park, his time as “failed ascetic” during college at Fordham, the weight of the Bronx on his earliest fiction, his pivotal copywriting work under advertising guru David Ogilvy, and how the eventual author of Libra reacted on the day JFK was shot. #mythologyofamerica #spaghettiandmeatballs #howtowriteabiography #catholicritual #quittingtowrite #dregsofhiswork We also announce in this episode our call for recorded contributions from our listeners! Be a part of our end-of-2023 tribute to our favorite DeLillo passages by heading to Speakpipe and recording yours, in two minutes or less. Deadline is December 10. Go to https://www.speakpipe.com/delillopodcast Critical texts, stories, and essays referred to in this episode: Don DeLillo, “The River Jordan,” Epoch 10.2 (Winter 1960): 105-120. ---, “Take the ‘A’ Train,” Epoch 12.1 (Spring 1962): 9-25. ---, “Spaghetti and Meatballs,” Epoch 14.3 (Spring 1965): 244-250. ---, “Coming Sun. Mon. Tues.,” Kenyon Review 28.3 (June 1966): 391-394. ---, “Baghdad Towers West,” Epoch 17.3 (Spring 1968): 195-217. ---, “A History of the Writer Alone in a Room.” Acceptance speech for the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, 1999. DeRosa, Aaron, “Don DeLillo, Madison Avenue, and the Aesthetics of Postwar Fiction,” Contemporary Literature 59.1 (Spring 2018): 50-80. Veggian, Henry. Understanding Don DeLillo . Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014. Interviews with DeLillo referred to in this episode: Tom LeClair (1979) and Anne Arensberg (1988): Collected in Thomas DePietro, ed., Conversations with Don DeLillo , University Press of Mississippi, 2005. Vince Passaro (1991): https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-delillo.html Gordon Burn (1991): “Wired Up and Whacked Out,” The Sunday Times (London), August 25, 1991 (magazine): 6-39. Adam Begley (1993): https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1887/the-art-of-fiction-no-135-don-delillo Mark Binelli (2007): https://www.guernicamag.com/intensity_of_a_plot/ PEN (2010): https://pen.org/an-interview-with-don-delillo/ Robert McCrum (2010): https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/08/don-delillo-mccrum-interview Finally, a great source for interview excerpts and so many other things DeLillo: Don DeLillo’s America: http://perival.com/delillo/delillo.html

In this special episode timed to the 2023 Nobel Prize announcement, DDSWTNP do a brief history and theorization of the Nobel, talk about DeLillo as a global author, and read in detail his astonishing, Kafka-inspired 1997 speech in support of a Chinese dissident writer, “The Artist Naked in a Cage.” #hungerartists #communalmakebelieve #bitingtheswede Texts referred to in this episode: Don DeLillo, “The Artist Naked in a Cage.” May 26, 1997. The New Yorker . https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/05/26/the-artist-naked-in-a-cage Cornelius Collins, “The World: DeLillo Abroad.” Don DeLillo in Context , ed. Jesse Kavadlo. Cambridge University Press, 2022. 39-46. James F. English, The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value . Harvard University Press, 2005. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674030435

Don DeLillo ( White Noise , Underworld ) is a writer's writer's writer. Often called one of the most important novelists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, his themes and style have made him one of the most highly regarded and influential writers of our time. In this episode, Jacke talks to Professor Jesse Kavadlo, the President of the Don DeLillo Society, about the new book he has edited, Don DeLillo in Context , which examines how geography, biography, history, media studies, culture, philosophy, and the writing process provide critical frameworks and ways of reading and understanding DeLillo's prodigious body of work. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever since I read White Noise, the 1985 National Book Award winner written by Don DeLillo, I’ve been expecting some Hollywood movie director would recognize its brilliance and bring it to the Silver Screen in some limited fashion. Finally, it happened, aided by the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown, thanks to movie director Noah Baumbach and his wife, actress Greta Gerwig. Here is my take on the resulting product, which I liken to the Talking Heads meets Don DeLillo. Novelist Spotlight is produced and hosted by Mike Consol, author of “Family Recipes: A Novel About Italian Culture, Catholic Guilt and the Culinary Crime of the Century,” “Hardwood: A Novel About College Basketball and Other Games Young Men Play,” and two yet-to-be-published manuscripts, “Lolita Firestone: A Supernatural Novel,” and the short story collection “Love American Style.” Write to him at novelistspotlight@gmail.com . We hope you will subscribe and share the link with any family, friends or colleagues who might benefit from this program.

In this November "Book Lunch" I take the deep dive into Don Delillo's 1985 novel about an American academic midwestern family, societal unrest, consumerism and much more. Mitch dove deep into the pages and heart of this text, while also exploring the upcoming film adaptation! More on this special livestream event, here: Although it is a novel from the 1980s, Don Delillo's “White Noise” not only remains my favorite novel by him - yes even more even more than his “Underworld”, “Falling Man” and “Cosmopolis” - but will soon be a major film on Netflix , directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Adam Driver, Don Cheadle and Greta Gerwig ! Moreover it is still one of the greatest of contemporary novels and my book lunch will be a celebration and deep dive into it." Link to the film: https://www.netflix.com/title/81317320 #WhiteNoise #books #literature #filmadaptations #WhiteNoise #BookLunch