Don DeLillo

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Don DeLillo , 1936–, American novelist, b. New York City, grad. Fordham (1958). DeLillo is an accomplished prose stylist with a dark vision and mordant wit. In a steady stream of novels beginning with Americana (1971), he has explored the anomie and violence of contemporary America—rock music and drugs in Great Jones Street (1973), science and mathematics in Ratner's Star (1976), terrorism in Players (1977), spying in Running Dog (1978), and political corruption in The Names (1982). His White Noise (1985), the story of Hitler studies professor Jack Gladney and a meditation on the fear of death, was followed by Libra (1988), a fictional portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald and Mao II (1991), about CIA activities in Greece. DeLillo's longest, most complicated, and most highly praised novel is Underworld (1997). In its sweep of time from 1951 to 1992, its panorama of American characters and landscapes, and its uniquely descriptive language, it portrays the vastness and variety of the ways Americans lived in the mid- to late 20th cent. Two relatively minor works followed— The Body Artist (2001), a dark and brief quasi–ghost story, and Cosmopolis (2003), a satire focused on a Manhattan billionaire. His next novel, Falling Man (2007), details the effects of 9/11 on a middle-class Manhattanite who experienced the World Trade Center attack and on his estranged wife and son. His spare and dread-haunted novella Point Omega (2010) focuses on a scholar who helped plan the Iraq war, now self-exiled in the desert, and his daughter and a filmmaker who follow him there. DeLillo is also a playwright.

Bibliography: See Conversations with Don DeLillo (2005), ed. by T. DePietro; studies by T. LeClair (1987), F. Lentricchia (1991), D. Keesey (1993), H. Ruppersburg and T. Engles, ed. (2000), M. Osteen (2000), D. Cowart (2002), H. Bloom, ed. (2003), J. Kavadlo (2004), P. Boxall (2005), J. Dewey (2006), and E. A. Martucci (2007).

Delillo, Don (1936– ), American novelist, born in the Bronx, New York, and educated at Fordham University. Like Pynchon, he employs black comedy and the language of science to deal with themes of paranoia and consumerism.

His first book, Americana (1971), was followed by End Zone (1972), and Great Jones Street (1973). Ratner's Star (1976), is a sprawling fable about scientific understanding and the nature of fiction. Subsequent works exhibit greater sophistication: Players (1977) deals with language, terrorism, and the sterility of affluent urban lives; Running Dog (1978) concerns the search for a pornographic film shot in Hitler's Berlin Bunker; The Names (1982) is about a murderous sect; and White Noise (1984) is an environmental disaster story narrated by the professor of Hitler studies at a mid-western University. His version of the Kennedy assassination, Libra (1988), focuses on the role of Lee Harvey Oswald in shaping the American psyche. Both Mao II (1991), a postmodern tale of celebrity, terrorism, and the behaviour of crowds, and Underworld (1997), a multi-layered secret history of the Cold War, examine the significance of spectacular events and media imagery in shaping the development of memory, history, and mass psychology. Recent novels include The Body Artist (2001), a strange but moving ghost story, and Cosmopolis (2003), charting a day in the life of a billionaire.

DeLillo, Don (1936– ) US novelist. A leading figure in post-modernism, his complex works examine the state of contemporary American society. Novels include White Noise (1986), Libra (1988), and Underworld (1997).