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Another year, another Nobel Prize in Literature not given to Don DeLillo. At The New Republic, Alex Shephard argues that DeLillo should have been a contender: …of all the leading American Nobel candidates, DeLillo is a writer of the moment. In an essay published three months after the September 11 attacks, Don DeLillo wrote that the problem […]
...moreOver at the New Yorker, Thomas Beller writes about reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise, with its opening move-in day scene on repeat, and the ways stories change when read again and again—even and especially presidential races and speeches, as with Bill Clinton’s speech at this past DNC.
...moreFor the Guardian, Sam Jordison draws parallels between Don DeLillo’s previous novels (White Noise and Omega) and his most recent novel, Zero K: In Point Omega, we’re told: “The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.” In White Noise, meanwhile, Jack Gladney already feels like he is the false character following his name […]
...more“All plots tend to move deathward,” the narrator of “White Noise” says. “This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as […]
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For as long as I can remember I’ve been interested, in a clinical way, in silence.
...moreThe Millions staff writer Nick Ripatrazone examines literature that “embraces the power of radio” and highlights the sounds of language: Radio is elegiac. Radio is the theater of the mind: our eyes are free to look elsewhere, but the sound bounces in our brains. Two mediums that elicit imagination and subjective experience, radios and literature go well […]
...moreNothing much more needs to be said: At the Atlantic, “the author of White Noise reviews Taylor Swift’s white noise.”
...moreStephan Eirik Clark, author of a new novel about artificial sweeteners, Sweetness #9, discusses his fascination with Don DeLillo’s White Noise over at The Atlantic: White Noise, though—it was something more. It was getting at what I’d always wanted to get. It was full of American yearning, a kind of Pilgrim’s Progress for the 20th […]
...moreIn the mid-1980s, I fled Ronald Reagan’s America for the jungles of Costa Rica. Before leaving–forever, I thought–I shipped two boxes of paperbacks to the tropics. I would soon read every book from those boxes plus anything else I could grab in hopes of explaining a world gone mad.
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People keep telling me that books are in danger of disappearing. E-books, Kindles, iPads will replace the object of the book as we know it. I’m not worried.
...more“…Jay McInerney’s 1984 publication of Bright Lights allows us excavation to an even earlier level of American self-confusion. The novel’s second-person narrative, which people found so powerfully affecting, cannot be dismissed as but a clever trick when seen in a broader context—as a visceral reaction to the early stage of a society where Don DeLillo’s […]
...moreAfter reviewing the book blogs this week, I’ve decided that if I see the words “Dan Brown” ever again I’m going to punch myself in the eyes with a Da Vinci Code decoder ring. To save you some time, here’s what they have to say about him: He makes a lot of money. And he’s not […]
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