In David Streitfeld's profile "Don DeLillo's Gloomy Muse," DeLillo remarks, "I've been called 'reclusive' a hundred times and I'm not even remotely in that category" (C: 4). We found this comment to be all too true: DeLillo publishes and grants interviews more frequently than the popular conception of him would suggest. So, while this bibliography attempts to catalogue everything that is in the public record (written or spoken), it seems inevitable that we've missed something. If you find documents we have missed, please let us know (email to or Phil Nel / philnel@ksu.edu).
Items rumored to exist but not found or otherwise confirmed are not listed here. For example, between quitting his job at the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency in 1964 and finishing his novel Americana in 1970, DeLillo wrote a number of nonfiction articles in order to support himself. (The articles were on "all sorts" of topics, including "pseudo-colonial furniture" and "computers," DeLillo told William Goldstein [56].) But no one has yet located these articles, so they are not included in this bibliography.
In every section except "Blurbs," the entries are in chronological order. Blurbs are listed alphabetically by author because DeLillo's endorsements often get recycled on other works by the same author. The interviews and profiles are listed chronologically by date of publication except when the interview occurred significantly earlier than its publication date (such as LeClair, and the complete version of DeCurtis). The "Interviews and Profiles" section includes major interviews and profiles, as well as shorter articles in which DeLillo does most of the talking; the "Articles with Comments from DeLillo" section catalogues any other piece in which the author (or interviewer) has spoken with DeLillo and provides an excerpt from that conversation.
This bibliography draws upon the research of earlier DeLillo bibliographies: James Dean Young, "A Don DeLillo Checklist", Critique 20.1 (1978): 25-26; Paula Bryant, "Don DeLillo: An Annotated Bibliographic and Critical Secondary Bibliography," Bulletin of Bibliography 45.3 (1986): 208-12; Tom LeClair, "Bibliography," in In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987): 237-40; Douglas Keesey, "Selected Bibliography," in Don DeLillo (New York: Twayne, 1993): 221-24. Other rich resources for bibliographic material include the Nexis database and, of course, the many contributors to the DeLillo's America web page.
The New Yorker ran an article "Final Destination" by D.T. Max on June 11, 2007 about the Ransom Center, with a partial focus on DeLillo's work.
Note that only the U.S. editions are shown here; information on many international editions is available from the Novels page.
Americana. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1971.
First mass market paperback from Pocket Books, 1973; second printing, 1978.
Trade paperback reissue, Penguin, 1989. The edition published by Penguin in 1989 includes
the following notice: "In preparing this edition for publication,
the author has made some cuts in the original text; there is no
new material." Pages 5-6 (from the hardcover) were cut; about
ten pages were cut altogether.
Americana editions.
End Zone. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1972.
First mass market paperback from Pocket Books, 1973.
End Zone editions.
Great Jones Street. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1973.
First mass market paperback, Pocket Books, 1974.
Great Jones Street editions.
Ratner's Star. New York: Knopf,
1976.
First mass market paperback, Vintage, 1980.
Ratner's Star editions.
Players. New York: Knopf, 1977.
First mass market paperback, Ballantine, 1978.
Players editions.
Running Dog. New York: Knopf,
1978.
First mass market paperback, Vintage, 1979.
Running Dog editions.
Amazons. New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1980. Written as 'Cleo Birdwell'. Douglas Keesey says
the work was "written as a collaboration," and the DeLillo
archives make it clear that DeLillo wrote this novel with help
from Sue Buck.
Amazons editions.
First mass market paperback, Berkley, 1981.
The Names. New York: Knopf, 1982.
The Names editions.
White Noise. New York: Viking,
1985.
Trade paperbacks in US, Penguin.
White Noise editions.
Viking Critical Library edition, Penguin, 1998. This edition includes DeLillo's essay "Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson and the Millenium," the White Noise chapter from In the Loop by Tom LeClair, critical essays by Lentricchia, Frow, Duvall, Bonca, Saltzman and Maltby, a few interview excerpts and reviews, an introduction by Osteen, and a bibliography.
Great Books edition, Penguin, 1999.
25th Anniversary edition in 2010.
Libra. New York: Viking, 1988.
First mass market paperback, Penguin, 1989.
Libra editions.
Mao II. New York: Viking, 1991.
Mao II editions.
Underworld. New York: Scribner,
1997.
Underworld editions.
Trade paperback, Scribner, 1998.
Scribner Classic hardcover edition, 2007.
The Body Artist. New York: Scribner,
2001.
The Body Artist editions.
Trade paperback, Scribner, 2002.
Cosmopolis. New York: Scribner,
2003.
Cosmopolis editions.
Falling Man. New York: Scribner,
2007.
Falling Man editions.
Point Omega. New York: Scribner,
2010.
Point Omega editions.
Zero K. New York: Scribner,
2016.
Zero K editions.
The Silence. New York: Scribner,
2020.
The Silence editions. Scribner paperback edition of October 2021 includes the essay "Man at the Window" dated April 1, 2021.
DeLillo: Three Novels of the 1980s. New York: Library of America,
2022. LOA #365.
Includes The Names, White Noise, and Libra (each with a new short 'Preface, 2022' by DeLillo). Edited by Mark Osteen, also includes a DeLillo Chronology, and reprints both the "Silhouette City" and "American Blood" essays.
Mao II & Underworld. New York: Library of America,
2023. LOA #374.
Includes Mao II and Underworld (both with a new short 'Preface, 2022' by DeLillo). Edited by Mark Osteen, also includes a DeLillo chronology.
Pafko at the Wall. Harper's Magazine Oct. 1992: 35-70. As DeLillo indicates (in the 1993 Paris Review interview), an edited version becomes the "Triumph of Death" prologue to Underworld, 11-60. The piece was subsequently published as a standalone hardcover in 2001 by Scribner, again entitled "Pafko at the Wall" (but in the Underworld prologue version, just to make things confusing).
This lists the uncollected short fiction which has not been incorporated into novels (or which was changed substantially upon later incorporation).
"The River Jordan." Epoch 10.2 (Winter 1960): 105-20.
"Take the 'A' Train." Epoch 12.1 (Spring 1962): 9-25. Rpt. in Stories from Epoch. Edited by Baxter Hathaway. Cornell University Press, 1966. 22-39.
"Spaghetti and Meatballs." Epoch 14.3 (Spring 1965): 244-50.
"Coming Sun. Mon. Tues." Kenyon Review 28.3 (June 1966): 391-94.
"Baghdad Towers West." Epoch 17.3 (Spring 1968): 195-217.
"The Uniforms." Carolina Quarterly 22.1 (Winter 1970): 4-11. Rpt. in Cutting Edges: Young American Fiction for the '70s. Edited by Jack Hicks. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1973. 451-59.
"In the Men's Room of the Sixteenth Century." Esquire Dec. 1971: 174-77, 243, 246. Rpt. in The Secret Life of Our Times. Edited by Gordon Lish. Doubleday, 1973. Rpt in Esquire's Big Book of Fiction, 2002.
"Total Loss Weekend." Sports Illustrated 27 Nov. 1972: 98-120. Rpt in Sports Illustrated: Fifty Years of Great Writing, 2003. Full text was online in the Sports Illustrated Vault, now found at: Internet Archive.
"Creation." Antaeus 33 (Spring 1979): 32-46. Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
"The Sightings." Weekend Magazine (Toronto) 4 August 1979: 26-30. A supplement included in many newspapers in Canada.
"Human Moments in World War III." Esquire
July 1983: 118-26. Rpt. in Great Esquire Fiction: The Finest
Stories from the First Fifty Years; Edited by L. Rust Hills,
New York: Viking Press, 1983. 572-86. Also rpt. in Granta 11, Spring 1984. Also rpt. in Lust, Violence, Sin, Magic: 60 Years of Esquire Fiction; Atlantic, 1993. 553-66. Also rpt. in American Gothic Tales, an anthology edited by Joyce Carol Oates; New York, Plume, 1996. Also rpt. in The Secret History of Science Fiction, an anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel; San Francisco, Tachyon Publications, 2009. Rpt. in Lovers, an anthology published by PEN America, 2010. Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
And online at Granta at: http://granta.com/human-moments-in-world-war-iii/.
"The Runner." Harper's Sept. 1988: 61-63. Rpt. in Trafika 1 (Autumn 1993): 81-86. (Trafika is published in Prague.) Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
"The Ivory Acrobat." Granta 25 (Autumn 1988): 199-212. Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
"The Angel Esmeralda." Esquire May 1994: 100-109. Rpt. in The Best American Short Stories 1995. Edited by Jane Smiley and Katrina Kenison. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. 263-83. Note that this story is also listed in the "Stories Included in Novels" section, where the material has been changed substantially. Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
"Baader-Meinhof." New Yorker 1 April 2002: 78-82. Rpt. in The Guardian, August 17, 2002 (online, entitled "Looking at Meinhof"). Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
"Midnight in Dostoevsky." New Yorker 30 November 2009: 68-77. On the web at: https://web.archive.org/web/20140806230553/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/30/midnight-in-dostoevsky (thanks Wayback Machine!). Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
"Hammer and Sickle." Harper's December 2010: 63-74. Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
"The Starveling." Granta 117, November 2011. Rpt. in The Angel Esmeralda, 2011.
"The Itch." New Yorker 7-14 August 2017. On the web at: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/07/the-itch-don-delillo.
"The Network." On the Job: Fiction About Work by Contemporary American Writers. Edited by William O'Rourke. New York: Vintage, 1977. 288-303. Chapter 2 of Americana. May be very slightly edited, if at all: the copyright notices thank Houghton Mifflin for the "Selection from pages 13-30 of Americana."
"Game Plan." New Yorker 27 Nov. 1971: 44-47. This seems to be a draft of what became Part Two of End Zone (the description of the big game against West Centrex Biotechnical Institute). Some sentences appear exactly as in the novel, some appear in a slightly altered form.
"from End Zone." Works In Progress 6 (1972): 97-120. Published by the Literary Guild of America, contains the first seven chapters of End Zone.
"Pop, Pop, Hit Those People." Sports Illustrated 17 Apr. 1972: 86-102. End Zone, chapers 1-4 (with the exception of the line -- "'You son of a bitch,' Fallon said."), chapter 6, most of 7, most of 8.
"Scrimmage." The Roar of the Sneakers. Edited by Robert S. Gold. New York: Bantam, 1977. 78-85. Chapter 12 of End Zone.
"The Bucky Wunderlick Story." Atlantic May 1973: 56-58, 61-62, 67-69, 71-72. Consists of most of the "Superslick Mind-Contracting Media Kit" section of Great Jones Street, plus a slightly different version of chapter 10.
"Showdown at Great Hole." Esquire June 1976: 108-10, 134-36, 138. Rpt. in All Our Secrets Are the Same: New Fiction from Esquire. Edited by Gordon Lish. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. Begins with parts of the first three paragraphs of Ratner's Star, then jumps to an edited version of Chapter 10 ("Opposites").
"Players." Esquire Apr. 1977: 103-104, 122, 126, 128, 130, 132. An edited version of Part One of Players, taking bits and pieces from pages 13-93. Concludes with "The Motel," the final scene of the novel.
"Walkmen." Vanity Fair Aug. 1984: 74-77, 108-110. Chapter 37 of White Noise, with virtually no changes, except that the last paragraph of the chapter is replaced by the line "I had the feeling they understood."
"from White Noise." Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction. Edited by Larry McCaffery. Duke University Press, 1991. 63-64. The "most photographed barn in America" section of White Noise.
"A Visit from Dr. Bazelon." Harper's Sept. 1986: 28-32.* A portion of The Day Room.
"Oswald in the Lone Star State." Esquire July 1988: 52-60. Almost all of the chapter "In Dallas" from Libra, pp. 269-290 (Viking). Also includes a few short quotations from DeLillo in little side boxes, including: "There's something poignant about men sitting in a room looking at extremely amateurish footage of a horrible event and trying to extract truth from it."
"The Lone Gunman Theory." Esquire Sept. 1988: 218-30. Focuses on Nicholas Branch, using most of Libra's "17 April" chapter, and parts of the following: the chapter "26 April," page 378, and page 445.
"In The Bronx." The Crime Lover's Casebook. Edited by Jerome Charyn. New York: Signet, 1996. 61-70. The first section of Libra.
"At Yankee Stadium." Granta 34 (Autumn 1990): 211-24. A slightly edited version of the "At Yankee Stadium" section of Mao II. The piece also appears in Andreas Gursky, edited by Thomas Weski, published by Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007, ppg. 30-34.
"Shooting Bill Gray." Esquire Jan. 1991: 92-96. From Mao II: a slightly different version of Part One, Chapter 3.
"Tompkins Square." Harper's May 1991: 44-48. Also from Mao II: a partially edited version of pp. 149-152 (Viking), beginning with "She came upon this park" and ending with "mutter of dreaming souls."
"The Angel Esmeralda." Refer to the listing under the "Stories" section for publication details. In a revised and expanded version, appears in Underworld, 237-50, 814-17, 818-24.
"Videotape." Antaeus 75/76 (Autumn 1994): 55-59. Rpt. in Harper's Dec. 1994: 15-17. Also rpt. in The Pushcart Prize XX - Best of the Small Presses for 1996: 187-91. And in Sudden Fiction (continued). Edited by Robert Shapard & James Thomas. Norton, 1996. 90-96. With very few revisions, forms the opening chapter of Part 2 of Underworld, 155-160.
"The Black-and-White Ball." New Yorker 23 & 30 Dec. 1996: 80-89. Revised, forms "November 28, 1966" and "November 29, 1966" in Chapter 4, Part 5 of Underworld, 555-65, 567-79.
"Sputnik." New Yorker 8 Sep. 1997: 76-79. Rpt. as "October 8, 1957" in Chapter 2, Part 5 of Underworld, 513-21.
"The Border of Fallen Bodies." Esquire April 2003: 124-27. A slightly edited take from Cosmopolis, 170-78.
"Still-Life." New Yorker 9 Apr. 2007: 62-69. An edited excerpt from Falling Man. Online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20150823072618/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/09/still-life-8 (thanks Wayback Machine!).
"Sine Cosine Tangent" New Yorker 22 Feb. 2016. An edited excerpt from Zero K. Online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20160503030612/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/22/sine-cosine-tangent (thanks Wayback Machine!).
"Plexiglass" Harper's April, 2016. An excerpt from Zero K. Online at: http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/plexiglass/?single=1.
"Time to Destination" Harper's October, 2020. An excerpt from The Silence. Online at: https://harpers.org/archive/2020/10/time-to-destination-don-delillo/.
"The Future That Takes Shape Too Soon" Fordham Magazine Dec, 2020. An excerpt from The Silence. Online at: https://news.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/fiction-the-future-that-takes-shape-too-soon-by-don-delillo/.
"Mother" WBAI, 99.5 Radio Theatre, initial broadcast December 1966.
A recording from the Pacifica Radio Archives is available here: 'Mother' recording in the Internet Archive.
"The Engineer of Moonlight" Cornell Review 5 (Winter 1979): 21-47.
"The Day Room" American Theatre Sept. 1986: Special Insert, 1-12. Rpt. by Knopf, 1987.
"The Rapture of the Athlete Assumed into Heaven" The Quarterly 15 (Fall 1990). Rpt. in Harper's Dec. 1990: 44. Rpt. in South Atlantic Quarterly 91.2 (Spring 1992): 241-42. Rpt. in After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology. Edited by Larry McCaffery. New York: Penguin, 1995. 88-89.
"Game 6" Unpublished. The version I've seen is dated September 19, 1991. Made as a film in 2004, put in general release in America on 10 March 2006.
"Valparaiso" Scribner, 1999.
"The Mystery at the Middle of Ordinary Life." A 'playlet' that appeared in Zoetrope magazine (volume 4, number 4), out in late 2000 - appears in full at the Internet Archive. The notes indicate that this piece "was originally written for a benefit evening at the American Repertory Theater. Rpt. in Harper's January 2001. Rpt. in South Atlantic Quarterly 99.2/3 (Spring/Summer 2000).
"Love-Lies-Bleeding" Scribner, 2006.
"The Word for Snow". 2007. Short play (20 minutes) premiered in October 2007 in Chicago. First published by Karma, 2014, in an edition of 1000, with six photos by Richard Prince. 26 pages of typewritten text in 64 page book.
"Notes Toward a Definitive Meditation (By Someone Else) on the Novel 'Americana.'" Epoch 21.3 (Spring 1972): 327-29.
Notes on "The Uniforms." Cutting Edges: Young American Fiction for the '70s. Edited by Jack Hicks. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1973. 532-33.
"American Blood: A Journey Through the Labyrinth of Dallas and JFK." Rolling Stone 8 Dec. 1983: 21-28, 74. Included in the Library of America DeLillo - Three Novels of the 1980s edition, 2022.
"Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson, and the Millennium." Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies 4.3 (1988): 29-34. Included in the Viking Critical Library edition of White Noise, Penguin, 1998. Also included in the Library of America DeLillo - Three Novels of the 1980s edition, 2022.
"Rushdie Novel Stirs Passions East and West; Answer to the Cardinal" Co-written with (or at least co-signed by) Mary Gordon, Andrew Greeley, John Guare, Maureen Howard, Garry Wills. New York Times 26 Feb. 1989. Sec. 4: 22.
"The Image and the Crowd." Creative Camera 231 (April 1993): 72. A few more details can be found at http://www.perival.com/delillo/ddoddsends.html#camera.
"Salman Rushdie Defense Pamphlet." Co-written with Paul Auster. New York: Rushdie Defense Committee USA. 14 Feb. 1994.
Notes on "The Angel Esmeralda." The Best American Short Stories 1995. Edited by Jane Smiley and Katrina Kenison. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. 338.
"WHITE NOISE: A Letter from DeLillo." Letter to Jon Jackson. 23 Oct. 1995. Full text now at DeLillo on Writing.
Letter to Jonathan Franzen. Included in Franzen, Jonathan. "Perchance to Dream." Harper's Apr. 1996: 54.
"Fitzgerald: the Movie." F. Scott Fitzgerald at 100: Centenary Tributes by American Writers. Quill & Brush, 1996.
"The Artist Naked in a Cage." The New Yorker 26 May 1997: 6-7.
"The Power of History." New York Times Magazine 7 Sept. 1997: 60-63. Rpt. in The Observer, 4 Jan. 1998.
"Looking for Valparaiso." American Repertory Theater website. Harvard University. 2 Nov. 1998. As captured at the Internet Archive.
"Finding the Dark Heart." Steppenwolf at 25: A Photographic Celebration of an Actor's Theater. Victor Skrebneski. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, Inc., Sept 2000. A one page appreciation for the Chicago theater company which has produced two DeLillo works; an adaptation of Libra in 93-94 and "Valparaiso" in 99-00.
"A History of the Writer Alone in a Room." The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. The Jerusalem International Book Fair, June 1999. Jerusalem: Caspit Press, 1999. 13-18. A translation by Frank Heibert appeared in the German newspaper Die Zeit entitled "Der Narr in seinem Zimmer" (may be translated as "The Fool in his Room") on January 14, 2001.
"The Fictional Man." Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America's Past (and Each Other). Edited by Mark C. Carnes. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 91-92. A short meditation on Lee Harvey Oswald.
"In the Ruins of the Future." Harper's Dec. 2001: 33-40. Rpt. in The Guardian, Dec. 22, 2001 and is available online from Internet Archive.
"That Day in Rome - Movies and memory." The New Yorker Oct. 20, 2003: 76-78.
"Female Nude by Louise Nevelson, 1932." The Paris Review, Fall 2003 #167: 108-109.
"On William Gaddis." Conjunctions, Fall 2003 #41. On the web at http://www.conjunctions.com/print/article/don-delillo-c41
"The American Absurd" (Answers to questions on Lee Harvey Oswald). Frontline website, Nov. 2003. url: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/forum/. DeLillo's comments only rpt. in Harper's Feb. 2004: 32-4.
"JFK's Assassination" Letter co-signed by DeLillo, credited to Anthony Summers, Elias Demetracopoulos, G. Robert Blakey, Gerald Posner, Jefferson Morley, Jim Hougan, Jim Lesar, John McAdams, John Newman, Norman Mailer, Paul Hoch, Richard Whalen, Robbyn Swann Summers. New York Review of Books 18 Dec. 2003 (Vol 50, No. 20). url: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16865. This letter requests that the CIA release "all relevant records on the activities of a career CIA operations officer named George E. Joannides."
Letter to Jonathan Safran Foer. Included in Foer, Jonathan Safran. "Emptiness." Playboy January 2004: 150. Full text can be found in DeLillo on Writing.
Letter to Gary Adelman. Included in Adelman, Gary. "Beckett's Readers: A Commentary and Symposium." Michigan Quarterly Review Winter 2004 (Vol XLIII, No. 1): 54-70. Full text can be found in DeLillo on Writing.
"Counterpoint: Three movies, a book, and an old photograph." Grand Street #73, Spring 2004: 36-53. Rpt. in Brick #74, Winter 2004: 96-105 (note, it's shown in the Table of contents as "Thelonious and Glenn").
Note on Thomas Pynchon. Bookforum, Summer 2005: 30. A short note from DeLillo appeared in a piece titled "Pynchon From A to V". Online at the Internet Archive.
"Blocked" Letter co-signed by DeLillo, credited to Anthony Summers, Don DeLillo, Elias Demetracopoulos, G. Robert Blakey, Gerald Posner, Jefferson Morley, Jim Lesar, John McAdams, John Newman, Norman Mailer, Paul Hoch, Richard Whalen, Robbyn Swan, Scott Armstrong, Vincent Bugliosi. New York Review of Books 11 Aug. 2005 (Vol 52, No. 13). url: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18193. This letter is a followup to the "JFK's Assassination" item above, with regard to the decision by the CIA to block disclosure of records "about a deceased CIA operations officer named George E. Joannides."
"Woman in the Distance." Black Clock #4, late 2005: 56-59, with eleven numbered sections. On the 1970 film 'Wanda'. Published online in the Guardian Guardian: Woman in the distance, November 1, 2008. Reprinted in Artesian, No. 1, 2008, ppg. 14-18. Reprinted in Black Clock #13.
"Assassination Aura." Introduction to Libra (printing 22), Penguin, 2006. There are five numbered sections that discuss reverberations of the assassination, such as the 1975 Ant Farm recreation in Dealey Plaza, along with new efforts to scientifically determine the number of shots from a dictaphone recording made that day. The piece itself is dated May 2005.
Letters to Norman Mailer (Nov. 1991 & May 1995). Included in the first issue of The Mailer Review is a selection of Images from the Ransom Center Archive, Fall 2007. The first letter is about Mailer's Harlot's Ghost, the 1995 exchange about the two authors' connection to Lee Harvey Oswald. A portion of the May '95 letter is posted on the Libra page.
Remarks at memorial for David Foster Wallace (Oct 23, 2008, NYC). Published in Harper's magazine, January 2009, pg. 30. A portion is posted on the Events page.
"Staring at the wall". Picador edition of Underworld, August, 2015, and included in subsequent printings of the Scribner paperback. A short afterword to the Picador reprint of Underworld from DeLillo. Online at the Internet Archive.
"Man at the Window". Essay included in the Oct. 2021 Scribner paperback edition of The Silence, dated April 1, 2021.
"Preface(s), 2022". Brief pieces introducing The Names, White Noise and Libra, included in the Library of America Don DeLillo: Three Novels of the 1980s edition, published Nov. 2022.
"Preface(s), 2022". Brief pieces introducing Mao II, and Underworld, included in the Library of America Don DeLillo: Mao II & Underworld edition, published Oct. 2023.
A short remembrance of Paul Auster. Published in LitHub, May 28, 2024. A link and portion is posted on the Events page.
LeClair, Thomas. "An Interview with Don DeLillo." Contemporary Literature 23.1 (1982): 19-31. Rpt. in Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists. Edited by Thomas LeClair and Larry McCaffery. Urbana: U. of Illinois Press, 1983. 79-90. (Interview conducted in Athens, in 1979.) The first major interview addresses a variety of important topics, including: DeLillo's reluctance to reveal his biography, games, language, film, Zen, methods of writing, and all of his works to date.
Harris, Robert R. "A Talk with Don DeLillo." New York Times Book Review 10 Oct. 1982: 26. Includes DeLillo's list of early influences, a discussion of The Names, the often-quoted remark about the "around-the-house-and-in-the-yard" school of fiction, and DeLillo's admiration for Pynchon.
James, Caryn. "'I Never Set Out to Write an Apocalyptic Novel.'" New York Times Book Review 13 Jan. 1985: 31. A brief telephone interview accompanying a review of White Noise.
Muro, Mark. "From Novels to a Play." Boston Globe 10 Apr. 1986: 77-78. Conducted in what the interviewer describes as "an abandoned lounge of [Harvard's] Hasty Pudding Club Theater," DeLillo talks about The Day Room, White Noise, themes in his work, and the Kennedy assassination. Biographical information: as a young child, DeLillo moved from the Bronx to Pottsville, PA; not long afterwards, he and his family moved back to the Bronx.
Rothstein, Mervyn. "A Novelist Faces His Themes on New Ground." New York Times 20 Dec. 1987. Sec. 2: 5, 19. Remarks on the collaborative nature of theater, playwriting, and The Day Room (which opened in New York on the day the article was published).
Mitgang, Herbert. "Reanimating Oswald, Ruby et al. in a Novel on the Assassination." New York Times 19 July 1988. Sec. C: 15, 20. On Libra, fact and fiction, the influence of the Kennedy assassination on DeLillo's work, the title, and DeLillo's research.
Heron, Kim. "Haunted by His Book." New York Times Book Review 24 July 1988: 23. A short telephone interview accompanying a review of Libra.
Connolly, Kevin. "An Interview with Don DeLillo." The Brick Reader. Edited by Linda Spalding and Michael Ondaatje. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1991. 260-69. An interview conducted "in Toronto in 1988" offers an in-depth discussion of Libra and related topics, including: Running Dog, dialogue, Players, "the paranoid school of American fiction," and film.
Arensberg, Ann. "Seven Seconds." Vogue Aug. 1988: 336-339, 390. Deals mostly with Libra and Oswald, but the remarks on terrorism foreshadow DeLillo's next book, Mao II.
Mehren, Elizabeth. "DeLillo's Novel Look at Oswald: Rescuing History From Confusion." Los Angeles Times 12 Aug. 1988. Sec. 5: 1-2. DeLillo discusses the pervasive influence of the Kennedy assassination, Libra, and his research for the novel. Of Oswald, DeLillo says, "No, I didn't like him, but I understood him."
DeLillo, Don. "'A Precinct of Chaos and Ambiguity.'" Newsweek 15 Aug. 1988: 59. As Newsweek puts it, "Highlights from a talk with Don DeLillo" (re: Libra).
Goldstein, William. "PW Interviews: Don DeLillo." Publishers Weekly 19 Aug. 1988: 55-6. DeLillo tells where he was on November 22, 1963, explains why he's giving more interviews about Libra than he has in connection with previous works (Libra "is grounded in history" and, since it addresses "a tragic and crucial event," he felt "a certain responsibility" to discuss it). An in-depth discussion of Libra.
Naughton, Jim. "Don DeLillo, Caught in History's Trap." The Washington Post, 23 Aug. 1988. Naughton visits DeLillo at his home in Bronxville, to chat about Libra and more.
Fender, Stephen. "Writers Talking." BBC Radio 3. 13 Nov. 1988. Focuses on Libra, the comment that "all plots tend to move deathward," coincidence, the difference between fiction and myth, what fiction has to offer history, and the sense of "unresolvability" that the assassination has left in the American concsiousness.
Wilde, John. "The Day John Kennedy Died." Melody Maker 19 Nov. 1988: 52-53. DeLillo discusses the composition of Libra, including: how he balanced his research and his writing, The Warren Report, and his hope that people would read the novel without worrying about which characters were real and which were invented.
DeCurtis, Anthony. "'An Outsider in This Society': An Interview with Don DeLillo." South Atlantic Quarterly 89.2 (1990): 281-304. Rpt. in Introducing Don DeLillo. Ed. Frank Lentricchia. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991. 43-66. (Longer version of "Matters of Fact and Fiction," Rolling Stone 17 Nov. 1988.) The interview, which was conducted in DeLillo's backyard, offers an extensive conversation about Libra, and also addresses the following: themes in DeLillo's work, movies, language, children, and politics.
Passaro, Vince. "Dangerous Don DeLillo." New York Times 19 May 1991. Sec. 6: 34-36, 38, 76-77. Over the course of several meetings in a New York restaurant, DeLillo provides more biographical information than he usually does, and comments on Mao II, images, Catholicism, terrorism, and Salman Rushdie.
Kerr, Nora. "'I Take The Language Apart.'" New York Times 9 June 1991. Sec. 7: 7. A short telephone interview accompanying a review of Mao II.
Fry, Donn. "DeLillo Probes Roots Of Danger." Seattle Times 27 June 1991. Sec. F: 1. Brief remarks on Mao II, images, terrorism, the media, and the Gulf War.
Kirchhoff, H. J. "Influence of Novelists on the Wane?" Toronto Globe and Mail 26 June 1991. Sec. C: 2. Discusses topics related to Mao II (novelists vs. terrorists, photographs of Salinger and of the mass wedding), the enduring presence of Libra in his life, and his speaking voice. Biographical detail: interviewer mentions that DeLillo and his wife "lived in Toronto for a year around 1975, when she worked for Citibank."
Marchand, Philip. "Being Reclusive Means Never Having to Tell Your Story." Toronto Star 27 June 1991: B7. In Toronto for a reading, DeLillo briefly discusses: the photos of Salinger and the mass wedding, Warhol, Mao, "fiction that is steeped in history" versus "around the house and in the yard fiction," Libra, and its film rights. A biographical note: DeLillo lived in Toronto "for a year in 1976" and "professes to have pleasant memories of the city."
"Don DeLillo: The Word, the Image, and the Gun." Dir. Kim Evans. BBC 1. 27 Sept. 1991. At the film's beginning, the narrator says, "This film was developed in close collaboration with DeLillo." Most of DeLillo's comments concern the themes of Libra and Mao II, especially: film, the news media,violence and terrorism, and the role of the writer.
Leith, William. "Terrorism and the Art of Fiction." Independent 18 Aug. 1991. Sec. Sunday Review Page: 18-19. In a New York hotel room, DeLillo explains how the media isolates people, says Mao II is "about the struggle for the imagination of the world," talks about the inspiration of the two photographs (Salinger, and the mass wedding), and claims that he writes "to find out how much I know." The interviewer also talks to Paul Auster and Gordon Lish about DeLillo.
Burn, Gordon. "Wired Up and Whacked Out." Sunday Times Magazine (London) 25 Aug. 1991: 36-37, 39. In a London hotel suite, a travel-weary DeLillo discusses book tours, White Noise, the Kennedy assassination, death, Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," his parents, his boyhood, and jazz.
Streitfeld, David. "Don DeLillo's Gloomy Muse: The PEN/Faulkner Winner & His Novels of Conspiracy." Washington Post 14 May 1992. Sec. C: 1, 4. In a New York Italian restaurant, DeLillo says he's not reclusive, and discusses the J. D. Salinger photograph, terrorism, TV, a passage in John Cheever's journals ("the task of the American writer is [...] to describe 400 people under the lights reaching for a foul ball [...] The sense of moral judgments embedded in a migratory vastness"), and crowds.
Roberts, Margaret. "'D' is for Danger - and for Writer Don DeLillo." Chicago Tribune 22 May 1992. Sec. 5: 1, 5. Topics include: the need for writers to resist being absorbed by their culture, Salman Rushdie, the Kennedy assassination, Mao II, the Salinger photograph, Andy Warhol, and comedy.
Begley, Adam. "Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction." Paris Review 35.128 (Fall 1993): 274-306. Online at: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1887/the-art-of-fiction-no-135-don-delillo. Begley notes, "Transcripts were made from eight hours of taped material. DeLillo returned the final, edited manuscript with a note that begins, 'This is not only the meat, but the potatos [sic]'" (276). During a series of tape-recorded conversations that began in the fall of 1992, DeLillo talks about his early influences, working habits, methods of composition, dialogue, characterization, and audience; he also discusses plots, the Kennedy assassination, The Warren Report, film, paranoia, and most of his novels.
Nadotti, Maria. "An Interview with Don DeLillo." Translated by Peggy Boyers. Edited by Don DeLillo. Salmagundi 100 (Fall 1993): 86-97. (First appeared in Italian, in the Italian magazine Linea d'Ombra.) DeLillo comments upon Mao II, crowds and the individual, women and men, fact and fiction, Libra and JFK, contemporary American writers, and his preference for the typewriter.
Sjoholm, Cecilia. "Fiktion raddar oss fran forvirring." July 1994. http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/7.94/Delillo.html. The interview is in Swedish. An excerpt of David Thomson's English translation of this interview ("Fiction saves us from confusion") has been published at: http://www.perival.com/delillo/ddinterviews.html#swedish. DeLillo talks about Charles Manson, Gary Gilmore, Kennedy, the Salinger photograph, the mass wedding photograph, film, and Walter Benjamin.
Suarez, Ray. "Book Club of the Air." Talk of the Nation. NPR. 4 Aug. 1994. Excerpt rpt. as "Tech Noise." Inc. Technology Summer 1995: 18. A telephone conversation about White Noise. The brief excerpt addresses technology and the Zapruder film; the complete version finds DeLillo arguing that the novel was not intended as a satire of academia.
Bing, Jonathan. "The Ascendance of Don DeLillo." Publisher's Weekly 11 Aug. 1997: 261-63. Discusses the marketing of Underworld, including comments from Gordon Lish and Nan Graham. DeLillo himself talks about "writers in opposition," the relationship between history and fiction, his career, writing, the "two levels of violence" in modern life, the power of the media, and the composition of Underworld. The article also tells us who edited each novel and mentions DeLillo's original screenplay, Game Six. Lorin Stein's "The Crying of Oct. 29," a short article accompanying the main one, discusses the bidding for Underworld's print and film rights.
Remnick, David. "Exile on Main Street." New Yorker 15 Sept. 1997: 42-48. During the summer of 1997, Remnick visits DeLillo at his home north of the city, near his boyhood home in the Fordham section of the Bronx, and at MoMA. DeLillo discusses the composition of Underworld, his childhood, his life after college, language, the power of the media, and says that "being called a 'bad citizen' [by George Will] is a compliment to my mind. [...] Will also said I blamed America for Lee Harvey Oswald. But I don't [...], I blame America for George Will."
Howard, Gerald. "The American Strangeness: An Interview with Don DeLillo." Hungry Mind Review Fall 1997: 13-16. DeLillo's editor for Libra talks with DeLillo about Underworld, including: the genesis of the novel, its structure, technology as faith, film, autobiography, art, Lenny Bruce, and the writer's role.
Feeney, Mark. "DeLillo's Dilemma." Boston Globe 30 Sept. 1997: E1. DeLillo declines to comment on Princess Diana's death, but does talk about his writing habits, PR, technology, baseball, film, the Bronx, and Underworld. When asked about his next book, DeLillo quotes Mel Brooks: "Life is full of surprises."
Gross, Terry. Fresh Air. NPR. 2 Oct. 1997. In a 35-minute radio interview, DeLillo discusses the headlines that inspired Underworld's prologue, describes videotapes as "our last perception of nature," and reads from Underworld, pp. 158-59. He then talks about: Diana's death, the deaths of Oswald and Kennedy and the mediums on which they were recorded (TV vs. film), news that has a "tabloid emptiness at its heart" replacing the Cold War narrative, the relationship between technology and paranoia, Underworld's title, the "American language" of his novels, "rediscovering" the "argot" of the Bronx, being shaped more by the Cold War than by World War II, the Italian language, his "audio-visual connection to language" (not only the sound but "the physical appearance" of words on the page), the second person singular in Underworld, his penchant for "larger themes," the writer's need to resist "consumer culture," and the function of celebrities in contemporary life.
Ulin, David L. "Merging Myth and History"; Los Angeles Times 8 Oct. 1997. Q&A with DeLillo on Underworld.
Streitfield, David. "Don DeLillo's Hidden Truths." Washington Post, 11 Nov. 1997: D1. Discusses Underworld, what DeLillo picks up while riding the subway, the "current craze for videotaped repetition," the unnerving connectedness of the modern world, and the challenge for the novelist to describe it.
Echlin, Kim. "Baseball and the Cold War." Ottawa Citizen, 28 Dec. 1997: E5.
Williams, Richard. "Everything under the bomb." The Guardian, 10 Jan. 1998.
O'Toole, Fintan. "And quiet writes the Don." The Irish Times, 10 Jan. 1998.
Billen, Andrew. "Up from the Underworld." London Evening Standard, 28 Jan. 1998.
Burger, Jörg. "Mr. Paranoia." Die Zeit, Hamburg, 8 Oct 1998.
Koerte, Peter. "Sprache ist der einzige Fluchtweg" (translated: "Language is the only escape route"). Der Standard, Austria, 30 Oct. 1998.
Jensen, Bo Green. "The Triumph of Death." WeekendAvisen, Denmark, 13 Nov 1998.
von Büchau, Armin. "Aus der Unter- in die Oberwelt - Ein Gespräch mit Don DeLillo." Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Zurich, 14 Nov. 1998.
Feeney, Mark. "Unmistakably DeLillo." Boston Globe, 24 Jan. 1999.
McAuliffe, Jody. "Interview with Don DeLillo." South Atlantic Quarterly. 99.2/3 (Spring/Summer 2000): 609-615. A brief interview with DeLillo focusing on his plays.
Chénetier, Marc and François Happe. "An Interview with Don DeLillo." Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines. Number 87 (January 2001): 102-111. Interview conducted March 11, 1999, focused on Underworld.
Pell, Gabe. "Acclaimed writer DeLillo gives rare reading in McCosh 50." Daily Princetonian, 17 Oct 2002.
Ulin, David L. "Finding reason in an age of terror." Los Angeles Times, 15 Apr. 2003.
Henning, Peter. "Maybe I see some things more clearly and earlier than others." Frankfurter Rundschau, 20 Nov 2003.
Bou, Stéphane and Jean-Baptiste Thoret. "A Conversation with Don DeLillo: Has Terrorism Become the World's Main Plot?" Panic #1, Nov. 2005, pp. 90-95. On Cosmopolis and related topics, in French. English translation by Noel King.
Freeman, John. "Q&A: Don DeLillo - It's not as easy as it looks". San Francisco Chronicle, 5 Mar 2006. On Love-Lies-Bleeding, Game 6, movies and sports. This appears to be the same interview that was used as the basis of "Lurking around society's edges" which ran in Melbourne's The Age, 22 Feb 2006.
Max, D.T. "Final Destination". New Yorker, 11 June 2007. About the Ransom Center Archives, with a partial focus on DeLillo's work.
Binelli, Mark. "Intensity of a Plot". Guernica, July 2007. Discussion of Falling Man, DeLillo mentions Norman Mailer, discusses the sixties and music a bit.
Amend, Christoph and Georg Diez. "Ich kenne Amerika nicht mehr" ("I don't know America anymore"). Die Zeit, Oct 11, 2007. A discussion on Falling Man and post 9/11 America.
Alter, Alexandra. "Don DeLillo Deconstructed". Wall Street Journal, 29 Jan 2010. They discuss Point Omega, among many other things.
DePietro, Thomas. Don DeLillo: A Conversation with Thomas DePietro. Barnes and Noble Review, 1 Feb 2010. They discuss Point Omega, among other things.
Caesar, Ed. "Don DeLillo: A writer like no other". London Times: 21 Feb. 2010. an interview with Don DeLillo on Point Omega and more.
McCrum, Robert. "Don DeLillo: I'm not trying to manipulate reality - this is what I see and hear". Guardian: Aug. 8, 2010, an interview with Don DeLillo on Point Omega and more, with one DeLillo title error.
Singer, Dale. "Take Five: Don't call Don DeLillo's fiction 'postmodern'". St. Louis Beacon: Sep. 17, 2010, an interview with Don DeLillo on the occasion of receiving the Saint Louis Literary Award.
Jacob, Didier. "Don DeLillo in conversation with Bret Easton Ellis". The Believer: Sep, 2011, pp. 63-73. Didier Jacob hosted a conversation between the two authors in Paris in October 2010. They discuss their respective writing careers.
Bartholomew, Rafe. Director's Cut: Q&A With Don DeLillo. Grantland website: October 3, 2011. An email interview about 'Pafko on the Wall' on the 60th anniversary of the game.
Igarashi, Yuka. Interview: Don DeLillo. Granta website: January 10, 2012. A short interview about DeLillo's stories.
Rabalais, Kevin. "A man in a room: an interview with Don DeLillo". New Orleans Review, June 2012 (Vol. 38, No. 1), pp. 110+. A wide-ranging interview, with a poor quality scan available online at the Gale Academic OneFile site
Nance, Kevin. "Living in dangerous times." Chicago Tribune: October 12, 2012. A short interview about DeLillo's writing, on the occasion of being awarded the Carl Sandburg Award on Oct 17 in Chicago.
Treisman, Deborah. "Don DeLillo on Seeing Oneself in Words" The New Yorker: Feb 15, 2016. A short interview about DeLillo's excerpted story "Sine Cosine Tangent" and Zero K.
Brooks, Xan. Don DeLillo on Trump's America: I'm not sure the country is recoverable, The Guardian: Nov, 5, 2018. Brooks speaks with DeLillo on the eve of the UK premiere of Love-Lies-Bleeding.
Boxall, Peter. "The edge of the future: A discussion with Don DeLillo". Included in Don DeLillo, Bloomsbury Contemporary Critical Perspectives, 2019, ppg. 159-164. Boxall received typewritten answers to several questions about Zero K.
Quick Links: Novels
Stories
Excerpts Plays
Essays Interviews
Articles Blurbs
Cohen, Debra Rae. "De Wild, De Wicked, De Fuhrer and DeLillo." Crawdaddy Oct. 1978: 13-14. Review of Running Dog which includes comments from DeLillo on this book and his previous work.
LeClair, Thomas. "Missing Writers." Horizon Oct. 1981: 48-52. Profiles of DeLillo, Gaddis, Pynchon and Salinger, including some comments from the soon-to-appear interview (Contemporary Literature 23.1 [1982]: 19-31).
Champlin, Charles. "The Heart is a Lonely Craftsman." Los Angeles Times 29 July 1984. Sec. Calendar: 7. In a short interview conducted at his home, DeLillo addresses his biography and the two things he's nostalgic about ("our time in Greece, and the years of Americana, when I was learning to be a writer").
Clemons, Walter. "At the Edge of Dreams." Newsweek 21 Jan. 1985: 69. A review of White Noise that includes a few remarks from DeLillo.
Blades, John. "A Renegade's Detour: Famed Novelist Don DeLillo Brings 1st Play to Chicago." Chicago Tribune 19 May 1989. Sec. 5: 3. In connection with The Day Room's Chicago premiere, this article includes part of a telephone interview in which DeLillo comments on his play.
"Backstage with Esquire." Esquire Jan. 1991: 19. In the same issue that contains "Shooting Bill Gray," DeLillo says that there's no direct correspondence between Gray and any particular author, and that hiding from the public "would probably be more trouble than it's worth."
Streitfeld, David. "DeLillo's 'Mao' Wins PEN Award: $7,500 Prize for Author's 10th Novel." Washington Post 1 Apr. 1992. Sec. C: 1, 4. Quotes his remark at the National Book Award ceremony for White Noise ("I'm sorry I couldn't be here tonight"), and chats briefly (on the phone from Paris) about his award for Mao II.
Fein, Esther B. "Book Notes." New York Times 1 Apr. 1992. Sec. C: 20. Speaking from Paris, DeLillo talks briefly about Mao II, Kafka and Beckett, terrorism, and Oliver Stone's JFK.
Smith, Sid. "Creative Stages: From Novelists to Playwrights in Two Short Acts." Chicago Tribune 2 May 1993. Sec. 13: 8, 10. DeLillo's remarks on: images, Mao II, and The Day Room.
Terry, Clifford. "Reimagined, History Repeats Itself: Two Plays Dramatize Versions of the Past." Chicago Tribune 8 May 1994. Sec. 13: 10, 22. Talks about Libra and John Malkovich's stage adaptation of it.
Gussow, Mel. "The Other John Malkovich: Director." New York Times 18 May 1994. Sec. C: 17, 20. Focuses on Malkovich, but also addresses DeLillo's role in bringing Libra to the stage.
Gardner, Ralph Jr. "Writing That Can Strengthen the Fraying Threads of Memory." New York Times 30 Jan. 1997. Sec. C: 1, 8. DeLillo and Manhattan psychologist Alan Dienstag have developed a writing program for Alzheimer's patients. The program does not counteract the effects of the disease, but it does help patients to cope: "Writing a brief narrative [...] can be a way of escaping loneliness and apprehension, if only temporarily," DeLillo explains.
Kamp, David. "DeLillo's Home Run." Vanity Fair Sept. 1997: 202, 204. DeLillo offers a few thoughts on Underworld, including his sense that the novel was written "in a looser vein, not as controlled as Mao II and Libra."
Jones, Malcolm Jr. "DeLillo Hits a Home Run." Newsweek 22 Sept. 1997. A review of Underworld, including a few remarks from DeLillo.
Gray, Paul. "How Did We Get Here." Time 29 Sept. 1997: 89-90. A review of Underworld, including a few remarks from DeLillo.
Firestone, David. "Public Lives; Reticent Novelist Talks Baseball, Not Books" NY Times 10 Sept. 1998. Online at: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/10/nyregion/public-lives-reticent-novelist-talks-baseball-not-books.html. Some talk on baseball following Mark McGuire breaking Roger Maris's single season record on Sept. 8.
Lieberman, Paul. "His first at-bat" Los Angeles Times 22 Jan. 2005. On the occasion of the screening of "Game 6" at Sundance, with some comments from DeLillo.
Kalospyros, Lefteris.Don DeLillo on this crazy, puzzling world we live in ekathimerini.com: on 12 March 2016. Short interview in the lead-up to DeLillo's appearance in Athens on 16 March 2016, on his days in Greece and more.
Quick Links: Novels
Stories Excerpts
Plays Essays
Interviews Articles
Blurbs
Auster, Paul. The Locked Room. New York: Penguin, 1988.
Front cover.
"Paul Auster spins wonderful mysteries of identity
and disappearance.... A writer whose work shines with intelligence
and originality."
---. Moon Palace. New York: Penguin, 1989. Back cover.
"This is a writer whose work shines with intelligence and
originality.... He blends modern surfaces with 19th-century interiors....
Yet he puts his storytelling techniques at the service of a very
contemporary novel."
---. The Music of Chance. New York: Penguin, 1990.
Uses
the first sentence above.
Banville, John. Doctor Copernicus. New York: Vintage,
1993. Front cover.
"Banville writes a dangerous and clear-running
prose and has a grim gift of seeing people's souls."
Barich, Bill. Big Dreams - Into the Heart of California.
New York: Vintage, 1995. Inside page.
"Big Dreams is very
fine work, deceptively easygoing, and filled with the sort of
thwarted longing that seems, more and more, to define our times."
Brodkey, Harold. First Love and Other Sorrows. New York:
Vintage, 1988. Front cover.
"For some years now, Harold Brodkey
has been making one of the great brave journeys of American Literature."
---. This Wild Darkness. Metropolitan Books, 1996. Dust
jacket flap.
Uses same blurb as above.
Buford, Bill. Among the Thugs. New York: Vintage, 1991.
First page.
"In Buford's compelling account of crowd violence
in sports, we see the frenzy of nations in horrifying miniature.
This is an important book about the shape the world is taking."
Franzen, Jonathan. The Corrections. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2001. Back cover.
"Jonathan Franzen has
built a powerful novel out of the swarming consciousness of a
marriage, a family, a whole culture - our culture. And he has
done it with a sympathy and expansiveness that bend the edgy modern
temper to a generous breadth of vision."
Gaddis, William. the Rush for Second Place. New York:
Penguin, 2002. Back cover.
"He's among the great American
novelists.... He's deeply uncompromising."
Hustvedt, Siri. The Blindfold. New York: W. W. Norton,
1993. Back cover.
"This is a work of dizzying intensity -
completely urban and modern but working at the reader's emotions
with the undistanced intimacy of a traditional tale. An intriguing
and sure-handed debut by a writer of eloquent and vivid disposition."
---. The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. New York: W. W. Norton,
1996. Back cover.
Reprints above quotation in reference to The
Blindfold.
Johnson, Denis. Angels. New York: Vintage, 1989. Front
cover.
"These lonely spaces and stunned lives have a hair-trigger
fascination that is American to the core....Dazzling and memorable."
Lauterbach, Ann. If in Time - Selected Poems 1975-2000.
New York: Penguin, 2001. Back cover.
"Ann Lauterbach's poetry
is quantum-packed inside its own reality, releasing beams of light
and time that bend across the world of human beauty without having
ever left the radiant point where the poems begin. This simultaneity
is her gift, and the mystery and longing in her work, the wit
and heart, are the things we feel on our skin."
LeClair, Tom. The Art of Excess. Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1989. Back cover.
"The Art
of Excess is both meticulous and great hearted. LeClair is a passionate
advocate of the fiction that matters most, those massive novels
of information and intense experience that form the only map we
have of planetary consciousness. This is a brilliantly argued
and important work of criticism."
LeClair, Tom. Well-Founded Fear. Dunkirk, New York:
Olin Frederick, Inc, 2000.
"In the fierce unfinished business
of Kurdistan, Tom LeClair has found the documentary edge and human
center that make Well-Founded Fear a resourceful
and moving work of fiction."
Leigh, Julia. The Hunter. London: Faber and Faber, 2000.
Front cover.
"A strong and hypnotic piece of writing. Julia
Leigh deserves every bit of praise she gets."
Lentricchia, Frank. Johnny Critelli and The Knifemen.
New York: Scribners, 1996. Dust jacket flap.
"Johnny Critelli
is a rich and textured novel that resembles a series of frescoes
embellished with body juices and food stains. It celebrates the
spirit, the flesh, and the family. Here is manhood as a tempestuous
and memoried work of art."
Lentricchia, Frank. The Music of the Inferno. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. Back dust jacket.
"The novel as a form still lives in our culture because it continues to be the deepest and most rewarding guide to the mystery of people's
souls and this brave and honest novel serves precisely that standard."
Lish, Gordon. Peru. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986 first edition.
Back dust jacket.
"In Peru, our fascination springs from the terror of compulsive memory and from the novelist's struggle to turn it into art. It is a struggle that Gordon Lish wins brilliantly. This is a novel of mounting power—hypnotic, entrapping, masterfully designed."
Lish, Gordon. Peru. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2013 reprint edition.
Back cover.
Uses first two sentences from the above first edition.
Lish, Gordon. Zimzum. New York: Pantheon, 1993. Back
cover.
"Gordon Lish, famous for all the wrong reasons, has
written some of the most fascinating American fiction of the last
10 years."
Lish, Gordon. Collected Fictions. New York: OR Books, 2010. Back
cover.
Uses same DeLillo quote as found on Zimzum.
Malan, Rian. My Traitor's Heart. New York: Atlantic
Monthly Press, 1990 & London: Vintage, 1991.
"A book
so unexpected, so filled with the passion of complex experience,
that the reader will turn the page into a South Africa seen new
and whole - totally outside TV news and sober editorial analysis.
A great swirling devil of a book and it is equal in every way
to its vast subject -- the black and white country of the heart."
The Vintage edition uses only the last sentence.
Matthiessen, Peter. On the River Styx. New York: Vintage.
Back cover.
"These compelling tales of elemental fear and
ever-pressing silence culminate in the great, dark and desperate
final story, a masterful piece of work by one of our best writers."
---. Killing Mister Watson. New York: Random House,
1990. Rpt. in paperback by Vintage.
Also uses the "one of
our best writers" phrase.
---. Shadow Country. New York: Modern Library,
2008. Back cover.
"Peter Matthiessen has done great things with the Watson trilogy. It's the story of our continent, both land and people, and his writing does every justice to the blood fury of his themes."
Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient. Back dust jacket.
"In this masterful novel, Michael Ondaatje weaves a beautiful
and light-handed prose through the mingled histories of people
caught up in love and war. A rich and compelling work of fiction."
Powe, B.W. Outage: A Journey into Electric City. Ecco
Press, 1995, back dust jacket.
"This is invigorating work."
Rushdie, Salman. The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Holt,
1999. Back cover.
"Salman Rushdie's new novel is a wonderful
stoytelling beast that feeds on pop culture, misfit history and
the persistence of myth. Rushdie's epic range has never been more
impressive. Here is a great novelist operating as a master of
metamorphosis--transforming life, art and language in the subterranean
maze of his imagination."
Sorrentino, Gilbert. Little Casino. Minneapolis: Coffee
House Press, 2002.
"For decades, Gilbert Sorrentino has remained
a unique figure in our literature. He reminds us that fiction
lives because artists make it. He is an artist who works against
the age, the tide, the timid wish to be popular. Again, in Little
Casino, he brings modernist rigor to the sad, messy, comical past.
This novel is a liturgy of pop songs, card games, women's underwear
and all the mistakes we've ever made. It is also a rich fiction
in the act of twisted self-reflection. To the novel - everyone's
novel - Sorrentino brings honor, tradition and relentless passion."
Sorrentino, Gilbert. The Abyss of Human Illusion. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2010. Back cover.
Reuses line from above: "To the novel - everyone's novel - Sorrentino brings honor, tradition and relentless passion."
Spiotta, Dana. Lightning Field. New York: Scribner,
2001.
"Los Angeles is the air we all breathe in this wonderfully
funny, accomplished, and far-reaching first novel about our consumer
colossus and the human products it makes and shapes."
Toibin, Colm. The South. Penguin, 1992. The cover.
"A
strong and moving work of fiction about the hard truths of changing
one's life. A grand achievement."
---. The Heather Blazing. New York: Penguin, 1994. Back
cover.
About Toibin: he "never says too much and never lets
us grow too comfortable."
Williams, Joy. The Quick and the Dead. New York: Knopf,
2000. Back dust jacket.
"Joy Williams has produced a hard,
sharp, comic novel about the off-kilter genius of adolescence
- a work of maverick insight and rash and beautiful bursts of
language."
Williams, Joy. Concerning the Future of Souls. Portland: Tin House,
2024. Back cover. (Also note this book is dedicated "To DD")
"An essential American voice, giving us a new way to hear the living language of our time, the off-notes, the devious humor—as the strange, fierce, vigorous undercurrent we sometimes mistake for ordinary."
Wright, Stephen. Going Native.
"Stephen Wright
is a demon novelist who has written an ambitious American tale
of the highway, the motel and the floating identity. Going Native
is strange, dark and funny, a slasher classic with high-intensity
heat and light." Paperback version: Delta Books, 1995. Inside
pages. "STRANGE, DARK AND FUNNY, A SLASHER CLASSIC."
---. Meditations in Green. Bantam Books, 1984 mass market edition. Inside
pages.
"Precisely that brutal hallucination we desperately wanted to end."
---. Meditations in Green. Delta Books, 1996. Inside
pages.
"The world's first self-conscious war becomes a rounded
and powerful Zen-American novel. Stephen Wright's soldiers are
funny, sardonic, and demented, and his Vietnam War is precisely
that brutal hallucination we desperately wanted to end. This is
a writer of wonderfully strong and deep-reaching talents."
---. M31: A Family Romance. Delta Books, 1996.
Reprints
the last sentence from the long Meditations in Green blurb.