DeLillo Criticism - Essays

Here is an always incomplete list (though not a bad start) of journal articles dealing with DeLillo's work. This includes some essays published in books. Recent additions (added since June 1999) to the list are marked with an asterisk in front. Entries ending with an asterisk I have verified.

• Aldridge, John. Essay on Players. In The American Novel and the Way We Live Now (Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 53-59.
• Applen, J.D. "Examining the Discourse of the University: The Use of Don DeLillo's White Noise in the Composition Classroom." In Miss Grundy Doesn't Teach Here Anymore: How Popular Culture Has Changed the Composition Studies Classroom Ed. Diane Penrod (Portsmouth: Heineman-Boynton/Cook, 1997), pp. 136-46.*
• Applen, J.D. "Understanding the Text of America from the Sixties to the Nineties." North Carolina English Teacher. Wilmington, NC. Summer, 1997. pp. 2-9.*
• Atlas, James. "Fashionable Despair." Partisan Review, Summer, 1979 (V46/#3), pp. 482-85. A review of Players.*
• Bawer, Bruce. "Don DeLillo's America." New Criterion, April 1985, pp. 34-42. A negative overview of DeLillo's work through White Noise. As Keesey puts it, "Tends to identify DeLillo with his characters and blame him for their faults." Reprinted in a book titled Diminishing Fictions.*
• Begley, Adam. Southwest Review, 1997 (V82/#4), pp. 478-505.
• Bell, Pearl K. "DeLillo's World." Partisan Review, Winter 1992 (V59/#1), pp. 138-46. A negative review of DeLillo's novels.*
• Berman, Neil. "End Zone: Play at the Brink." In Playful Fictions and Fictional Players: Game, Sport, and Survival in Contemporary American Fiction (1981), pp. 47-71.
• Bizzini, Silvia Caporale. "Can the intellectual still speak? The example of Don DeLillo's Mao II." Critical Quarterly, Summer, 1995 (V37/#2), pp. 104-17.*
• *Blom, Mattias. "Unmaking Identities: Going West in DeLillo's Americana." In Stories of Old: The imagined West and the Crisis of Historical Symbology in the 1970s (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University, 1999), pp. 107-135.*
• Bonca, Cornel. "Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Natural Language of the Species." College Literature, June, 1996 (V23/#2), pp. 25-44.*
• Brent, Jonathan. "The Unimaginable Space of Danilo Kis and Don DeLillo." Review of Contemporary Fiction, Spring 1994 (V14/#1), p. 180.
• Bryant, Paula. "Discussing the Untellable: Don DeLillo's The Names." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, Fall 1987 (V29/#1), pp. 16-29.*
• Bryant, Paula. "Extending the Fabulative Continuum: DeLillo, Mooney and Federman." Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy, 1989 (#30), pp. 156-165.
• Bryson, Norman. "City of Dis: The Fiction of Don DeLillo." Granta, #2, 1980, pp. 145-57.*
• Burke, William. "Football, Literature, Culture." Southwest Review, Autumn 1975, pp. 391-398.*
• Cain, William E. "Making Meaningful Worlds: Self and History in Libra." Michigan Quarterly Review, Spring 1990, (V29), pp. 275-87.
• Carmichael, Thomas. "Buffalo/Baltimore, Athens/Dallas: John Barth, Don DeLillo and the Cities of Postmodernism." Canadian Review of American Studies, Fall 1991 (#22), pp. 241-49.
• Carmichael, Thomas. "Lee Harvey Oswald and the Postmodern Subject: History and Intertextuality in Don DeLillo's Libra, The Names and Mao II." Contemporary Literature, Summer 1993 (V34/#2), pp. 204-218.*
• Caton, Lou F. English Language Notes, Sept. 1997 (V35/#1), pp. 38-48.
• Conroy, Mark. "From Tombstone to Tabloid: Authority Figured in White Noise." Critique, Winter 1994 (V35/#2), p. 97-145.
• Cowart, David. "For Whom Bell Tolls: Don DeLillo's Americana." Contemporary Literature, Winter, 1996 (V37/#4), pp. 602-19.
• Crow, Dallas. "Amazons, Don DeLillo's Pseudonymous Novel." Notes on Contemporary Literature, November, 1998 (V28/#5), pp. 2-4.*
• Duvall, John N. "The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo's White Noise" Arizona Quarterly, Autumn 1994 (V50/#3), pp. 127-153.* Reprinted in the critical edition of White Noise.
• Duvall, John N. "Baseball as Aesthetic Ideology: Cold War History, Race, and DeLillo's 'Pafko at the Wall'." Modern Fiction Studies, Summer 1995 (V41/#2), pp. 285-313.*
• Edmundson, Mark. "Not Flat, Not Round, Not There: Don DeLillo's Novel Characters." Yale Review, April, 1995 (V83/#2), pp. 107-124.*
• Frow, John. Essay on Running Dog. In Marxism and Literary History (Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 139-47.
• Gadarphe, Fred L. Gadarphe. An essay "Don DeLillo's American Masquerade: Italianita in a Minor Key." In his book, Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative (Duke University Press, Durham and London, 1996).
• Gatenby, Bruce. "A Disturbance of Memory: Language, Terror and Intimacy in Don DeLillo's The Names." Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos (Sevilla, Espana), Spring 1996.
• Hantke, Steffen. "God save us from bourgeois adventure: the Figure of the Terrorist in Contemporary American Conspiracy Fiction." Studies in the Novel, Summer 1996 (V28/#2), pp. 219-43.
• Harris, Paul A. "Epistemocritique: A Synthethic Matrix." SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism, 1993 (#71/72), pp. 185-203. This is a heavy-duty lit crit essay dealing with The Names.*
• Hayles, N. Katherine. "Postmodern Parataxis: Embodied Texts, Weightless Information." American Literary History, Fall, 1990 (V2/#3). Concerns White Noise and Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.*
• Hendrix, Howard V. "Memories of the Sun, Perceptions of Eclipse." New York Review of Science Fiction, 1992 (#46), p. 13-15.
• Higginbotham, J.K. "The 'Queer' in Don DeLillo's End Zone." Notes on Contemporary Literature, 1989 (#19), p. 5-7.
• Howard, Gerald. "Slouching Towards Grubnet: The Author in the Age of Publicity." Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1996 (V16/#1), pp. 44-53. This essay touches upon Mao II.*
• Hughes, Simon. "Don DeLillo: Mao II and the Writer as Actor." Scripsi, 1991 (V7/#2).
• Isaacs, Neil D. "Out of the End Zone: Sports in the rest of DeLillo." Arete, 1985 (#3), pp. 85-95.
• Jameson, Frederic. review of The Names. The Minnesota Review, Spring, 1984, pp. 116-122.*
• Johnson, Diane. "Terrorists as Moralists: Don DeLillo." In Terrorists and Novelists (1982), pp. 105-10.*
• Johnson, Stuart. "Extraphilosophical Instigations in Don DeLillo's Running Dog." Contemporary Literature, Spring, 1985 (V26/#1), pp. 74-90.*
• Johnston, John. "Generic Difficulties in the Novels of Don DeLillo." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, Summer 1989 (V30), pp. 261-75. Keesey incorrectly notes this as "Generic Discontinuities...".*
• Johnston, John. "Post-Cinematic Fiction: Film in the Novels of Pynchon, McElroy and DeLillo." New Orleans Review, 1990, (V17/#2), pp. 90-97.*
• Johnston, John. "Representation and Multiplicity in Four Postmodern American Novels." In Critical Essays on American Postmodernism ed. Stanley Trachtenberg (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1995), pp. 169-181.
• Johnston, John. "Superlinear Fiction or Historical Diagram? Don DeLillo's Libra." Modern Fiction Studies, Summer 1994 (V40/#2), p. 319.*
• Keesey, Douglas. "The Ideology of Detection in Pynchon and DeLillo." Pynchon Notes, 1993 #32-33.
• King, Noel. "Reading White Noise: floating remarks." Critical Quarterly, 1991, (V33/#3), pp. 66-83.*
• Kucich, John. "Postmodern Politics: Don DeLillo and the Plight of the White Male Writer." Michigan Quarterly Review, Spring, 1988 (V27/#2), pp. 328-41.*
• Maltby, Paul. "The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo." Contemporary Literature, Summer, 1996 (V37/#2), pp. 258-77.*
• McClure, John. "Systems and Secrets: Don DeLillo's Postmodern Thrillers." In Late Imperial Romance (Verso, 1994), pp. 118-151.*
• Messmer, Michael. "Thinking it Through Completely: The Interpretation of Nuclear Culture." Centennial Review, Fall 1988 (V32/#4), pp. 397-413.*
• Michael, Magali Cornier. "The Political Paradox within Don DeLillo's Libra." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Spring 1994 (V35/#3), pp. 146-56.
• Morris, Matthew J. "Murdering Words: Language in Action in Don DeLillo's The Names." Contemporary Literature, Spring 1989 (V30/#1), pp. 113-127.*
• Mott, Christopher M. "Libra and the Subject of History." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Spring 1994 (V35/#3), pp. 131-45.
• Mottram, Eric. "The Real Needs of Man: Don DeLillo's Novels." In The New American Writing: Essays on American Literature Since 1970 ed. Graham Clarke (St. Martins, 1990), pp. 51-98.*
• Mullen, Bill. "No There There: Cultural Criticism as Lost Object in Don DeLillo's Players and Running Dog." In Powerless Fictions? Ethics, Cultural Critique, and American Fiction in the Age of Postmodernism ed. Ricardo Miguel Alfoson (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 113-39.
• Nadeau, Robert. Chapter on DeLillo. In Readings from the New Book on Nature (University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), pp. 161-81.*
• O'Donnell, Patrick. "Obvious Paranoia: The Politics of Don DeLillo's Running Dog." Centennial Review, Winter, 1990 (V34/#1), pp. 56-72.*
• O'Donnell, Patrick. "Engendering Paranoia in Contemporary Narrative." Boundary 2: An International Journal on Literature and Culture, 1992 (#19), pp. 181-204.
• Oriard, Michael. "Don DeLillo's Search for Walden Pond." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, 1978 (V20/#1), pp. 5-24. An early essay focusing on the first four novels, End Zone especially.*
• Oriard, Michael. "Don DeLillo (1936- )." In Postmodern Fiction: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide, ed. Larry McCaffery (Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 323-26.*
• Osteen, Mark. "Against the End: Asceticism and Apocalypse in Don DeLillo's End Zone." Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 1990 (V26/#1), pp. 143-63.*
• Osteen, Mark. "'A Moral Form to Mortal Commerce': The Economies of Great Jones Street." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction Spring 1994 (V35/#3), pp. 157-72.*
• Osteen, Mark. "Children of Godard and Coca-Cola: Cinema and Consumerism in Don DeLillo's Early Fiction." Contemporary Literature, Fall, 1996 (V37/#3), pp. 439-70.*
• Parks, John G. "The Noise of Magic Kingdoms: Reflections in Theodicy in Two Recent American Novels." Cithara: Essays in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, 1990 (#29), pp. 55-61.
• Pastore, Judith Laurence. "Marriage American Style: Don DeLillo's Domestic Satire." Voices in Italian Americana, 1990 (#1), pp. 1-19.
• Pastore, Judith Laurence. "Palomar and Gladney: Calvino and DeLillo Play with the Dialectics of Subject/Object Relationships." Italian Culture, 1991 (#9), pp. 331-42.*
• Pastore, Judith Laurence. "Pirandello's Influence on American Writers: Don DeLillo's The Day Room." Italian Culture, 1990 (#8), pp. 431-47.*
• Peyser, Thomas. "Globalization in America: the Case of Don DeLillo's White Noise." Clio, 1996 (V25/#3), pp. 255-71.
• Reeve, N. H. and Kerridge, Richard. "Toxic Events: Postmodernism and DeLillo's White Noise." Cambridge Quarterly, 1994 (V23/#4), pp. 303-23.*
• Saltzman, Arthur M. "The Figure in the Static: White Noise." Modern Fiction Studies, Winter 1994 (V40/#4), p. 807.
• Saltzman, Arthur M. Chapter 5 entitled "Fluent Mundos: Ratner's Star and Plus." In The Novel in the Balance, (South Carolina, 1993) pp. 83-102.
• Scanlan, Margaret. "The Writer Among Terrorists: Don DeLillo's Mao II and the Rushdie Affair." Modern Fiction Studies, Summer 1994 (V40/#2), pp. 229-252.*
• Schaub, Thomas. "Don DeLillo's Systems: 'What is Now Natural'." Contemporary Literature, Spring, 1989 (V30/#1), pp. 128-32. A review of LeClair's In the Loop.*
• Simmons, Philip E. Chapter entitled "Don DeLillo's Invisible Histories." In Deep Surfaces: Mass Culture & History in Postmodern American Fiction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997).
• Storoff, Gary. "The Failure of Games in Don DeLillo's End Zone." In American Sport Culture: The Humanistic Dimensions, ed. Wiley Lee Umphlett (Bucknell University Press, 1985), pp. 235-45.
• Tabbi, Joseph. Chapter entitled "From the Sublime to the Beautiful to the Political: Don DeLillo at Midcareer" in Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk (Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 169-207.*
• Taylor, Anya. "Words, War, and Meditation in Don DeLillo's End Zone." International Fiction Review, January, 1977 (V4/#1), pp. 68-70.*
• Thornton, Z. Bart. "Linguistic Disenchantment and Architectural Solace in DeLillo and Artaud." Mosaic, March 1997 (V30/#1), p. 97-112.
• Wacker, Norman. "Mass Culture/Mass Novel: The Representational Politics of Don DeLillo's Libra." Works and Days Spring 1990, #8, pp. 67-87.*
• Wallace, David Foster. "E. Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction." In A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again, Little, Brown, 1997.*
• White, Patti. Chapter entitled "Toxic Textual Events." In Gatsby's Party: The System and the List in Contemporary Narrative (W. Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1992).
• Wilcox, Leonard. "Baudrillard, DeLillo's White Noise, and the End of Heroic Narrative." Contemporary Literature, Fall 1991 (V32/#3), pp. 346-65.*
• Wilson, Robert F., Jr. "DeLillo's Libra: Fiction and Pseudo-History?" Contemporary Literature, 1989 (#19), pp. 8-9.
• Young, James Dean. "A Don DeLillo Checklist." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, 1978 (V20/#1), pp. 25-26. An early DeLillo bibliography.*
• Zinman, Toby Silverman. "Gone Fission: The Holocaustic Wit of Don DeLillo." Modern Drama, March, 1991 (V34/#1), pp. 74-87. The first critical work I have seen that deals with DeLillo's plays.*