A novel by Don DeLillo, 1978
Published by Knopf, 1978, 246 pages. Jacket design by Lidia
Ferrara, painting by Karl Korab.
British first edition published by Gollancz, 1978.
Paperbacks issued by Vintage starting in 1979.
Running Dog editions.
Dedication: "to Eydie and Phil"
What it's about:
The search for the secret Hitler pornographic film.
Here's the original dust jacket
copy.
First line:
"You won't find ordinary people here."
What it's really about:
From the DeCurtis interview: "What I was really getting at
in Running Dog was a sense of the terrible acquisitiveness
in which we live, coupled with a final indifference to the object.
After all the mad attempts to acquire the thing, everyone suddenly
decides that, well, maybe we really don't care about this so much
anyway. This was something I felt characterized our lives at the
time the book was written, in the mid to late seventies. I think
this was part of American consciousness then."
Check out the Running Dog Media Watch for contemporary reviews of the novel.
Fun Libra foreshadowing: One character is reported to spend most of her time at home. "She curls up with the Warren Report. She's been reading the Warren Report for eight or nine years. Nine years, I make it. The full set. Twenty-six volumes."