Don DeLillo Should Win the Nobel Prize

In Episode 26: Libra (2), DDSWTNP continue our deep dive into DeLillo’s story of Oswald and CIA plotters, taking on the distinctions between lone-gunman and systems theories, the unique role of Bobby Dupard in Oswald’s arc, and all this novel has to teach us about “diminishing existence” and the taste for mediated violence as it’s grown since the watershed moment of 1963. Major segments here focus on the remarkable, Mephistophelean voice of David Ferrie, the work done by secret CIA historian Nicholas Branch, and DeLillo’s prefatory essay “Assassination Aura,” which brings Libra’s enduring mystery into the twenty-first century through the promises and failures of technology embodied by “Dictabelt No. 10.” An episode best listened to, of course, after Episode 25: Libra (1)! Stay tuned next week for the release of our concluding episode on Libra.

What does the déjà vu allegedly caused by the Airborne Toxic Event have to do with a disease called Jumping Frenchman? How is Jack Gladney’s “day of the station wagons” connected to the first female NHL player’s longing for quaint hometown holidays? In Episode 24, DDSWTNP continue our White Noise residency by showing listeners all the hidden connections between DeLillo’s most famous novel and his most obscure: Cleo Birdwell’s Amazons, his pseudonymous 1980 collaboration with Sue Buck, written as a kind of lark but we think absolutely integral to the satiric vision of White Noise five years later. Our discussion suggests all the ways in which DeLillo seems to have used Amazons as a “laboratory” of sorts, developing Cleo’s thoughts on ad shoots, celebrity athletes, Americana, and an ex-player in a deathlike suspension into the richer, more in-depth meditations on similar topics in White Noise. Naturally we give major attention to Murray Jay Siskind, a sportswriter in Amazons who’s become an Elvis scholar in White Noise, expressing above all our gratitude that DeLillo came back to him and transformed him, reshaping an already very funny snowmobile obsessive into a Mephistophelean wit and one of the darkest, most memorable characters in the corpus. Those who haven’t gotten to read Amazons but know other DeLillo will get a ton out of this episode, for we end up drawing surprising connections not just to White Noise but Americana, End Zone, Great Jones Street, Underworld, Zero K, and others. Turns out this prank of a novel in 1980 paid many dividends for DeLillo. Tune in to hear some fun thoughts as well about a prank of our own: an April Fool’s post about a brand-new DeLillo novel we put on social media a few weeks ago.

We’ve arrived at the big one, the breakthrough book of 1985 – White Noise. In Episodes 21 and 22, DDSWTNP extend our White Noise “residency” and turn in-depth attention to DeLillo’s most popular piece of fiction in another double episode. Episode 21: White Noise (1) takes an expansive view of the novel’s narrative and goes into depth on (among many other subjects) the iconic opening chapter’s commentary on America and Americana, the meaning of Mylex suits, Jack’s relationships with Heinrich and Orest Mercator, and what it means to be a rat, a snake, a fascist, and a scholar of Hitler in this book’s universe. Episode 22: White Noise (2) interprets passages mainly from the book’s second half, including scenes featuring the dark humor of Vernon Dickey and of SIMUVAC, the meaning of DeLillo’s desired title “Panasonic,” Jack’s shooting of Willie Mink (and what it owes to Nabokov), a riveting fire and a fascinating trash compactor cube, and the Dostoevskyan interrogation of belief by Sister Hermann Marie. Every minute features original ideas on the enduring meanings of White Noise in so many political, social, technological, and moral dimensions – what it teaches us about the roots and implications of our many epistemological crises, how it does all this in writing that somehow manages to be self-conscious, philosophical, hilarious, and warm all at once.

Looking to start reading Don DeLillo, or already a fan and looking for ways to persuade your friends, relatives, or students to finally access the wonders of White Noise? In Episode Twenty, DDSWTNP offer an introduction to White Noise for the first-time reader of DeLillo, focusing on elements of plot, action, character, humor, and voice that often present stumbling blocks to initiates. We help listeners navigate DeLillo’s most popular novel, the “gateway drug” to the joys and challenges that a lifetime of reading his corpus holds in store. We also answer key questions like how to regard Hitler Studies and whether you need to know anything about “postmodernism,” philosophy, or how a media theorist might read the Most Photographed Barn in America before entering DeLillo’s world (spoiler: no!). Longtime listeners to the pod will find here, we hope, an episode to send along to anyone they’ve given a copy of White Noise for Christmas or ever told, “Hey, you should read Don DeLillo.” The first of several episodes to come from us on White Noise as the novel turns 40, this podcast will be followed in 2025 by our deep dives into the novel itself, its massive body of criticism, and the recent film adaptation – so stay tuned, and may you be immensely pleased.

In Episode Eighteen, DDSWTNP wish our author a happy 88th birthday and talk about the international life he led between the mid-1970s and early 1980s. We follow DeLillo abroad, covering his year in Canada (1975) and his much-discussed time living in Athens (1978-1982), tracing influences of these experiences on portrayals of national identity and language in The Names especially but other works too. Central to understanding this period is the powerful change in method that DeLillo made at his manual typewriter that inspired slower, more “serious” work. For those who already know the biography pretty well we also have in this episode some surprising details garnered from his letters in these years to editor and friend Gordon Lish, the remarkable story of DeLillo’s response to a Utah banning of Americana in 1979, and connections between the 1981 Athens earthquakes DeLillo lived through and the 1988 short story “The Ivory Acrobat.” We end by considering the “toxic spill” of the news that greeted DeLillo on his return to America in 1982 and energized the writing of White Noise, and we announce too some upcoming episodes that will close out 2024! As is often true, we get significant help in this episode from interview excerpts and more collected at Don DeLillo’s America: http://perival.com/delillo/delillo.html

In Episode Sixteen: “DeLillo’s Sentences,” DDSWTNP take a brief break from analyzing full novels to do some very close reading of single sentences from across DeLillo’s career. Style and craft, sound and rhythm, and what makes DeLillo (as one critic puts it) a poet writing prose—these are subjects we consider as we look closely at the lines noted below and try to figure out what DeLillo means when he says in 1997, “At some point you begin to write sentences and paragraphs that don’t sound like other writers’.” This episode is a deep dive into DeLillo’s language but also a pretty good introduction for those just starting to read him. #donutmaker #thehemingwayand DeLillo lines analyzed in this episode: “Much of the appeal of sport derives from its dependence on elegant gibberish. And of course it remains the author’s permanent duty to unbox the lexicon for all eyes to see—a cryptic ticking mechanism in search of a revolution.” End Zone (113) “New York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague.” Great Jones Street (3) “Around the great stadium the tenement barrens stretch, miles of delirium, men sitting in tipped-back chairs against the walls of hollow buildings, sofas burning in the lots, and there is a sense these chanting thousands have, wincing in the sun, that the future is pressing in, collapsing toward them, that they are everywhere surrounded by signs of the fated landscape and human struggle of the Last Days, and here in the middle of their columned body, lank-haired and up-close, stands Karen Janney, holding a cluster of starry jasmine and thinking of the bloodstorm to come.” Mao II (7) “The last sentence was, ‘In future years, of course, men and women, in cubicles, wearing headphones, will be listening to secret tapes of the administration’s crimes while others study electronic records on computer screens and still others look at salvaged videotapes of caged men being subjected to severe physical pain and finally others, still others, behind closed doors, ask pointed questions of flesh-and-blood individuals.” Point Omega (33)

In Episode Fourteen, DDSWTNP turn our attention for the first time to DeLillo’s drama – and to a largely unknown work by DeLillo as playwright, a 1966 radio play and disturbing take on U.S. race relations titled Mother. We cover the circumstances of the play’s original broadcasts, its re-emergence in an internet archive recording more than 50 years later, and the strange way in which this story’s armchair progressives and Billie Holiday fans, Ralph and Sally, end up making a fetishizing travesty of civil rights and racial integration in the play’s brief 27 minutes. Topics include the importance of radio to Mother’s themes of media occlusion, moral numbness, and erasure; what DeLillo means by Ralph’s “white malady” of transparency and how it reworks images from another Ralph’s Invisible Man; and what this play has to do with contemporaneous issues like interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia. We talk extensively as well about how Mother presages parts of the early novels, from jazz love in Americana to Taft in End Zone and Azarian in Great Jones Street. Before (and after) listening to our analysis, take in this troubling 27-minute play at https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.01 Our raffle for a hardcover Amazons has been extended to August 1 – donate and enter to win at https://buymeacoffee.com/delillopodcast

In Episode Twelve, DDSWTNP interview Curt Gardner, creator and keeper of “Don DeLillo’s America,” a prolific and comprehensive website that for nearly 30 years has been the go-to spot for information about DeLillo, from reviews, appearances, and novel publication histories to news of film adaptations and play performances. We cover Curt’s stories of first discovering DeLillo in 1981, what he learned about the writing of Amazons at the Harry Ransom Center, and the letters he’s exchanged with the man himself as he’s built his site. We had a really fun time trading stories, insights, and interpretive connections with Curt. After listening to this in-depth interview, check out the riches of “Don DeLillo’s America” at http://www.perival.com/delillo/delillo.html Support our work: https://buymeacoffee.com/delillopodcast