Don DeLillo

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Don DeLillo (born November 20 1936) is an American author best known for his novels, which paint detailed portraits of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He currently lives in New York City.

Contents

1 Biography
2 Works

2.1 Fiction
2.2 Plays
2.3 Screenplays

3 External links

Biography

DeLillo was born in the Bronx in New York City in a family of Italian immigrants and attended Fordham University, from which he received a bachelor's degree in 1958. His family name was apparently partially anglicized, as the correct Italian spelling of it would be "De Lillo." There are no specific elements in his fiction that connect to Italian culture, and unlike other Italian-American authors such as Mario Puzo or John Fante, he does not focus to any extended degree on his Italian origins (though some such material appears in his work Underworld).

As a teenager, DeLillo wasn't interested in writing until taking a summer job as a parking attendant, when spending hours waiting and watching over vehicles led to a reading habit.

His novels, while lauded by critics, did not achieve noticeable success until the publication of White Noise in 1985. White Noise is significant for its postmodern themes of rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and re-integration of the family, and the promise of rebirth through violence, some of which were further developed in Delillo's later novels.

DeLillo is widely considered by modern critics to be one of the central figures of literary postmodernism. Many younger English-language authors such as Bret Easton Ellis, Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace cite DeLillo as an influence.

Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, and Cormac McCarthy. DeLillo was awarded the 1999 Jerusalem Prize. His papers were acquired in 2004 by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin [link].

Underworld was the runner-up on the New York Times' best work of American fiction of the last 25 years, announced in May of 2006. White Noise and Libra also were recognized.

Don DeLillo was attacked by B. R. Myers in A Reader's Manifesto.

Works

Fiction

Americana (1971)
End Zone (1972)
Great Jones Street (1973)
Ratner's Star (1976)
Players (1977)
Running Dog (1978)
Amazons (1980) (under pseudonym "Cleo Birdwell")
The Names (1982)
White Noise (1985) (see also Dylar)
Libra (1988)
Mao II (1991)
Underworld (1997)
Pafko at the Wall (2001)
The Body Artist (2001)
Cosmopolis (2003)

Plays

The Day Room (first production 1986)
Valparaiso (first production 1999)
Love-Lies-Bleeding (first production 2006)

The plays have been produced by the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and other venues. DeLillo has also published a number of essays and short stories.

Love-Lies-Bleeding was first heard as a staged reading directed by the author at Boise Contemporary Theater in Boise, Idaho in May 2005. The World Premiere Production was presented at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois in June 2006

Screenplays

Game 6 (2005)

Game 6, the story of a playwright (played by Michael Keaton) and his obsession with the Boston Red Sox and the 1986 World Series was written in the early 90's, but wasn't produced until 2005, ironically one year after the Red Sox won their first World Series title in 86 years. To date, it is DeLillo's only work for film.

External links

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