Bloom's Modern Critical Views - Don Delillo (2003) (191p) [Inua].pdf

Don Delillo (Bloom's Modern Critical Views) Hardcover – December, 2002
by Harold Bloom (Editor), Aaron Tilman (Editor)

Series: Bloom's Modern Critical Views
Hardcover: 182 pages
Publisher: Chelsea House Pub (L) (December 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0791070387
ISBN-13: 978-0791070383

Essays on such works as Mao II and White Noise depict writer Don DeLillo's vision of American culture, as well as his dedication to modern literature.

Editor’s Note:
My Introduction centers upon the opening and closing sections of Underworld, and is a response to the brilliant “afterthoughts,” on that novel, of the late Tony Tanner, reprinted as the penultimate essay in this volume.
Michael Oriard, in an overview of DeLillo’s first five novels, commends them for asking the right questions, while Robert Nadeau finds in DeLillo the metaphysics of the New Physics.
DeLillo’s vision of America is interpreted by Bruce Bawer as being excessively reductive, after which Greg Tate considers Libra, particularly praising the novelist’s conception of Oswald’s mother.
White Noise is regarded by Gregory Salyer as an instance, together with the novels of Leslie Silko, of an original religious stance towards our culture. Visionary experience in DeLillo is also the subject of Paul Maltby, who emphasizes the survival of the Romantic epiphany.
David Cowart returns us to DeLillo’s first novel, Americana, and centers upon the theme of our Oedipal violation of the land, while Christian Moraru broods on issues of authorship and readership throughout DeLillo.
The Romantic epiphanies of White Noise are judged by Lou F. Caton to defy Post-Modernist critiques of meaning, after which Dana Phillips also sees that novel as a defense of “nature” against our still-current cultural commissars.
In the major essay reprinted in this book, the distinguished critic Tony Tanner, an admirer of DeLillo’s work, indicates what he takes to be some of the weaknesses of Underworld.
Jeoffrey S. Bull, in the final essay, compares Mao II and Robert Stone’s A Flag for Sunrise, finding in each the difficulty of writing contemporary political fiction.