Any news on delillo new works?? Any new novels and projects?

I just re- fell in love with DeLillo after recently reading Mao II. What a gem. I've now read all of his "middle" novels, from The Names through Underworld. My ranking would be something like:

1. Mao II/Libra
2. White Noise/Underworld
3. The Names, which I place pretty far below the rest. Just couldn't engage with it as much.

I'm wondering if, from this point, you all might push me in the direction of his earlier work or his later work? I do understand that the general trajectory of his work is to get leaner, more concise and distilled. Cosmopolis or Zero K sound interesting to me, but on the other hand am I really missing out if I don't read End Zone or Running Dog?

I’ve read 3/4s of DeLillo's novels, and can comfortably say he’s my favorite writer. His voice is the voice I hear when I read anything— not his approach/indifference to plot, or to literature as a field, but the voice itself, that’s the voice and perspective I always hear, for better or for worse.

A few things about the book that really struck me:

1. The experience of being in the confines of the Convergence echoes the intended effects of the place, in strange and disturbing ways. I felt lodged in a manufactured infinity that felt the need to remind you why you were there, and how just being there meant you could never truly leave. Kafka would have liked this, these portions definitely owe a debt to his constructions and traps.

2. I don’t know how Delillo managed to predict that a Ukrainian orphan drawn back to the conflicts of his origin would have such lasting resonance, to the point where the character comprises the emotional center of the book (for me, anyway). By the end, the links between our narrator and the overgrown, overthinking 14 year old he encounters are unmistakable. Definitely a variant on Heinrich from White Noise, to be sure, but Stak becomes this beacon of wild purpose, however illogical, that conflicts with the white-flag acceptance of collapse that the Convergence begs you to see and bow before.

3. The fragmented vignettes of the final chapter are stunning. I’ll admit I was shy to warm to the “return to normal life” sequence that followed the book’s Part 1, but I thought Delillo brought things home really nicely, abstractly but in a way that managed to address multiple emotional and intellectual loose ends.

4. The respect and prescience afforded to Madeline, Artis, Emma, and the anonymous woman standing on the street without a sign grant a power to women and mothers as preservers of humanity and experience, not just mere nurturers to the boys and men who cause the wars, play out their games, and document the chaos that comes.

5. The prose thoughout the whole book is exceptional, so fully DeLillo, but also surprising at times in the best ways.

My first Delilo novel was White Noise in Highschool, I remembered liking it so I re read and it was honestly so relatable and funny it left a profound impact on me. When I saw that Delilo wrote a novel about Lee Harvey Oswald I was sold immediately. It took me a while to finish it and I almost put it down at one point because I was having trouble following all the characters (I have gerbil brain) but I couldnt be happier that I finished it. It's been a few months since then and I still have it on my mind.

The moment this book touched me was when Lee hits his wife. I was so shocked and dissapointed in Lee, and it kind of took me aback because it made me consider my relationship with the character. Even "knowing" how the book is going to end I couldnt believe he would do something so nasty, despite the fact he is one of the most infamous men in American history. I just think it's crazy how Delilo is able to make this character you can have so much empathy for out of someone you think you already have figured out.

So often people that get caught up in the narrative of the world become just that, a narrative piece, no longer a human being and devoid of character. We lose so much of our understanding of humanity and the events that take place when this happens. I'm grateful that this book illuminated that thought for me, and when the attempt on Trumps life happened pretty soon after I had finished reading Libra I was able to come at it with the perspective that the world is insane and it forces people to do insane things no matter what their reasons or beliefs were - not that we'll ever really know why.

On top of creating great stories that are fun to read, I love that everytime I've finished a Delilo book I'm able to walk away with a deeper understanding of myself and eachother. That's two in the bag for me and I'm trying to decide which Delilo book I'll read next if anyone has two cents about that, or something else to add about the amazing character that is Lee Oswald :)

I'm curious, how do people read into the final excerpt from the chapter "4 October"?

Win's daughter takes out a pair of Indian figurines that were gifted to her and she keeps hidden.

The chapter closes with: "The Little Figures were not toys. She never played with them. The whole reason for the Figures was to hide them until the time when she might need them. She had to keep them near and safe in case the people who called themselves her mother and father were really somebody else."

My first thought was a metaphor for CIA assets (like Mackey and his team, Alpha 66, etc). The figures somehow representing the clandestine actors and keeping them hidden until Suzanne (the Agency) needs them to fight some imposter out to harm her (JFK easing Cuban tensions)?

This is my first DeLillo read and this section just seemed more detached from the narrative than any other part of the book.

I'm involved in theatre, and so I'm always searching for interesting material. DeLillo as a novelist is well-respected by me, but how good is he as a playwright, seeing how he's got a good dozen of plays to his name?

Just picked up Americana on Kindle and read chapter 1. Anybody else reading this now?

All of the best writers are long dead and then there is Don Delillo.

Start with any novel and read all of them.

Try everything and if you don't enjoy it after a few pages then stop and try another and if you are so turned off that you never read one of his novels again then he wasn't for you and that's ok because this is subjective which also means you can't take advice from people on specific novels to start with.

Hello DeLillo Reddit. I am about to jump in to my first reading of Don DeLillo. I have both White Noise and Libra staring at my from the bookshelf and I’d love to get your opinions on where to begin based off my general taste and what I’ve been reading lately. I am a major fan of Pynchon (esp. GR and against the day) McCarthy(the Passenger, Border trilogy), Nabokov (Ada, Pale Fire) and Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain). I also very much enjoy Knausgaard, Le Carre, Houellebecq, etc. I am just finishing up Suttree and wonder what you think should come next. Thanks in advance!

This was my first DeLillo and I’m blown away, I’ve been a JFK conspiracy nut for since youth but this novelization of those events made me feel like I was watching a Greek tragicomedy unfold.

I’m sitting on a copy of Underworld, but I think I may go through White Noise before that.

https://lit.salon/

Hi, I launched lit.salon on small lit subs like dondelillo exactly a month ago, and the feedback has been fantastic. We now have almost 1000 users, with 200-250 daily active users everyday. And no, the site is not monetized. Thank you so much for the initial feedback and words of encouragement, the site is much much better now. The site is getting better everyday, and I would love to see some more users from dondelillo join the site, since the reception has been especially fantastic in the this sub. I am excited to soon expand to original writing and more features <3.

Now the site has:

• Quotes feature
• Ranked lists
• DM / Groupchats feature
• Custom ordering for lists and shelves
• Custom book covers! (custom book descriptions coming soon)
• Fast! fixed all caching problems
• Better UI/UX overall
• A solid community of interesting users!

I take the feedback from the lit subs very seriously, so please let me know if you have any feedback at all! We also have a (very) active discord where people frequently contribute feature requests and bug reports (and just banter about literature): https://discord.gg/VBrsR76FV3

Got a few delillo books recently (zero k, Underworld and white noise). Am really keen to get into delillo and Underworld seems epic. I read zero k and tbh really didn't like much about it all. The story and concept were good but I found it a bit pretentious and meandering. Is this indicative of his style?

[Possible spoiler]

I have a kindle edition of RS and can’t see the graphic(s?). I’m on chapter 4 or 5. It looks like it’s a table detailing some data. It’s at the section where Billy is considering the transmission. Anyone have a more easily viewable pic of this (or any other) table from the book?

Hey all

Just a quick post to note there have been a few interesting DeLillo themed podcasts lately that are worth checking out.

Don DeLillo Should Win the Nobel Prize is still going through his catalogue. But they have had a few interesting specials lately, including an interview with Curt Gardener (who runs the Don DeLillo's America website), an episode on DeLillo's early and recently rediscovered radio play Mother and an episode on Amazons. So well worth checking out those, as well as the other discusions they have had on his work.

Novelist Spotlight podcast did an episode on DeLillo, and Book Club from Hell also did an episode recently on Point Omega. Book Spider also did a four parter on Underworld, but have not listened to this yet (or this podcast before) so no idea if any good.

Enjoy .

"He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful."

Is DeLillo addressing the reader as "American," or is the sentence better interpreted as "He speaks in your voice which is American" ? Is it perhaps both?

Whatever is going on, it has crushed our technology. Crowdstrike - the word itself seems outdated to me, lost in space. Where is the leap of authority to our secure devices, our encryption capacities, our tweets, trolls and bots. Is everything in the datasphere subject to distortion and theft? And do we simply have to sit here and mourn our fate?

Hi everyone,

just bought those 2 books, never red a Don DeLillo book before

Which one should i start with?

https://www.literary.salon/

Reposting it here because it got a lot of traction in other lit subs! Currently at 500+ registered users. A lot of the users told me I should post the site here.

It's essentially a letterboxd for literature, with emphasis on community and personalization. You can set your profile picture, banner image, and username which becomes your URL. You can also set a spotify track for your shelf. I took huge UI inspirations from Substack, Arena, and letterboxd. You have a bookshelf, reviews, and lists. You can set descriptions for each of them, e.g. link your are.na, reddit, or more. There's also a salon, where you can ask quick questions and comment on other threads. It's like a mini reddit contained within the site. You also have notifications, where you get alerted if a user likes your review, thread, list, etc. I want the users to interact with each other and engage with each other. The reviews are markdown-supported, and fosters long-formats with a rich text editor (gives writing texture IMO) rather than letterboxd one sentence quips that no one finds funny. The API is OpenLibrary, which I found better than Google books.

For example, here's my bookshelf: https://www.literary.salon/shelf/lowiqmarkfisher. It's pretty sparse because I'm so burnt out, but I hope it gets the gist across.

I tried to model the site off of real bookshelves. If you add a book to your shelf, it indicates that you "Want to Read" it. Then, there are easy toggles to say you "Like" the book or "Read" the book. Rather than maintaining 3 separate sections like GR, I tried to mimic how a IRL shelf works.

IMO Goodreads and even storygraph do not foster any sort of community, and most of all, the site itself lacks perspective and a taste level (not that I have good taste, but you guys do). This is one of my favorite book-related communities I've found in my entire life. Truelit, and a few other lit subs that I frequent, should be cherished and fostered. IMO every "goodreads alternative" failed due to the fact that they were never rooted in any real community. No one cares about what actual strangers read or write. You care about what people you think have better taste than you read and write. I am saying this tongue in cheek, but it's true IMO. I really do think we can start something really special in this bleak age of the internet where we can't even set banner images on our intimate online spaces. I also believe the community can set a taste level and a perspective that organically grows from a strong community. Now, when we post on reddit, we could actually look at what you read, reviewed, liked, etc. I hope it complements this sub well.

My future ambition is to make this site allow self-publishing and original writing. That would be so fucking awesome. Or perhaps a marketplace for rare first editions etc etc. Also more personalization. We'll figure it out. Also maybe we could "editors" so they could feature some of their favorite reviews and lists? Mods of the sub, if you have any ideas, please let me know. For now, I made my own "Editor's picks": https://www.literary.salon/lists?tab=editorspick

BTW, I made a discord so you can report bugs, or suggest features. Please don't be shy, I stared at this site so long that I've completely lost touch with reality. I trust your feedback more than my intuition. https://discord.gg/VBrsR76FV3. I will consider myself on-call for the foreseeable future. If something breaks, I will wake up at 3 AM to fix it. Please feel free to ping me!

I’ve not read Underworld cover-to-cover in twenty years, I just dip back in to particular sections now and then.

There’s a line I read, in a section I can’t quite recall, that I need the brains trust here to help me identify. I’ve used all my powers of internet search, AI mediated guidance, and eBook scrolling, and I just can’t find it.

Here’s the setup: the scene in question is a meal, I’m pretty sure, between a man and a woman. I think they’re married, a fairly boring domestic scene. They aren’t major characters from my recollection, they’re on the edges, or beyond, of the major narrative.

One of them might be talking about a hobby they have, or they’ve been indulging in a hobby or interest of some kind, which leads to the line I’m trying to find: from my recollection, it’s something like “hobbies make the time pass”, or “we have interests to help pass our time” or something like that…

Does anybody recall anything along these lines..? Your support will help quell my restless mind that’s been searching for this scene for a long time…

Thanks all.

I was reminded recently, after going through a signiticant Delillo re-read, of the annotated copy of Underworld that Delillo marked up to be sold at auction.

I love his reaction to reading this end of a paragraph, 'The subway seals you durably in the stone of the moment', to which he notes - "Great fucking line".

One of the least visibly egotistical writers out there, with arguably the most to be egotistical about, and he takes pleasure in pointing out lines like that. Love it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210227064434/https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/don-delillos-annotated-underworld

Just finished the book and was pleasantly surprised. I don’t have any permanent thoughts on this strange, bleak story yet, but I think the main moment that struck me was the riot/protest sequence. I also enjoyed the distant, sterilizing narrative tone. Obviously not up there with Libra and Underworld in terms of DeLillo greatness, but I certainly think it’s worth a read and it better than some of the mediocre reception it receives.

For those who’ve read it what do you think?

Hey y'all. I read White Noise a couple months ago and really loved it. What should I read next? I get scared by really big books so not Underworld? (Ironically I'm reading Pynchon's GR right now and not finding it terribly unreadable at all, so maybe am ready for big beefy postmodern books??)

The real reason I'm posting is because I really like the whiskey Widow Jane, and I have been told this is DeLillo's favorite whiskey, too. Can anyone confirm?