White noise

Selected Bibliography

WORKS BY DON DeLILLO

NOVELS

Americana. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971; (Paper) New York: Penguin Books, 1989.
End Zone. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972; (Paper) New York: Penguin Books, 1986.
Great Jones Street. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973; (Paper) New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
Ratner's Star. New York: Knopf, 1976; (Paper) New York: Vintage, 1989.
Players. New York: Knopf, 1977; (Paper) New York: Vintage, 1989.
Running Dog. New York: Knopf, 1978; (Paper) New York: Vintage, 1989.
The Names. New York: Knopf, 1982; (Paper) New York: Vintage, 1989.
White Noise. New York: Viking, 1985; (Paper) New York: Penguin Books, 1996; The Viking Critical Library, 1998.
Libra. New York: Viking, 1988; (Paper) New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
Mao II. New York: Viking, 1991; (Paper) New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
Underworld. New York: Scribner, 1997; (Paper) New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1998.
PLAYS

The Engineer of Moonlight. Cornell Review 5 (Winter 1979): 21-47.
The Day Room. New York: Knopf, 1987; New York: Viking/Penguin, 1989.

The Rapture of the Athlete Assumed into Heaven. The Quarterly 15 (1990);
South Atlantic Quarterly 91 (1992): 241-42.
UNCOLLECTED SHORT FICTION

"The River Jordan." Epoch 10:2 (Winter 1960): 105-20.

"Take the 'A' Train." Epoch 12:1 (Spring 1962): 9-25.

"Spaghetti and Meatballs." Epoch 14:3 (Spring 1965): 244-50.

"Coming Sun. Mon. Tues." Kenyon Review 28 (1966): 391-94.

"Baghdad Towers West." Epoch 17 (1968): 195-217.

"The Uniforms." Carolina Quarterly 22:1 (Winter 1970): 4-11.

"In the Men's Room of the Sixteenth Century." Esquire (Dec. 1971): 174-77, 243, 246.

"Creation." Antaeus 33 (1979): 32-46.

"Human Moments in World War III." Esquire (July 1983): 118-26.

"The Runner." Harper's (Sept. 1988): 61-63.

"The Ivory Acrobat." Granta 25 (Autumn 1988): 199-212.

ESSAYS

"Notes Toward a Definitive Meditation (By Someone Else) on the Novel Americana." Epoch 21.3 (Spring 1972): 327-29.

"Total Loss Weekend." Sports Illustrated (27 Nov. 1972): 98-120.
"Notes on 'The Uniforms.' " Cutting Edges: Young American Fiction for the 70s. Edited by Jack Hicks. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1973 [532-33].
"American Blood: A Journey through the Labyrinth of Dallas and JFK." Rolling Stone (8 Dec. 1983): 21-22, 24, 27-28, 74.
"Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson and the Millennium." Dimensions 4:3 (1989): 29-34.
Salman Rushdie Defense Pamphlet. New York: Rushdie Defense Committee USA, 14 February 1994.
"The Artist Naked in a Cage." New Yorker (26 May 1997): 6-7.
"The Power of History." New York Times Magazine (7 Sept. 1997): 60-63.
FILM

Don DeLillo: The Word, the Image and the Gun. Broadcast 27 Sept. 1991. Directed by Kim Evans. British Broadcasting Corporation.
SELECTED INTERVIEWS AND PROFILES

Arensberg, Ann. "Seven Seconds: An Interview." Vogue (Aug. 1988): 337— 39, 390.

Begley, Adam. "Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction." Paris Review 35:128 (Fall 1993): 274-306.

Burn, Gordon. "Wired Up and Whacked Out." (London) Sunday Times Magazine (25 Aug. 1991): 36-39.

Champlin, Charles. "The Heart Is a Lonely Craftsman." Los Angeles Times, Calendar section. (29 July 1984): 7.

Connolly, Kevin. "An Interview with Don DeLillo." The Brick Reader. Edited by Linda Spalding and Michael Ondaatje. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1991: 260-69.

DeCurtis, Anthony. "Matters of Fact and Fiction." Rolling Stone (17 Nov. 1988): 113-22, 164. Longer version published as "An Outsider in This Society." South Atlantic Quarterly 89 (1990): 280-319, and in Lentricchia, Introducing Don DeLillo. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991: 43-66.

Harris, Robert R. "A Talk with Don DeLillo." New York Times Book Review (10 Oct. 1982): 26.

Heron, Kim. "Haunted by His Book." New York Times Book Review (24 July 1988): 23.

Howard, Gerald. "The American Strangeness: An Interview with Don DeLillo." Hungry Mind Review 43 (Fall 1997): 13-16. (Online address: http://www.bookwire.com/hmr/hmrinterviews.article$2563)

James, Caryn. " 'I Never Set Out to Write an Apocalyptic Novel.' " New York Times Book Review (13 Jan. 1985): 31.

Kamp, David. "DeLillo's Home Run." Vanity Fair (Sept. 1997): 202-4.

LeClair, Tom. "An Interview With Don DeLillo." Contemporary Literature 23 (1982): 19-31. Reprinted m Tom LeClair and Larry McCaffery, eds. Anything Can Happen. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983: 79-90.

Nadotti, Maria. "An Interview with Don DeLillo." Salmagundi 100 (Fall 1993): 86-97.

Passaro, Vince. "Dangerous Don DeLillo." New York Times Magazine (19 May 1991): 36-38, 76-77.

Remnick, David. "Exile on Main Street." New Yorker (15 Sept. 1997): 42-48.

WEBSITE

Don DeLillo's America. Address: http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/~gardner/de-lillo.html. Contains much useful information on DeLillo's novels and on critical studies of his works. For a more complete listing of interviews and profiles, readers are encouraged to consult the bibliography compiled by Curt Gardner and Philip Nel at this Website.
LITERARY CRITICISM

BOOKS

Hantke, Steffen. Conspiracy and Paranoia in Contemporary American Fiction: The Works of Don DeLillo and Joseph McElroy. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994. White Noise discussed: 46-59.
Keesey, Douglas. Don DeLillo. Twayne's United States Authors Series. New York: Twayne, 1993.

Solid, informative overview of DeLillo's career. White Noise discussed on pages 133-150.

LeClair, Tom. In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Insightful, at times brilliant analysis of DeLillo's novels through White Noise, with emphasis on depicting DeLillo as a "systems novelist." White Noise discussed, pages 207-36.

Lentricchia, Frank, ed. Introducing Don DeLillo. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991.

Reprint of a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (89.2 [Spring 1990]) on DeLillo. First-rate collection of essays on DeLillo from a variety of critical viewpoints, covering most of the novels through Libra. Its usefulness for students and scholars is slightly mitigated by the absence of footnotes. Contents: Lentricchia, Frank. "The American Writer as Bad Citizen— Introducing Don DeLillo," 1-6.

DeLillo, Don. "Opposites." Chapter 10 of Ratner's Star, 7-42.

DeCurtis, Anthony. " 'An Outsider in This Society': An Interview with Don DeLillo," [Longer version of Rolling Stone interview, cited on page 527.] 43-66.

Aaron, Daniel. "How to Read Don DeLillo," 67-81.

Crowther, Hal. "Clinging to the Rock: A Novelist's Choices in the New Mediacracy," 83-98.

McClure, John A. "Postmodern Romance: Don DeLillo and the Age of Conspiracy," 99-115.

Goodheart, Eugene. "Speculations on Don DeLillo and the Cinematic Real," 117-30.

DeCurtis. "The Product: Bucky Wunderlick, Rock 'n Roll, and Don DeLillo's Great Jones Street," 131-41.

Molesworth, Charles. "Don DeLillo's Perfect Starry Night" [on Ratner's Star], 143-56.

Foster, Dennis A. "Alphabetic Pleasures: The Names," 157-73. Frow, John. "The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White Noise," 175-91. Revised in Frow book cited on page 529.

Lentricchia, Frank. "Libra as Postmodern Critique," 193-215.

——, ed. New Essays on White Noise. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Contents:

Lentricchia, Frank. "Introduction," 1-14.

Ferraro, Thomas J. "Whole Families Shopping at Night!" 15-38. Discusses the depiction of Gladney family and shows how in shopping and supermarkets "consumer capitalism brilliantly exploits the need for strengthening family bonds that it has itself, in part, destroyed."

Cantor, Paul A. " 'Adolf, We Hardly Knew You,' " 39-62. Wittily analyzes DeLillo's treatment of Hitler in both White Noise and his earlier fiction.

Moses, Michael Valdez. "Lust Removed from Nature," 63-86. Reading White Noise in tandem with Heidegger, Moses discusses the relationship between technology and nature in the novel.

Lentricchia, Frank. "Tales of the Electronic Tribe," 87-113. Focuses on Jack Gladney as first-person narrator and protagonist as a "human collage of styles," both literary and pop-cultural.

BOOK SECTIONS

Applen, J. D. "Examining the Discourse of the University: White Noise in the Composition Classroom." Miss Grundy Doesn't Teach Here Anymore. Edited by Diane Penrod. Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook,Heinemann, 1997.136—46. Pedagogical essay, giving examples of how White Noise can be used in composition courses to enable students to think and write about the discourse communities that define contemporary culture.

Chénetier, Marc. Beyond Suspicion: New American Fiction Since 1960. Translated by Elizabeth A. Houlding. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Contains several brief passages discussing White Noise; see 130-32, 183-86.

Dewey, Joseph. "The Eye Begins to See: The Apocalyptic Temper in the 1980s—William Gaddis and Don DeLillo." In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age. W. Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1990: 180-229. Praises White Noise for offering hope and reassurance in replacing the white noise of "language" by silence. Emphasizes the hopeful aspects of the ending. White Noise discussed, 205-229.
Frow, John. Time and Commodity Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 13-15, 23-36, 38-39, 45, 49, 59-61, 67-69, 79, 88-90. Revision of Frow article in Lentricchia, Introducing Don DeLillo, cited on page 528, and reprinted in this volume, pages 417-31.
Heffernan, Teresa. "Can Apocalypse Be Post?" Postmodern Apocalypse: Theory and Cultural Practice at the End. Edited by Richard Dellamora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995 [171-81]. Reads Jack Gladney's confrontation with death in the light of "nuclear criticism" as an attempt to move beyond apocalyptic narratives and meanings.
Mottram, Eric. "The Real Needs of Man: Don DeLillo's Novels." The New American Writing: Essays on American Literature Since 1970. Edited by Graham Clarke. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990: 51-98. Survey of DeLillo's novels through Libra. White Noise discussed, 86-90.
Reid, Ian. Narrative Exchanges. New York and London: Routledge, 1992 [59-63]. Sharp narratological reading of pages 191-92.
Simmons, Philip E. "Don DeLillo's Invisible Histories." Deep Surfaces: Mass Culture and History in Contemporary American Fiction. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1997: 41-81.

Traces the influence of filmed images and simulacra on DeLillo's artistic vision. White Noise discussed, 55-65.

Weinstein, Arnold M. "Don DeLillo: Rendering the Words of the Tribe." Nobody's Home: Speech, Self and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993: 288-315. Well-written analysis of DeLillo's use of language; finds DeLillo's depiction of family life to be heroic. White Noise discussed, 298-311.
White, Patti. "Toxic Textual Events." Gatsby's Party: The System and the List in Contemporary Narrative. W. Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1992: 7-27. Reads the novel in terms of information theory, with illuminating remarks on the "trilog" lists peppering the text.
JOURNAL ARTICLES: ON WHITE NOISE

Bawer, Bruce. "Don DeLillo's America." New Criterion 3.8 (April 1985): 34-42.

Negative survey of DeLillo's fiction, focusing on White Noise.
Bonca, Cornel. "Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Natural Language of the Species." College Literature 23.2 (June 1996): 25-44.

Illuminating essay linking the novel to DeLillo's recurrent demonstration of the redemptive powers of language. See pages 456-79 of this volume.

Bryant, Paula. "Extending the Fabulative Continuum: DeLillo, Mooney, Federman." Extrapolation 30 (1989): 156-65.

Brief discussion of how White Noise coincides with certain aspects of "fabulative"—science-fictional—themes and strategies.

Caton, Lou F. "Romanticism and the Postmodern Novel: Three Scenes from Don DeLìllo's White Noise." English Language Notes 35 (Sept. 1997): 38-48.

Gladney recognizes but mourns the emergence of a constructed political postmodern culture, and DeLillo "maintains a romantic uncertainty throughout White Noise."

Conroy, Mark. "From Tombstone to Tabloid: Authority Figured in White Noise." Critique 35.2 (Winter 1994): 97-110.

Interprets Gladney's malaise as a "crisis in authority" deriving from the demise of traditional forms of cultural transmission.

Duvall, John N. "The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Un-mediated Mediation in DeLillo's White Noise." Arizona Quarterly 50.3 (Autumn 1994): 127-153.

Forcefully argued analysis of the "proto-fascist" role of TV. Particularly good on the use of Baudrillard and Murray Siskind's role. See pages 432-55 of this volume.

Frow, John. "The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White Noise." In Lentricchia, Introducing Don DeLillo, reprinted from South Atlantic Quarterly 89 (Spring 1990): 414-29. Helpfully addresses issue of typicality, simulacra, and brand names. See pages 417-31 of this volume.
Hayles, N. Katherine. "Postmodern Parataxis: Embodied Texts, Weightless Information." American Literary History 2 (1990): 394-421. Offers White Noise as an example of "parataxis," in which the relationship between terms is emphemeral and decontextualized.
King, Noel. "Reading White Noise: Floating Remarks." Critical Quarterly 33.3 (Autumn 1991): 66-83.

Shows the close relationship between the novel's discourses and current theories about postmodernism. Argues that White Noise denies us a "preferred reading position" from which to evaluate its presentation of "unverified information."

Leps, Marie-Christine. "Empowerment through Information: A Discursive Critique." Cultural Critique 31 (1995): 179-96. White Noise "registers some of the difficulties of agency associated with the Information Age while inscribing the possibility of resistance and alteration."
Maltby, Paul. "The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo." Contemporary Literature 37 (1996): 258-77.

Persuasively examines DeLillo's depictions of visionary experiences and suggests that he espouses a metaphysics much indebted to Romanticism. Treats White Noise as well as The Names. See pages 498-516 of this volume.

Messmer, Michael W. " 'Thinking It Through Completely': The Interpretation of Nuclear Culture." Centennial Review 23.4 (Fall 1988): 397-413. Uses White Noise to exemplify DeLillo's understanding of nuclear culture via his treatment of the sublime.
Moraru, Christian. "Consuming Narratives: Don DeLillo and the 'Lethal' Reading." Journal of Narrative Technique 27 (1997): 190-206. Focuses on instances of misreading in Mao II, Great Jones Street, and Libra, as well as in White Noise, to show how such "lethal" readings menace inherited notions of textuality and authorship.
Parks, John G. "The Noise of Magic Kingdoms: Reflections on Theodicy in Two Recent American Novels." Cithara (May 1990): 56-61. Compares the treatment of belief in White Noise and Stanley Elkin's The Magic Kingdom.
Pastore, Judith Laurence. "Marriage American Style: Don DeLillo's Domestic Satire." Voices in Italian Americana 1.2 (Fall 1990): 1-19. Suggests that beneath DeLillo's satire lies a more traditional view of marriage and divorce stemming from his Italian-Catholic heritage. Also discusses the early stories "Spaghetti and Meatballs" and "Creation."
——. "Palomar and Gladney: Calvino and DeLillo Play with the Dialectics of Subject/Object Relationships." Italian Culture 9 (1991): 331-42.

Argues that both Calvino's and DeLillo's protagonists seek "to escape from the subjectivity of modern relativism" but end up shifting to "some quasi-religious approach."

Peyser, Thomas. "Globalization in America: The Case of Don DeLillo's White Noise." Clio 25 (1996): 255-71.

Argues that White Noise exemplifies how global forces impinge on old cultural boundaries and disable the concepts of boundaries and community.

Reeve, N.H., and Richard Kerridge. "Toxic Events: Postmodernism and DeLillo's White Noise." Cambridge Quarterly 23 (1994): 303-23. Perceptive analysis suggesting how most events are incorporated into formulas or packages in the novel; "toxic events" are those that spill out and violate categories.
Saltzman, Arthur M. "The Figure in the Static: White Noise." Modern Fiction Studies 40 (1994): 807-26.

Elegantly written and incisively argued essay addressing DeLillo's use of language and the role of art and the artist. Locates White Noise amidst DeLillo's other work. See pages 480-497 of this volume.

Wilcox, Leonard. "Baudrillard, DeLillo's White Noise, and the End of the Heroic Narrative." Contemporary Literature 32 (1991): 346-65. Persuasively links DeLillo's work with the analyses of Jean Baudrillard and other postmodern theorists; argues that the world of simulacra depicted in White Noise disrupts subjectivity and precludes the possibility of heroic narratives.
JOURNAL ARTICLES: GENERAL CRITICISM ON DeLILLO

Bell, Pearl K. "DeLillo's World." Partisan Review 59.1 (Winter 1992): 138-46.

Bosworth, David. "The Fiction of Don DeLillo." Boston Review 8.2 (1983): 29-30.

Bryson, Norman. "City of Dis: the Fiction of Don DeLillo." Granta 2 (1980): 145-57.

Carmichael, Thomas. "Buffalo/Baltimore, Athens/Dallas: John Barth, Don DeLillo and the Cities of Postmodernism." Canadian Review of American Studies 22.2 (Fall 1991): 241-49. Compares The Names and Libra to John Barth's LETTERS.

——. "Lee Harvey Oswald and the Postmodern Subject: History and Intertextualíty in Don DeLillo's Libra, The Names, and Mao II." Contemporary Literature 34 (1993): 204-18.

Edmundson, Mark. "Not Flat, Not Round, Not There: Don DeLillo's Novel Characters." Yale Review 83.2 (April 1995): 107-24.

Hantke, Steffen. " 'God save us from bourgeois adventure': The Figure of the Terrorist in Contemporary American Conspiracy Fiction." Studies in the Novel 38 (Summer 1996): 219-43. [Discusses Players and Mao II.]

Ireton, Mark. "The American Pursuit of Loneliness: Don DeLillo's Great Jones Street and Mao II." Don DeLillo's America: Online: http:// haas.berkeley.edu/~gardner/ireton_essay.html

Isaacs, Neil D. "Out of the End Zone: Sports in the Rest of DeLillo." Arete 3 (Fall 1985): 85-95.

Johnston, John. "Generic Difficulties in the Novels of Don DeLillo." Critique 30 (1989): 261-75.

——. "Post-Cinematic Fiction: Film in the Novels of Pynchon, McElroy and DeLillo." New Orleans Review 17:2 (Summer 1990): 90-97.

Kucich, John. "Postmodern Politics: Don DeLillo and the Plight of the White Male Writer." Michigan Quarterly Review 27.2 (Spring 1988): 328-41.

Lentricchia, Frank. "Don DeLillo." Raritan 8.4 (Spring 1989): 1-29. [Discusses mostly Libra.] Excerpted in this volume, pages 412-16.

McClure, John A. "Postmodern/Post-Secular: Contemporary Fiction and Spirituality." Modern Fiction Studies 41 (1995): 141-63.

O'Donnell, Patrick. "Engendering Paranoia in Contemporary Narrative." Boundary 2: An International journal on Literature and Culture 19 (1992): 181-204. Dicusses mainly Running Dog.

Oriard, Michael. "Don DeLillo's Search for Walden Pond." Critique 20 (1978): 5-24. Discusses the early novels.

JOURNAL ARTICLES ON SPECIFIC TEXTS

AMERICANA

Cowart, David. "For Whom Bell Tolls: Don DeLillo's Americana." Contemporary Literature 37 (Winter 1997): 602-19.

Osteen, Mark. "Children of Godard and Coca-Cola: Cinema and Consumerism in Don DeLillo's Early Fiction." Contemporary Literature 37 (Fall 1996): 439-70. Also discusses early short stories.
END ZONE

Benton, Jill. "Don DeLillo's End Zone: A Postmodern Satire." Aethlon 12.1

(Fall 1994): 7-18. Burke, William. "Football, Literature and Culture." Southwest Review 60

(1975): 391-98. Osteen, Mark. "Against the End: Asceticism and Apocalypse in Don DeLillo's End Zone." Papers on Language and Literature 26 (1990):

143-63. Taylor, Anya. "Words, War, and Meditation in Don DeLillo's End Zone."

International Fiction Review 4 (1977): 68-70. Thornton, Z. Bart. "Linguistic Disenchantment and Architectural Solace in DeLillo and Artaud." Mosaic 30.1 (March 1997): 97-112.
GREAT JONES STREET

Osteen, Mark. " 'A Moral Form to Master Commerce': The Economies of DeLillo's Great Jones Street." Critique 35 (1994): 157-72. '

RATNER'S STAR

Allen, Glenn Scott. "Raids on the Conscious: Pynchon's Legacy of Paranoia and the Terrorism of Uncertainty in Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star." Postmodern Culture 4:2 (January 1994): n.p.

RUNNING DOG

Johnson, Stuart. "Extraphilosophical Instigations in Don DeLillo's Running Dog." Contemporary Literature 26 (1985): 74-90.

O'Donnell, Patrick. "Obvious Paranoia: The Politics of Don DeLillo's Running Dog." Centennial Review 34:1 (Winter 1990): 56-72.
THE NAMES

Bryant, Paula. "Discussing the Untellable: Don DeLillo's The Names." Critique 29 (1987): 16-29.

Harris, Paul A. "Epistémocritique: A Synthetic Matrix." SubStance 71/72 (1993): 185-203.

Morris, Matthew J. "Murdering Words: Language in Action in Don DeLillo's The Names." Contemporary Literature 30 (1989): 113-27.

THE DAY ROOM

Pastore, Judith Laurence. "Pirandello's Influence on American Writers: Don DeLillo's The Day Room." Italian Culture 8 (1990): 431-47.

Zinman, Toby Silverman. "Gone Fission. The Holocaustic Wit of Don DeLillo." Modern Drama 34 (1991): 75-87. Also briefly discusses The Engineer of Moonlight.
LIBRA

Bernstein, Stephen. "Libra and the Historical Sublime." Postmodern Culture 4:2 (January 1994): n.p.

Brent, Jonathan. "The Unimaginable Space of Danilo Kiś and Don DeLillo." Review of Contemporary Fiction 14.1 (Spring 1994): 180-89.

Caesar, Terry. "Motherhood and Postmodernism." American Literary History 7.1 (Spring 1995): 120-40. Treats Libra alongside Doctorow's Billy Bathgate and Pynchon's Vineland.

Cain, William E. "Making Meaningful Worlds: Self and History in Libra." Michigan Quarterly Review 29 (1990): 275-87.

Civello, Paul. "Undoing the Naturalistic Novel: Don DeLillo's Libra. Arizona Quarterly 48 (Summer 1992): 33-56. Reprinted in Civello book; see page 536 in this volume.

Johnston, John. "Superlinear Fiction or Historical Diagram?: Don DeLillo's Libra." Modern Fiction Studies 40 (1994): 319-42.