Don DeLillo
Symphonic Critic of Contemporary America By Tracy O’NeillWith black humor and spirited outrage, DeLillo remains one of the country’s great fatalists.
Bronx-bred novelist Don DeLillo has a bone to pick with contemporary America, and he's done it in novels like White Noise and Underworld, which decry everything from television and artificially sweetened chewing gum to self-righteous academics and political sloth. The former parking attendant kicked off his literary career with the publication of Americana. Yet it was White Noise's dark vision of America distracting itself with consumerism, virtual reality, and drugs that solidified DeLillo as a literary great with the verve to give the status quo a shakedown. The brazen novelist has ruffled feathers with subsequent works like Mao II and Libra, in which anti-heroes like terrorists and assassins take center stage. If this sounds like a lot of death and destruction, it is, and DeLillo will be the first to claim (as he has repeatedly) that all plots move in one direction--towards death. Yet a touch of absurdism and empathy for even his most ridiculous characters ensure that his work is more than bleak pessimism. With black humor and spirited outrage, DeLillo remains one of the country's great fatalists.
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