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"Discussing DeLillo's literary accomplishments, why different kinds of context matters to understanding the work, and setting up the book's sections and chapters. DeLillo's fiction acts as a commentary on the human condition and its relation to spatial stimuli. New York City represents a fixed point of reference that the author revisits and continuously extracts meaning from its inhabitants' movement throughout the cityscape and the architectural constructs that affect their lives"--
List of contents
Introduction: Context, content, conflict Jesse Kavadlo; Part I. Places: 1. New York reassessing the topography of newyork city in Don Delillo's fiction Alan Gravano; 2. The Bronx Don Delillo's underworlds: mystery and manners Jacqueline A. Zubeck; 3. The American Southwest 'Texas is the reason:' running dog, point omega and Delillo's 'southwest' Henry Veggian; 4. The World Delillo abroad Cornelius Collins; Part II. History and Politics: 5. The cold war the rules, norms, games, and professions of Delillo's cold war Alan Nadel; 6. The John F. Kennedy assassination paranoid suspicions Skip Willman; 7. Terrorism terrorism as context in Delillo Margaret Scanlan; 8. The twenty-first century March madness: Don Delillo in the age of global interdependence Marni Gauthier; 9. Prescience the idea of the future Paul PetrovicI; Part III. Media and Pop Culture: 10. Film Don Delillo, the movie Timothy Parrish; 11. Television and mass media 'the nausea of news and traffic' Crystal AlbertsI; 12. Plays and performance dramatic contexts Rebecca Rey; 13. Sports 'fascinating ways to lose a game' Mike Witcombe; 14. The internet everything is connected: Delillo and internet culture Andrew Strombeck; 15. Signs print, image, and visual media Joseph Conte; Part IV. Literary Contexts: 16. Intertextuality 'an attempt to find pattern and motive': text, context, intertext Laura Barrett; 17. Genre and genre theory bold new forms: genre and the generic Jeffrey Severs; 18. Modernism and postmodernism a quantum perspective: modernist depths and post-modernist connections Samuel Chase Coale; 19. Postmodernism and literary criticism postmodernism and its discontents, or, the cultural logic of don delillo Katie Muth; Part V. Material Contexts: 20. Technology science/fiction Randy Laist; 21. The environment postmodern ecology in Don Delillo's fiction Elise Martucci; 22. Materiality violence and the body Rebecca Harding, university of Sussex; 23. Death (not) moving deathward: the living and the undead in delillo's late works Mark Osteen; Part VI. Social and Cultural Constructions: 24. Religion and spirituality meditations on mystery Graley Herren; 25. Race white male mobility Tim Engles; 26. Ethnicity DeLillo and Italian America John Paul Russo; 27. Gender masculine and feminine subjectivity Anne Longmuir; 28. Time still life Catherine Gander; Part VII. Writing and Writers: 29. The concept of authorship self/referentiality Marjorie Worthington; 30. The writing process 'a book determines its own dimensions': observing, writing, typing Harold K. Bush; 31. Advertising copywriting aesthetics Aaron DeRosa; Conclusion: DeLillo's literary legacy DeLillo as context David Cowart; Further Reading; Index.
About the author
Jesse Kavadlo is a Professor of English and Humanities and the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Maryville University of St. Louis. He is the author of Don DeLillo: Balance at the Edge of Belief and American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror: Falling Skies, Dark Knights Rising, and Collapsing Cultures, and co-editor of Michael Chabon's America: Magical Words, Secret Worlds, and Sacred Spaces. Jesse also writes for the magazine PopMatters and is currently President of the Don DeLillo Society.
Summary
Don DeLillo In Context benefits scholars and students interested in intersections between his literature and its contexts. Essays examine how geography, biography, history, media studies, culture, philosophy, and the writing process provide critical frameworks and ways of reading and understanding his body of work.
