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person1970s-present

Don DeLillo

Disciplines:
literature

Summary

American novelist who is the foremost literary anatomist of postmodern American culture — its systems, media, violence, and death anxiety.

Core Contribution

White Noise: fear of death, the 'airborne toxic event,' the family in the age of media oversaturation — the most important American novel of the 1980s. Underworld: 9-inch narrative spanning 1951-1992 through the Cold War. Libra: Lee Harvey Oswald as a figure of conspiracy and chance. The novel as a form against the noise of media.

Notable Works & Achievements

White Noise

Libra

Underworld

Falling Man

Historical Influences

William Faulkner Thomas Pynchon

Intellectual Lineage

American Postmodernism American Realism

Contemporaries & Peers

Thomas Pynchon Philip Roth

Minds Influenced

Jonathan Franzen Zadie Smith

Intellectual Posterity

American Literary Fiction Postmodern Novel

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Don DeLillo

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