Continuum Don DeLillo: Mao II, Underworld, Falling Man (Continuum Studies in Contemporary North America Fiction)

A wide-ranging study of the post-1990 fiction of one of America's most respected writers and cultural critics, this volume focuses on three of Don DeLillo's most recent novelsGÇöMao II, Underworld, and Falling ManGÇöthat span pivotal moments in recent history: the end of the Cold War, the millennium, and 9/11. Consisting of original essays written by scholars whose interdisciplinary approachesGÇödrawn from art history and religious history, ethnic studies and urban studies, popular culture and political scienceGÇöshed new light on DeLillo's work, it investigates DeLillo's portrait of turn-of-the-century America as the nation confronts the defining phenomena of globalism and terrorism. With an eye always on the impact that shifts in historical sensibility produce on aesthetic sensibility, the volume also considers the role that DeLillo sees narrative playing in a world dominated by digital images and provides the first extended analysis of how much faith he has in fiction's ability to convey the trauma of September 11, an event commonly conceived as resistant to all forms of artistic expression. Review "This is a beautifully coherent collection of essays on DeLillo's three most important recent novels. It is also much more than that. The volume reflects on, tells us much about, and revises views of, DeLillo's entire oeuvre, American literature and culture broadly, modernist and postmodernist theory, and the other arts (including photography, performance art, film). Anyone with any interest in contemporary culture should know this book. Led by the level-setting eloquent and erudite Olster, the contributors comprise the most exciting scholars in American literary and cultural studies today. Fittingly for a volume on DeLillo, reading it you will never forget that these are people who can write."--Sanford Lakoff About the Author Stacey Olster is Professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. She is the author of Reminiscence and Re-Creation in Contemporary American Fiction (1989) and The Trash Phenomenon: Contemporary Literature, Popular Culture, and the Making of the American Century (2003), and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to John Updike (2006). Stacey Olster is Professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA.