“Here they come, marching into American sunlight.” In Episode 33, DDSWTNP follow Mao II from this opening line into a chilling view of a mass Moonie wedding at Yankee Stadium, and on into the story of reclusive novelist Bill Gray, whose work, maybe, has a chance of deprogramming the mind and language of Karen Janney, one of the participants in that wedding – but maybe not, given the totalizing dominance by images that this novel documents. Our conversation delves into the several rich dialogues Mao II is known for, especially that about (quoting Bill) the “curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists,” the differing attempts by writers and bomb-makers to “alter the inner life of the culture” and “make raids on human consciousness” that DeLillo juxtaposes in this novel, which follows the writer from his cloying “bunker” to London, Athens, and (almost) Lebanon, while also taking in scenes from Iran, China, and the homeless encampments of lower Manhattan. Throughout we discuss the many followers of and sequels to Mao and Maoism DeLillo analyzes, all the ways his characters foolishly seek, outside the values of deep reading and the novel, scenes of “total vision” and messianic “total being,” the “lightning-lit” language of information and the terrorist’s mastery of “the language of being noticed.” We examine in detail as well the effects of Andy Warhol’s work as DeLillo sees it; what it means that readers never learn much at all about the content of Bill’s famous novels; the commonalities he has with Rushdie, Salinger, Pynchon, and DeLillo himself; and why terrorist go-between George Haddad loves word processors so much. We also have a lot to say about the ailing, injured body and spirit of Bill Gray, as well as the simplicity of spoons and what they might teach us about objects and art. Mao II is a book that, as we say in the episode, sums up much of the DeLillo that came before it, lays the groundwork for the masterpiece to come, and contains so many of what have come to seem over the years since 1991 (and over the run of our episodes) the foundational DeLillo ideas and questions, especially ones about politics, violence, and images. Hope you’ll have a listen and, if moved, tell us what you think!

Texts referred to in this episode:

David Cowart, Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language. Athens: U. of Georgia P., 2002.

“Mao II is a sort of rest-and-motion book, to invent a category. The first half of the book could have been called ‘The Book,’ Bill Gray talking about his book, piling up manuscript pages, living in a house that operates as a kind of filing cabinet for his work and all the other work it engenders. And the second half of the book could have been called ‘The World.’ Here, Bill escapes his book and enters the world. It turns out to be the world of political violence . . . I was nearly finished with the first half of the book before I realized how the second half ought to be shaped. I was writing blind . . .” –“Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction CXXXV,” The Paris Review 128 (1993): 274-306. Interview by Adam Begley.

“I called him Bill Gray just as a provisional name,” DeLillo says. “I used to say to friends, 'I want to change my name to Bill Gray and disappear.’ I've been saying it for 10 years. But he began to fit himself into the name, and I decided to leave it.” –Vince Passaro, “Dangerous Don DeLillo,” New York Times Magazine, May 19, 1991 (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-delillo.html)

Mark Osteen, American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo’s Dialogue with Culture. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2000.

Sources of interlude clips from Warhol and Moon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vCKc7r8U8E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiCYKJc_VwI

In Episode 30, DDSWTNP once again use the occasion of the Nobel Prize (which on October 9, 2025, was awarded to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai) to talk about a prize Don DeLillo did win: the 2013 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. We dig into the award presentation and an interview he gave then about his whole career, from how he begins his novels and finds their structures, to the reading he did on a park bench in the 1950s, the influence advertising work had on his writing, and the inspiration he has found in the artistry of jazz and film. This episode culminates on the title question, “So what?”, which is the revealing remark DeLillo remembers making upon seeing Americana in published form – and a key, we think, to understanding the humility, ambition, and restless work ethic that has driven his work over the five decades since.

For the reader new to DeLillo, this interview and episode offer a good overview of his major concerns and literary techniques. And for readers at any stage with DeLillo’s fiction, this one also goes well with our previous two Nobel episodes, 3 and 17, where we discuss his “The Artist Naked in a Cage” and “A History of the Writer Alone in a Room.” Listen to this episode too for many other callbacks to our earlier episodes, including 5 and 28.

For video of the Library of Congress Prize presentation and the interview of DeLillo conducted by Marie Arana, an editor at the Washington Post, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AObZbCKlEc8&t=722s

Thanks for pointing out and providing some sources for this episode to: Tim Personn (https://linktr.ee/timpersonn), Joel in Toronto, and Curt Gardner (https://perival.com/delillo/delillo.html).

Texts and passages referred to in this episode:

John Freeman, “Q & A: Don DeLillo – It’s not as easy as it looks,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 5, 2006. (On DeLillo seeing the film Satantango; see an excerpt at https://perival.com/delillo/ddinterviews.html)

From William Gaddis’s J R, Gibbs’s thoughts on writing a novel: “Sixteen years like living with a God damned invalid sixteen years every time you come in sitting there waiting just like you left him wave his stick at you, plump up his pillow cut a paragraph add a sentence hold his God damned hand little warm milk add a comma slip out for some air pack of cigarettes come back in right where you left him, eyes follow you around the room wave his God damned pillow change bandage read aloud move a clause around wipe his chin new paragraph God damned eyes follow you out stay a week, stay a month whole God damned year think about something else, God damned friends asking how he’s coming along all expect him out any day don’t want bad news no news rather hear lies, big smile out any day now, walk down the street God damned sunshine begin to think maybe you’ll meet him maybe cleared things up got out by himself come back open the God damned door right there where you left him . . .”

David Foster Wallace, “The Nature of the Fun” (1998). Reprinted in Both Flesh and Not: Essays (2012).

In Episode 29, DDSWTNP go to space to get a good look at the earth in a time of war, turning to one of DeLillo’s greatest short stories, “Human Moments in World War III,” first published in July 1983. We examine this tale of two future astronauts who have become soldiers for its strategic engagement with the tropes of science fiction, its eerie portrayals of the so-called “Overview Effect” available from a spacecraft window, and its compression and renewal of motifs from Americana, End Zone, and Ratner’s Star. Nostalgia, patriotism, history, the soldier’s mindset in following inhuman commands, and even the role of poetry and voice – all these come to be recast in DeLillo’s shrewd take on an era of “Star Wars” defense initiatives, a Cold War giving way to hot wars, and very tricky ways out of Mutually Assured Destruction. Along the way we read the 1980s thoughts of an expert on lasers in space, consider what it means to have an alien perspective on one’s earthly home and diurnal rhythms, and speculate on connections between “Human Moments” and White Noise still to come.

Texts referred to and discussed in this episode:

Don DeLillo. “Human Moments in World War III.” Published in Esquire (July 1983) and reprinted in The Angel Esmeralda (2011).

Philip M. Boffey. “Laser Weapons: Renewed Focus Raises Fears and Doubts.” New York Times, 9 March 1982. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/09/science/laser-weapons-renewed-focus-raises-fears-and.html

Summary of the Overview Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

The first scene of War Games (1983): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls

Our intro’s clip of DeLillo reading from “Human Moments in World War III” comes from this October 2012 event at the New York Public Library: https://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/angel-esmeralda-don-delillo-conversation-jonathan-franzen

The interlude sound effect is from Burns and Allen, featuring Ray Noble, “Rah Rah in Omaha” (1940).

So who killed JFK? We still don’t know, but we’re concluding our series on DeLillo’s conspiratorial history with Episode 27: Libra (3). This episode begins by focusing on the unexpected injection of humor and depth that comes with Jack Ruby, another reluctant shooter, in the novel’s second part. We draw into this episode some comparisons of Libra to other artists’ paranoid visions of conspiracy, including Oliver Stone, Norman Mailer, and Thomas Pynchon. We spend ample time on the newspaper-clipping and TV-watching of CIA wife Beryl Parmenter, one of several figures here who make Libra a canny narrative of media and information history. And we close with detailed debate and speculation about why DeLillo’s concluding “Author’s Note” – with its powerful notion that “readers may find refuge here” – has changed over the years. Like Nicholas Branch, we're overwhelmed by all that still could be said about Libra (and we may still say it in a future episode!), but we conclude our three-part analysis here.

References and corrections for this episode:

“Don DeLillo: The Word, the Image, and the Gun.” BBC Documentary, September 27, 1991. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DTePKA1wgc

Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia.” chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_MourningAndMelancholia.pdf

JFK (dir. Oliver Stone, 1991).

Frank Lentricchia, “Libra as Postmodern Critique.” In Frank Lentricchia, ed., Introducing Don DeLillo (Durham, NC: Duke U. Press, 1991), 193-215.

George F. Will, “Shallow Look at the Mind of an Assassin.” Washington Post, September 22, 1988.

Correction and references on Carmine Latta and Sam Giancana: DeLillo’s character Carmine Latta is indeed based on Carlos Marcello (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Marcello), but we misstate the name of mobster Sam Giancana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Giancana).

Interlude clips include the voices of Jack Ruby and Marguerite Oswald.

In Episode 26: Libra (2), DDSWTNP continue our deep dive into DeLillo’s story of Oswald and CIA plotters, taking on the distinctions between lone-gunman and systems theories, the unique role of Bobby Dupard in Oswald’s arc, and all this novel has to teach us about “diminishing existence” and the taste for mediated violence as it’s grown since the watershed moment of 1963. Major segments here focus on the remarkable, Mephistophelean voice of David Ferrie, the work done by secret CIA historian Nicholas Branch, and DeLillo’s prefatory essay “Assassination Aura,” which brings Libra’s enduring mystery into the twenty-first century through the promises and failures of technology embodied by “Dictabelt No. 10.”

An episode best listened to, of course, after Episode 25: Libra (1)! Stay tuned next week for the release of our concluding episode on Libra.

References and corrections for this episode:

Don DeLillo, “American Blood: A Journey Through the Labyrinth of Dallas and JFK.” Rolling Stone, December 8, 1983. Rpt. in Osteen, Mark, ed., Novels of the 1980s: The Names, White Noise, Libra. Library of America, 2022. 1045-1061.

Don DeLillo, “Assassination Aura” (May 2005). Included as preface in 2006 edition of Libra (Penguin).

“I was able to acquire a copy of the [Zapruder] film before it became legally available, which made me feel slightly conspiratorial”: Don DeLillo, “Preface, 2022.” In Osteen, ed., Novels of the 1980s: The Names, White Noise, Libra. Library of America, 2022. 633-634.

Linda Hutcheon, “Historiographic Metafiction: The Pastime of Past Time.” In A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. (The first instance of a concept much discussed by Hutcheon and many others.)

Tom LeClair, In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel. U. of Illinois P., 1988.

Dante correction: We say “circling the square” in Paradiso 33, but it’s of course the problem of “squaring the circle.”

Interlude clips include the voices of General Edwin Walker and Lee Harvey Oswald.