Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo

Description

In his novel Mao II, Don DeLillo lets his protagonist say, 'Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness.' DeLillo suggests that while the collective imagination of the past was guided by the creative order of narrative fictions, our contemporary fantasies and anxieties are directed by the endless narratives of war and terror relayed by the mass media. To take DeLillo's literary reflections on media, terrorism, and literature seriously means to engage with the ethical implications of his media critique. This book departs from existing works on DeLillo not only through its focus on the function of literature as public discourse in culture, but also in its decidedly transatlantic perspective. Bringing together prominent DeLillo scholars in Europe and in the US, it is the first critical book on DeLillo to position his work in a transatlantic context. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION: THE AMERICAN AND THE EUROPEAN DELILLO PART 1: MEMORY WORK AFTER 9/11 1. THE WAKE OF TERROR: DON DELILLO’S “IN THE RUINS OF THE FUTURE,” “BAADER-MEINHOF,” AND FALLING MAN 2. GRIEVING AND MEMORY IN DON DELILLO’S FALLING MAN 3. COLLAPSING IDENTITIES: THE REPRESENTATION AND IMAGINATION OF THE TERRORIST IN FALLING MAN PART 2: WRITERS, TERRORISTS, AND THE MASSES 4. 6,500 WEDDINGS AND 2,750 FUNERALS: MAO II, FALLING MAN, AND THE MASS EFFECT 5. PUBLIC IMAGE AND SELF-REPRESENTATION: DON DELILLO’S ARTISTS AND TERRORISTS IN POSTMODERN MASS SOCIETY 6. THE ART OF TERROR—THE TERROR OF ART: DELILLO’S STILL LIFE OF 9/11, GIORGIO MORANDI, GERHARD RICHTER, AND PERFORMANCE ART PART 3: DON DELILLO AND JOHAN GRIMONPREZ 7 GRIMONPREZ’S REMIX 8 DIAL T FOR TERROR: DON DELILLO’S MAO II AND JOHAN GRIMONPREZ’S DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y PART 4: DEATHWARD AND OTHER PLOTS 9 TERROR, ASCETICISM, AND EPIGRAMMATIC WRITING IN DON DELILLO’S FICTION 10 THE END OF RESOLUTION? REFLECTIONS ON THE ETHICS OF CLOSURE IN DON DELILLO’S DETECTIVE PLOTS PART 5: THE ETHICS OF FICTION 11 SLOW MAN, DANGLING MAN, FALLING MAN: DELILLO AND THE ETHICS OF FICTION 12 FALLING MAN: PERFORMING FICTION 13 “THE GREAT SECULAR TRANSCENDENCE”: DON DELILLO AND THE DESIRE FOR NUMINOUS EXPERIENCE PART 6: CODA 14 THE DELILLO ERA: LITERARY GENERATIONS IN THE POSTMODERN PERIOD CONTRIBUTORS INDEX A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z