Product Description

DeLillo transforms the lurid elements of the thriller--espionage, assassination, pornography--into a work of art that captures the fevered shades of the latter-day American psyche.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #393743 in Books
• Published on: 1989-07-17
• Released on: 1989-07-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Inside Flap
DeLillo's Running Dog, originally published in 1978, follows Moll Robbins, a New York city journalist trailing the activities of an influential senator. In the process she is dragged into the black market world of erotica and shady, infatuated men, where a cat-and-mouse chase for an erotic film rumored to "star" Adolph Hitler leads to trickery, maneuvering, and bloodshed. With streamlined prose and a thriller's narrative pace, Running Dog is a bright star in the modern master's early career.

Customer Reviews

DeLillo 101
For anyone who is looking to get involved in the paranoiac, conspiracy-riddled world of Don DeLillo, Running Dog is a perfect jumping-off point. Replete with all the DeLillo standards-ambiguous, dangerous characters, postmodern disenchantment, the spectre of violence and war, voyeurism, as well as humor, compassion and loss-Running Dog serves as DeLillo 101. Before engaging in the complexities of White Noise, Underworld, Mao II or Libra (for which Running Dog is a kind of template), try this shorter, lighter version of DeLillo's later work. The subject, at least initially, is simple: in the mad dash for material conquests (in this case, an antiquated porno film supposedly depicting members of the Third Reich engaged in lewd sexual acts) the combatants lose sight of their motives, their souls, and most alarmingly the item itself. Commentary on war, sex, greed and our modern version of self-realization.

My Favorite DeLillo Novel!
Running Dog is essentially a witty and sarodnic spy/intrigue/romance. DeLillo in a bar room brawl with Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Charles Willeford and Larry Flynt. It's like punk rock DeLillo. Filled with porn, sex, violence, apathy, lecherous men and empowered women and DeLillo's Hitler fixation, manifested here less incidentaly than in White Noise. For my money its the least indulgent and most readable and fun novel of DeLillo's ouevre. All Of Chuck Palahniuk's work is a sort of cross between Running Dog and Vonnegut's Sirens Of Titan and Cat's Cradle. If you like Palahniuk, then Running Dog will offer you a great bridge to step up to DeLillo. For those who were turned off to DeLillo after yawning through Underworld and its hype, then Running Dog will be a revelation. If you don't agree with Penguin Books and have a hard time considering White Noise to be one of the greatest books of the 20th Century, up there with Ulysses, The Big Sleep and Madame Bovary, (Don't worry-neither do I) take it from me- You'll love Running Dog. I won't bother giving you a plot summary because do you really need me to reiterate what the publisher and Amazon says above? Alrighty then. Running Dog's a lot of fun!

Cosmic Erotics
OK: a New York smut dealer and a lefty muckraking journalist team up to find a lost porno of Hitler in his last bunkered days, end up traipsing onto a secret government military-corporate web and high-tailing it across the American desert. As improbable as it all seems, the book leaps convincingly from post-60's liberal wreckage to government stoogery and fascism to the empty acquisitiveness of American society in the 70's, DeLillo's florid language making the jumps delightful to follow. With such disparate elements woven so seamlessly together, this is a real work of art, one of DeLillo's unknown gems, and a light-on-its feet read.