Product Description

In novel after award-winning novel, Don DeLillo (b. 1936) exhibits his deep distrust of language and the way it can conceal as much as it reveals. Not surprisingly, DeLillo treats interviews with the same care and caution. For years, he shunned them altogether. As his fiction grew in popularity, especially with "White Noise," and he began to confront the historical record of our times in books such as "Libra," DeLillo felt compelled to make himself available to his readers. Despite claims by interviewers about his elusiveness, he now hides in plain sight.

In "Conversations with Don DeLillo," the renowned author makes clear his distinctions between historical fact and his own creative leaps, especially in his masterwork, "Underworld." There it seems the true events are unbelievable and imaginary ones not. Throughout long profiles and conversations -- ranging from 1982 to 2001 and published in the "New Yorker," the "Paris Review," and "Rolling Stone" -- DeLillo parries personal inquiries. He counters with the details of his work habits, his understanding of the novelist's role in the world, and his sense of our media-saturated culture. A number of interviews detail DeLillo's less-heralded work in the theater, from "The Day Room" to a recent production of "Valparaiso," itself a stinging satire on the interviewing process.

DeLillo also finds time to comment on his nonliterary passions, primarily the movies and baseball. Lee Harvey Oswald also inspires much extraliterary discussion, not just as the subject of "Libra," but as a figure who, like the terrorists always lurking in DeLillo's fictions, captures our attention in ways novelists cannot. For DeLillo, a writer who eschews celebrity, the ultimate response might be the one he offered in his very first interview, paraphrasing Joyce: "Silence, exile, cunning, and so on. It's my nature to keep quiet about most things." Fortunately for his many readers and fans, he proves himself here to be a talker.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2506105 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 185 pages

Review
"It's no accident that my first novel was called Americana. This was... a statement of my intention to use the whole picture, the whole culture." - Don DeLillo"

From the Publisher
* Interviews that range over 19 years covering the American novelist's major works and his plays

* Gathers conversations from 1982 to 2001 from such publications as the "New Yorker," "Rolling Stone," and the "Paris Review," and an unpublished interview with the editor

* Delivers passionate and incisive talks from a novelist known to be leery of the whole interview process

About the Author
Thomas DePietro is an independent scholar based in Scarsdale, New York. His work has been published in "Kirkus Reviews," the "Hudson Review," "Commonweal," and other periodicals.

Customer Reviews

great resource for writers and fans
I really love this book and highly recommend it anyone with a strong interest in literature and writing. As a writer I find this book along with others in the "Literary Conversations Series" (the one for Philip Roth is equally interesting and useful) to be fascinating and indispensible as a resource. I wish my creative writing teachers in school had handed them out as parting gifts, it might have saved me some frustration. If you're like me and have spent too much time on the internet nerding out in search of interviews, musings and work routines, etc. you'll be surprised by the wealth of material here. If you want to know more of Delillo's thoughts on writing, his habits, his ideas, etc. then this is the greatest thing in the world. If not, you may not share my enthusiasm. (I'm kind of baffled they don't do a better job marketing these to aspiring writers. I discovered them by digging in the stacks of a giant college library. In my opinion these are of much greater use than the self-helpy style writing books that are more ubiquitous in bookstores, etc. People like Delillo, Roth, Bellow, Morrison, Garcia-Marquez, whomever you like, know what it takes to write great fiction and are often surprisingly candid and thorough in describing their processes.) Perhaps the best compliment I can give this book is that I borrowed it from the library 4 or 5 times before I broke down and bought it--it's great for bedside encouragement and writerly solidarity.