Don DeLillo Essay -- Biography Biographies Essays

Don DeLillo Throughout the twentieth-century, humanity has had the privilege of reading the works of many fine authors. Authors such as Toni Morrison, James Joyce, and even Robert Pinsky all come to mind. But when one thinks of the most prolific writers in the twentieth century, Don DeLillo is certainly one of them. Born in New York City in a small Italian neighborhood in the Bronx, DeLillo was destined to be a writer. He attended Fordham University where, upon graduation, he worked for an advertising agency. Dissatisfied, he left the agency in 1964 to begin working as a freelance writer. As a freelance writer, sustaining a living on a mere two thousand dollars a year. DeLillo wrote on a vast amount of subjects including computers and furniture and began to work on his first novel, Americana. It was his first published novel that took him nearly four years to finish. Although DeLillo encountered many obstacles during work on Americana, he persevered overcoming "constant interruptions to make money" (Charters 428). It was during this time that DeLillo knew that he was a writer. Other novels were born after Americana. End Zone, which was written shortly thereafter, also achieved significant success. During the next twelve years, DeLillo wrote five more novels including the breakthrough White Noise that was published in 1985 and for which he won the coveted American Book Award. Other novels followed including Libra in 1988 and the 1991 debut of Mao II, a novel about terrorism and political violence which won DeLillo the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. In addition to his novels, DeLillo also wrote plays, short stories and essays on various contemporary subjects. In 1997, however, DeLillo would prove to the writing world tha... ...and research what is going on in their domain. In addition, Underworld is a novel that encompasses loose-knit fabrications of the tensions, preoccupations, and manias of modern America. Whether they are about the Cold War or our love for the media and its flattening of character, we as a society rely on sources that are not relevant to our own thinking. This was DeLillo’s ultimate goal when he wrote Underworld. The ability to look at things and rely on one's own source of thinking to interpret what they mean is important to DeLillo. He encourages his readers to allocate their resources and find out the validity in their world and the problems that could come into it. Works Cited Charters, Ann, ed. The Story and Its Writer. Fifth Edition. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999. DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1997.