Don DeLillo: Three Novels of the 1980s (LOA #363) by Don Delillo

Don DeLillo: Three Novels of the 1980s (LOA #363) by Don Delillo

A definitive edition of a modern master: three essential works that reveal his incomparable style, dark humor, and uncanny sensitivity to the complexities of "living in dangerous times"

Includes White Noise, now a major motion picture starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig

This first volume in the Library of America Don DeLillo edition presents three indispensable novels from the 1980s, published here with new prefaces from the author. 

The Names (1982) was DeLillo's breakthrough novel, a book that, as he reflects here, spanned a "broader expanse" than his earlier novels. James Axton, a "risk analyst" tasked with assessing dangers for his corporate clients from terrorism and other forms of political upheaval, uncovers evidence of ritual murders committed by a cult obsessed with ancient languages. The investigations of these crimes yields a profound series of meditations on identity, disconnection, and the nature of language itself. 

Part campus satire, part midlife character study, and part fever dream of a hyperreality that has become uncannily familiar, the National Book Award-winning White Noise (1985) creates a terrifying yet wickedly funny portrait of a postmodern America that is still recognizably ours, a world where children chant brand names in their sleep, university professors "read nothing but cereal boxes," and "you are the sum of your data." 

Three years in the research and writing, Libra (1988) offers a magnificent counter-history of the JFK assassination and a nuanced portrait of the president's murderer. DeLillo has observed that "the novel, working within history, is also outside it, correcting, clearing up, finding balances and rhythms." The result is a revelatory new depiction of a defining event in twentieth-century history. 

Rounding out the volume are two hard-to-find essays directly related to the novels: "American Blood," the 1983 Rolling Stone article that was DeLillo's first effort to grapple with the JFK assassination and the welter of information and speculation the events of the killing and Oswald's own murder by Jack Ruby; and "Silhouette City," an assessment of extremist right-wing groups and the troubling presence of neo-Nazism in the United States.

When Don DeLillo was twenty-three years old, he published his first short tale. Since then, he has published twelve books, the most recent of which being White Noise (1985), which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra (1988), a novel about President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 1997, he wrote the bestseller Underworld, and in 1999, he received the Jerusalem Prize, which is granted to a writer whose work conveys the idea of individual liberty in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is also an American Academy of Arts and Letters member.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781598537338
ISBN 10	1598537334
Title	Don DeLillo: Three Novels of the 1980s (LOA #363)
Author	Don Delillo
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	The Library of America
Year published	2022-11-08
Number of pages	1100
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.