Don DeLillo Boeken

While Eisenstein captured the impact of totalitarianism and Stalinism on the Russian people, DeLillo presents a compelling exploration of the Cold War and American culture, revealing the "swerve from evenness" that intertwines wondrous and horrifying events. The narrative begins with a vibrant prologue set during the 1951 Giants-Dodgers pennant race. Utilizing "super-omniscience," DeLillo weaves together the story of young Cotter Martin as he navigates the press box, the baseball diamond, and the stands, where historical figures like J. Edgar Hoover and Jackie Gleason are present. The "shot heard around the world" by Bobby Thomson sets in motion decades of events, all connected by the baseball. DeLillo reflects on how "it's all falling indelibly into the past," as he reconstructs this history with grace. The narrative shifts to 1992 Nevada, where Nick Shay, now the baseball's owner, reunites with former lover Kara Sax. Their past encounters serve as a lens through which DeLillo examines the Cold War's influence on personal lives, illustrating how global events subtly reshape existence. Over 800 pages, the reverse narrative strips away historical and cultural detritus, focusing on the bomb, the baseball, and the Bronx. The epilogue propels us to a near future dominated by capitalism and the Internet, marking a stark departure from the Cold War's complex emotions. Through interconnected stories of various characters, DeLillo cr

Deze eerste bundel van Don Delillo omvat negen verhalen uit de periode 1979-2011, die samen een staalkaart van het oeuvre van deze grote schrijver vormen. Een van de bepalende thema's is de angst voor controleverlies waaraan Delillo's personages ten prooi zijn. Paradoxaal genoeg belanden ze juist daardoor in situaties met een uiterst onzekere afloop of geven ze zich over aan fantasieën die een heel eigen leven gaan leiden: een vrouw leeft in angst vanwege aardbevingen om haar heen; mensen getuigen van de mysterieuze ontvoering van een kind uit een parkje. Toevallige ontmoetingen en kleine gebeurtenissen monden uit in een grootse climax.

Een Amerikaan in Griekenland raakt geïnteresseerd in een geheimzinnige sekte die rituele moorden pleegt.

Moll Robbins, journaliste, werkt bij het radicale tijdschrift 'Jachthond'. Zelf is Moll allang niet meer radicaal: als zwoegende broodschrijfster zoekt ze slechts nieuwe invalshoeken voor oude thema's. En het oudste thema is seks. Maar deze keer is de invalshoek wel heel bijzonder. In Manhattan wordt het lijk van een man in vrouwenkleren gevonden. Het slachtoffer had geprobeerd de enige nog bestaande kopie van een film te verkopen - een pornografische film, opgenomen in de bunker van Hitler tijdens de laatste dagen van het Derde Rijk. Het verdwenen stukje celluloid wordt door veel mensen gezocht: een invloedrijke senator, een kunsthandelaar, een gepensioneerde CIA-agent, een Vietnam-veteraan, een pornoverzamelaar, en de maffia. En er is één persoon - misschien wel van dezelfde lijst - die beweert te weten hoe hij aan het unieke nazi-materiaal kan komen. Een koper en een verkoper op een markt waar niet met geld gehandeld wordt, maar met chantage, marteling en corruptie. En waar iemand die op zoek is naar een goed verhaal wel eens terecht kan komen tussen de overlijdensberichten.

De terroristische aanslag op het WTC heeft een enorme invloed op het leven van enkele mensen.

Na de zelfmoord van haar man ontdekt een performance-kunstenares dat er een spookachtige jongeman in huis woont die hele conversaties herhaalt die de echtelieden in het huis gevoerd hebben.

Nulpunt gaat over een man die alles op alles zet om bij zijn vrouw te kunnen blijven. En over een zoon die nader tot zijn vader probeert te komen. Ross Lockhart is een rijke man van in de zestig. Zijn jongere vrouw Artis lijdt aan een ongeneeslijke ziekte. Hij is investeerder in een geheime instelling waar lichamen worden ingevroren en worden bewaard tot het moment waarop de geneeskunde vooruitgang heeft geboekt. Ross en zijn zoon Jeffrey nemen daar afscheid van Artis. Ross is echter niet op zoek naar onsterfelijkheid. Hij wordt gedreven door liefde voor Artis, die inmiddels al is ingevroren en zonder wie hij niet verder kan leven. Deze liefde doet hem besluiten zich aan de dood over te geven, tegen de zin van zijn zoon, die met volle teugen van het leven geniet. Don DeLillo heeft met Nulpunt een meesterwerk geschreven: een ode aan taal en aan menselijkheid.

This first volume in the Library of America Don DeLillo edition features three essential novels from the 1980s, each accompanied by new prefaces from the author. In The Names (1982), DeLillo's breakthrough work, James Axton, a risk analyst, investigates ritual murders linked to a cult fascinated by ancient languages, leading to profound reflections on identity, disconnection, and language. White Noise (1985), a blend of campus satire and midlife character study, presents a darkly humorous portrayal of postmodern America, where brand names infiltrate daily life and individuals are reduced to their data. Libra (1988) serves as a counter-history of the JFK assassination, offering a nuanced view of Lee Harvey Oswald and exploring the complexities of historical narratives. DeLillo notes that the novel, while rooted in history, also seeks to clarify and balance it. The volume includes two rare essays: "American Blood," a 1983 Rolling Stone article addressing the JFK assassination and its surrounding speculation, and "Silhouette City," which examines extremist right-wing groups and the rise of neo-Nazism in the U.S. Together, these works showcase DeLillo's incisive exploration of contemporary themes.

"There's a long drive. It's gonna be. I believe. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant." -- Russ Hodges, October 3, 1951 On the fiftieth anniversary of "The Shot Heard Round the World," Don DeLillo reassembles in fiction the larger-than-life characters who on October 3, 1951, witnessed Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Jackie Gleason is razzing Toots Shor in Leo Durocher's box seats; J. Edgar Hoover, basking in Sinatra's celebrity, is about to be told that the Russians have tested an atomic bomb; and Russ Hodges, raw-throated and excitable, announces the game -- the Giants and the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds in New York. DeLillo's transcendent account of one of the iconic events of the twentieth century is a masterpiece of American sportswriting.

From the author of White Noise (winner of the National Book Award) and Zero K In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy , Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald 's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • An “eerie, brilliant, and touching” (The New York Times) modern classic about mass culture and the numbing effects of technology. “Tremendously funny . . . A stunning performance from one of our most intelligent novelists.”—The New Republic The inspiration for the award-winning major motion picture starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig Jack Gladney teaches Hitler Studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America where his colleagues include New York expatriates who want to immerse themselves in “American magic and dread.” Jack and his fourth wife, Babette, bound by their love, fear of death, and four ultramodern offspring, navigate the usual rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. Then a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives, an “airborne toxic event” unleashed by an industrial accident. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the “white noise” engulfing the Gladney family—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

From one of America's foremost living writers comes a brilliant and disturbing comedy that mixes laughter and terror as it uncovers the boundaries of sanity in all of us.

"Bill Gray, a famous, reclusive novelist, emerges from his isolation when he becomes the key figure in an event staged to force the release of a poet hostage in Beirut. As Bill enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms, Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover - and Bill's. An extraordinary novel from Don DeLillo about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist, Mao II explores a world in which the novelist's power to influence the inner life of a culture now belongs to bomb-makers and gunmen. Mao II is the work of an ingenious writer at the height of his powers." -- Publisher's description.

At Logos College in West Texas, huge young men, vacuum-packed into shoulder pads and shiny helmets, play football with intense passion. During an uncharacteristic winning season, the perplexed and distracted running back Gary Harkness has periodic fits of nuclear glee; he is fueled and shielded by his fear of and fascination with nuclear conflict. Among some of the players, the terminologies of football and nuclear war—the language of end zones—become interchangeable, and their meaning deteriorates as the collegiate year runs its course. In this triumphantly funny novel, Don DeLillo explores the the borders of organized violence.

"A whimsical, surrealistic excursion into the modern scientific mind." -- The New YorkerOne of DeLillo's first novels, Ratner's Star  follows Billy, the genius adolescent, who is recruited to live in obscurity, underground, as he tries to help a panel of estranged, demented, and yet lovable scientists communicate with beings from outer space. It is a mix of quirky humor, science, mathematical theories, as well as the complex emotional distance and sadness people feel. Ratner's Star demonstrates both the thematic and prosaic muscularity that typifies DeLillo's later and more recent works, like The Names (which is also available in Vintage Contemporaries).  "His most spectacularly inventive novel." -- The New York Times 

Alex Hauser left New York and gave up easel painting to live and create land art in the southwestern desert. Now seventy, he has had his second massive stroke. His young third wife Lia believes that somewhere deep inside his mind is still alive, but Alex’s ex-wife and son, Toinette and Sean, have come to this remote place to help him die. Scarlet four o’clock, terminal sedation, night blooming cereus, respiratory depression, sacred datura, persistent vegetative state, love-lies-bleeding, life long devotion: the names of desert flowers and the language of death are equally potent and mysterious in this haunting and urgent play. Like Wit and Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Love-Lies-Bleeding explores the perilous question of when life ends—or should. It is also a play about a son looking for the father who abandoned him, and it is about the odd emotional tenacity of relationships long-ended, about shared language as the antidote to loss. Praise for Don DeLillo’s previous play, Valparaiso: 'May be the novelist’s most satisfying work since White Noise . . . Valparaiso is art at its finest' Boston Globe 'Indisputably electric . . . fresh and pertinent' New York Times

Michael Majeski finds himself in a surprising situation when he thinks he is flying to Valparaiso, Indiana. Through a series of mix-ups, Michael finds himself first flying to Valparaiso, Florida and then eventually lands in Valparaiso, Chile. Even more unexpected is the media onslaught that follows. He finds himself pursued by every kind of interviewer and the object of fascination for the American audience. As his fame grows, Michael's personal life begins to erode. He and his wife Livia struggle to keep their marriage and their lives intact despite the growing intensity of the media spotlight. Ultimately, Michael must choose between his sanity and his celebrity

In this potent and beautiful novel, the writer The New York Times calls "prophetic about twenty-first-century America" looks into the mind and heart of a scholar who was recruited to help the military conceptualize the war. Richard Elster is at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker and by Elster's daughter Jessica—an "otherworldly" woman from New York. The three of them build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event turns detachment into colossal grief, and it is a human mystery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.

The narrator of this novel is Bucky Wunderlick, a Dylan-Jagger amalgam who finds he's gone as far as he knows how. Mid tour he leaves his rock band and holes up in a dingy East Village apartment, in Great Jones Street. The plot revolves around his retreat and a drug designed to silence dissidents.

"David Bell embodies the American dream. He's twenty-eight, has survived office coups, scandals, and beaten lesser rivals, to become an extremely successful TV exec. The images that flicker across America's screens, the fantasies that enthrall viewers, they are of his making. But David's dream is turning sour, nightmarish. He wants reality, to touch, feel and record what is real. He takes a camera and journeys across America in a mad, roving quest to discover and capture some sense of his own and his country's past, present and future. Americana is Don DeLillo's brilliant first novel."

In this remarkable novel of menace and mystery Pammy and Lyle Wynant are an attractive, modern couple who seem to have it all. Yet behind their "ideal" life is a lingering boredom and quiet desperation which leads both of them into separate but equally fatal adventures. And still they remain untouched, "players" indifferent to the violence that surrounds them, and that they have helped to create.

'A brilliant excursion into the decadence of contemporary culture' Sunday Times Eric Packer is a twenty-eight-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager. We join him on what will become a particularly eventful April day in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Manhattan. He's on a personal odyssey, to get a haircut. Sitting in his stretch limousine as it moves across town, he finds the city at a virtual standstill because the President is visiting, a rapper's funeral is proceeding, and a violent protest is being staged in Times Square by anti-globalist groups. Most worryingly, Eric's bodyguards are concerned that he may be a target . . . An electrifying study in affectlessness, infused with deep cynicism and measured detachment; a harsh indictment of the life-denying tendencies of capitalism; as brutal a dissection of the American dream as Wolfe's Bonfire or Ellis's Psycho, Cosmopolis is a caustic prophecy all too quickly realized. 'A prose-poem about New York . . . DeLillo has always been good at telling us where we're heading . . . we ignore him at our peril' Blake Morrison, Guardian

"It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. The conversation ranges from a survey telescope in North-central Chile to a favorite brand of bourbon to Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity. Then something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed"--Publisher.

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.