Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T12:45:16.719Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - The American Southwest

“Texas Is the Reason”: Running Dog, Point Omega, and DeLillo’s “Southwest”

from Part I - Places

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2022

Jesse Kavadlo
Affiliation:
Maryville University of Saint Louis, Missouri
Get access

Summary

Don DeLillo is not considered a regionalist writer in the American literary tradition, yet this chapter explores a primary geographical region in which his novels are often set, the Southwest, with emphasis on both urban and desert landscapes. DeLillo's early novel Running Dog and his later work Point Omega are the chapter's main examples. While DeLillo is not a regionalist in any conventional sense, the chapter explains how DeLillo's fiction disrupts literary conventions of time and space in his depiction of the American Southwest, thereby asking readers to consider a reading of DeLillo in which postmodern literary experimentalism combines with a punk rock aesthetic rooted in graffiti and political art (hence the chapter's title, which borrows a a lyric from the Misfits, a band named after a famous mid-century Western film).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Apitzsch, Julia. “The Art of Terror – The Terror of Art: Don DeLillo’s Still-Life of 9/11, Giorgio Morandi, Gerhard Richter, and Performance Art.” In Terrorism, Media and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo Edited by Schneck, Peter and Schweighauser, Phillip. Continuum, 2010: 93108.Google Scholar
Arac, Jonathan. The Emergence of Literary Narrative: 1820–1860. Harvard University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Barrett, Laura. “Mao II and Mixed Media.” In Don DeLillo: Mao II, Underworld, Falling Man. Edited by Olster, Stacey. Continuum, 2011: 4967.Google Scholar
Boxall, Peter. Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction. Routledge, 2006.Google Scholar
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. Verso, 1990.Google Scholar
DeCurtis, Anthony. “‘An Outsider in This Society’: An Interview with Don DeLillo.” In Introducing Don DeLillo. Edited by Lentricchia., Frank Duke University Press, 1991: 4366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Running Dog. Knopf, 1978.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Libra. Viking, 1988.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Point Omega. Scribner, 2010.Google Scholar
Lentricchia, Frank. “The American Writer as Bad Citizen.” In Introducing Don DeLillo. Edited by Lentricchia, Frank. Duke University Press, 1991: 16.Google Scholar
Marshall, Kate. “What Are the Novels of the Anthropocene? American Fiction in Geological Time.” American Literary History, 27.3, June 7, 2015: 523–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClure, John. “Postmodern Romance: Don DeLillo and the Age of Conspiracy.” In Introducing Don DeLillo. Edited by Lentricchia, Frank. Duke University Press, 1991: 99116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molesworth, Charles. “Don DeLillo’s Perfect Starry Night.” In Introducing Don DeLillo. Edited by Lentricchia, Frank. Duke University Press, 1991: 143–56.Google Scholar
Steiner, Wendy. “Look Who’s Modern Now” The New York Times Book Review. Oct. 10, 1999.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×