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...
... middle of paper ...
...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.
Alfredo Corchado — is the author of the book named " Midnight in Mexico:A Reporter's Journey through a Country's Descent into Darkness”. We are, probably, all interested in finding out the facts, news, and gossips about Mexico. This country was always associated with something mysterious. For me personally, the title of the book seemed to be very gripping, I was interested in revealing the secrets of life in Mexico, thus I decided to read this book. I was really curious, what can Alfredo Corchado tell me about the life in this country, the country, where the constant massacre is the picture, people used to see. In his book, the author tells the reader about the real situations, which took place in Mexico, reveals the secrets of the people’s lives and tells the story from the “inside”. He describes the way he lives his life, and does his work. The " Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey through a Country's Descent into Darkness” is a memoir. Author tries to transform his own experience into the story line. Corchado shows the reader the darkest episodes of Mexican society, while relying on his own experience.
Brown, Victoria Bissel, ed. Introduction. Twenty Years at Hull-House. 1910. By Jane Addams. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. 1-38.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
Kempe, Margery. "From The Book of Margery Kempe." The Norton Anthology of Literature By Women. 2nd ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 18-24.
The Story and Its Writer by, Ann Charters. Bedford Press. 1999.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Peterson, Linda H., John C. Brereton, Joseph Bizup, Anne E. Fernald, and Melissa A. Goldthwaite. The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. 195-99. Print.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1989.
...y uses anecdotes and stories of women in the 17th and 18th centuries to provide evidence to the reader and demonstrate the roles women filled and how they filled those roles. Furthermore, she illustrates the individuality in each woman’s story. Although in several of the stories the women may be filling the same roles, the uniqueness of the situation varies from woman to woman. Ulrich’s use of period stories helps add to the credibility of the arguments she makes. She makes the reader feel the weight of responsibility on the shoulders of colonial New England women. A sense of appreciation is gained by the reader for the sheer number of roles fulfilled by the women of New England. In addition, Ulrich’s real life accounts also give valuable insight to life as it was during this time period in American history and the silent heroes behind it – the wives of New England.
Charters, Ann & Samuel. Literature and its Writers. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 137-147. Print.
The idea of universal preschool (UP) has recently exploded across America. Who wouldn’t want cheap or free early education for their children? From a distance the whole idea looks as if there’s nothing wrong with it, but close up it’s a different story. While parents will be saving money, the schools are going to be losing it, with funds being spread even thinner than before. In conjunction to this, the government would be the ones providing the money, and therefore, the curriculum. The trouble is that they would then take the “cookie-cutter” approach, shaping kids’ minds the way they see fit. This tactic could ideally lead to the cure of our economic gaps that Thomas L. Friedman explains in his renowned book, The World is Flat, but will only
How to research or ideas fit in with the assigned reading. The study was able to illustrate the dynamics of Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory and Aker’s Social Learning Theory through the simple fact that the study focuses on social behaviors, particularly deviant behaviors that can be the result of society or interactions. These deviant behaviors are typically learned actions as a survival mechanism due to a deteriorating community. Allen and Lo constructed their study from Anderson’s (1999) study of black male behavior within poor neig...
Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, a 2011 book. Print. The. Gilman, Charlotte.
Don DeLillo’s ‘Videotape’ is a short story of man who is absolutely captivated by some footage on the news that can be described as both, raw and shocking. The footage is being repeatedly played over and over. It depicts a young girl with a camcorder travelling in the backseat of her family’s car who happens to be filming a man driving a Dodge behind them. She continues aiming the camera at the man and filming until, suddenly, he is shot and murdered. The man watching the tape at home is clearly mesmerized and fascinated with the footage to the extent that he was trying to get his wife to watch it with him. This story portrays society’s utter fascination of shocking and disturbing content relating to death and other horrible events unless they themselves are involved. This, along with other characteristics, clearly suggests that “Videotape” is a piece of postmodern literature. This report will analyze and describe why “Videotape” belongs to postmodern literature through the in-depth analysis of the selected passage and a brief breakdown of the story as a whole.