Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America

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Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America is a fresh and engaging study of “last things” in Don DeLillo’s works-things like death, mourning, and the decline of the American empire, but then also the apocalypse, the last judgment, and the end of the world more generally. Michael Naas untangles complex themes in short, witty chapters that highlight and celebrate DeLillo’s inventive and playful writing, employing a novel approach to literary criticism. Making no use of secondary sources, the book is entirely a discussion of DeLillo’s work, accessible to any level of readership while maintaining a firm grasp of the theory necessary to make this unique argument.
And yet, this book is also about all the things that double or shadow those last things in the very same works, like the wonder of language or the radiance of everyday events. From Americana (1971) up through Zero K (2016) and The Silence (2020), and perhaps like no other American author, Don DeLillo has created meaning by contrasting, juxtaposing or, as Naas calls it here, “contrabanding” first and last things, conflicting or opposing forces such as life and death, creation and destruction, consumption and waste, everyday wonder and apocalyptic ruin, the origins of language and the end of the world. In his adept demonstration of how DeLillo has returned repeatedly to these “last things,” Naas shows how the works of Don DeLillo have been there for more than half a century to remind us of one simple and yet profound truth-nothing lasts forever.

Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, USA. He is the author of Don DeLillo, American Original: Drugs, Weapons, Erotica, and Other Literary Contraband (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Abbreviations of Works by Don DeLillo
Preface: Last Things
1. Countermovements
America…New York, New York…“USA! USA! USA!”…The West, the Desert, and, Inevitably, California…Automobiles…Airplanes…Beyond America
2. Countercurrents
Sports, Games, Sports Gaming…Academia…Philosophy…Technologies of Life and Death
3. Counterproductions
Empire, Capital, the Corporation…Money…Advertising…Consumerism and Waste
4. Counterhistories
American History 2.0…Terrorism…9-11, The Twin Towers…Creation and Ruin…War and Peace
5. Countermeasures
Self and Others…The Individual and the Crowd…Prophylactics and Purifications…The Shit, the Shower, the Shave, and the Haircut
6. Counterforces
Life and Death…Mourning…The Afterlife…The Apocalypse…The Omega Point, the Death Drive
7. Counterworlds
Space…Time…Space-Time…Religion… Miracles…The Everyday…Earth, Moon, Sun…Radiance
Conclusion: Silent Mode (The Future of Contraband)
Acknowledgements

“Michael Naas’s Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America displays a thorough knowledge and an impressive thematic cartography of Don DeLillo’s oeurve. This invaluable synthesis, which consider’s DeLillo’s work through the lens of contrabanding, illuminates the contradictions that make America what it is and confirms DeLillo’s magisterial and uninterrupted examination of America as a country and as an idea.” —Karim Daanoune, Associate Professor in American Literature, Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier, France“In Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America, Michael Naas artfully delineates the dense web of thematic crosscurrents and connections that run through DeLillo’s entire oeuvre. Naas foregrounds the pleasure of reading DeLillo, allowing the humour of the works to be reflected in his own distinctive and accessible writing style. Naas reads DeLillo’s fiction as a body of theoretical enquiry in itself rather than applying existing theory and criticism, making this an innovative and necessary addition to scholarship.” —Rebecca Harding, Independent Scholar, UK

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