The thirteen novels Don DeLillo has written, between 1971 and 2003, have earned him a reputation as one of America’s leading contemporary writers. Academic studies have made a case for him as “the most gifted stylist in American letters today”, while his engagement with subtle changes in American society has established him as an important influence on younger novelists, like David Foster Wallace who describes DeLillo as a “true prophet of . . . U.S. fiction.” DeLillo’s novels anatomise the media and technological obsessions of America, finding a mix of modern paranoia and primitive fear at the heart of the contemporary self which he explores by writing about terrorism, celebrity, writers, mathematicians and the crucial shaping events of

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First published 03 October 2003

Citation: Burn, Stephen. "Don DeLillo". The Literary Encyclopedia. 3 October 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1214, accessed 9 February 2010.]