Welcome to Contemporary American Literature! For our first few classes, we will be exploring the work of Don DeLillo, who is famous for his ability to tap into some of the more disturbing currents of contemporary life. Long before the Twin Towers fell on September 11th, DeLillo was fascinated by the intersection of technology and terror in the twentieth century; in Mao II, and throughout his many works of fiction, he ponders what role the writer can have in such a climate. Can the writer compete with the terrorist? Whose narrative of the contemporary world will hold sway and sear itself onto the consciousness of its listeners? In the piece we read for class, "In the Ruins of the Future," written in October 2001, DeLillo asks some of these very questions with the urgency that many writers and artists and everyday people experienced in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Please think of DeLillo's essay with an eye both to how his work can help us talk about Mao II and how it can lead us to some of the larger questions we will ask in our course.
Our course will be guided by the notion that history and literature are often inextricable: that is, we can't necessarily separate between the things that our favorite authors write and the events going on in the world around them. I am looking forward to our class this term!
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