The novel follows Professor Jack Gladney, who teaches Hitler studies at a small liberal arts college in rural New York. He lives there with his fourth wife Babette and their blended family. Jack is obsessed with avoiding death and stockpiles iodine tablets in case of a chemical spill from a nearby plant. One day while shopping at the local mall with his family, a strange toxic cloud appears and they have to evacuate. This event sparks an existential crisis in...
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DeLillo’s Running Dog, originally published in 1978, follows Moll Robbins, a New York City journalist trailing the activities of an influential senator. In the process, she is dragged into the black market world of erotica and shady, infatuated men, where a cat-and-mouse chase for an erotic film rumored to “star” Adolph Hitler leads to trickery, maneuvering, and bloodshed. With streamlined prose and a thriller’s narrative pace, Running Dog is a bright star in the modern master’s early career.
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The prologue of Underworld is a fictionalized account of The Shot Heard 'Round the World, a home run by Bobby Thomson in 1951. The HR won the National League pennant for the New York Giants against their cross-town rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. In DeLillo’s account, the game-winning ball is caught by a young black fan named Cotter Martin. Meanwhile, J Edgar Hoover is also in the stands that day. During the game, he is informed of the game of the...
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In Zero K , Jeffrey Lockhart’s father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau. Her health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled. Bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to life. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say “an uncertain farewell” to her as she surrenders her body. These are...
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