Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I have many colleagues and friends to thank for their generous support during my work on this project: those in the Department of English at the University of South Carolina include Amitai Aviram, Meili Steele, and Ed Madden, who shared their knowledge of theory. When I was living abroad and facing a long wait for a newly translated piece by Walter Benjamin, Professor Aviram took the trouble to Xerox his copy and mail it to me. Professor Madden has on more than one occasion saved me a trip to the library by lending me his personal copies of theoretical books I do not own myself. I am grateful to other colleagues who were instrumental in my receiving a research grant in the summer of 1998—and to Robert Newman, the department chair, who found money to allow me to attend the premiere of DeLillos play Valparaiso in Cambridge , Massachusetts. On a Fulbright fellowship at Syddansk Universitet in Odense, Denmark, I ix was assigned to the Center for American Studies and was much stimulated by its faculty, especially Helle Porsdam, Clara Juncker, David Nye, and Jan Nordby Gretlund. The students in my fall 1996 kursusfag seminar, with whom I read DeLillo, were wonderfully sharp and jogged my thinking at every meeting . Thanks, Jan, Stephen, Lone, Pernille, and Paul. I appreciate the sage counsel of the readers for my articles (incorporated here in slightly different form) in Contemporary Literature and Modern Fiction Studies. I should also like to thank and half-seriously reproach the authors of the previous book-length studies of DeLillo: Thomas LeClair, Douglas Keesey, and Mark Osteen (I had the great privilege of reading Professor Osteens book in manuscript). Their work, along with that of Frank Lentricchia, is so good as to discourage the academic community from doing with the DeLillo canon what was done with that of Pynchon and others, that is, create whole shelves of scholarly discussion. At the same time, however, I know that they will want the dialogue to continue. Laura di Prête, my graduate assistant one semester, was a great help in tracking down secondary materials. Casey Clabough helped compile the bibliography . Kelly Innés helped with last-minute preparation of the manuscript. Justin Pittas-Giroux also helped, notably with some heroic photocopying. Barbara Pace, administrative assistant during the three years in which I served as my department's graduate director, took considerable pains to insure that a reluctant administrator had time for his research. Glen Scott Allen took the trouble to e-mail me his article on Ratner's Star at a time when my library did not subscribe to Postmodern Culture (an oversight since rectified). Jesse Kavadlo brought my attention to the DeLillo essays in the electronic journal Undercurrent . Richard Rorty was kind enough to answer a stranger's e-mailed query about a Heidegger reference. I also wish to thank Mr. DeLillo's agent, Lois Wallace, who arranged for me to receive an advance copy of The Body Artist months before its official publication. I had the good fortune to serve on the doctoral committee of Paul Price, whose 1995 dissertation on the artist figure in DeLillo helped me to seejust how multivalent this author is. Paul's bibliography was especially valuable to the early stages of my project. I am happy not to be alone in saluting the work of Curt Gardner, whose Internet site on DeLillo is one of the very best of its kind. It is gratifying to see him recognized in scholarly citations and in reviews and articles in the popular press. Another first-rate website is that of the Don DeLillo Society, maintained by Philip W. Nel of Kansas State University. One often reads touching tributes to long-suffering spouses and children left to their own devices during the long seasons of authorial travail. But as I look back over the period spent on this project it occurs to me that the work x Acknowledgments was frequently retarded because my children and parents and other relatives firmly insisted on my presence and participation in the daily business of family life. If ever I seemed impatient to return to my contemplation of the blinking cursor, I apologize, for I am fully aware that years hence one is unlikely to say: I wish I had spent more time at the office. Thanks, all, for slowing me down— I wouldn't for anything have missed...