Transmission incoming from the insane world of Ratner’s Star, DeLillo’s fourth novel, a major change in his fiction and his most difficult text, underappreciated as precedent for his later turns on encyclopedic form in Libra and Underworld. Ratner’s also has, though, tons of connections to earlier works like Americana and End Zone. In this episode DDSWTNP celebrate Ratner’s fiftieth anniversary with a wholly new re-reading of a book that remains for us hilarious, pleasurable, and a huge reading challenge. We consider how Ratner’s Star, like any masterpiece, teaches us how to read its fabulations from its first page on. We examine its relentless juxtaposition of minds and bodies, as well as its dissection of the impulses toward pattern, order, and other “convenient fictions.” We ask what kinds of narrative experimentation with time and perspective DeLillo carries out, especially in the quest for an ultra-logical metalanguage in Part 2. We wonder about how science and math as fields of knowledge and uncertainty relate to DeLillo’s later turns to examining history. We do our best to try to understand the relationships of DeLillo’s “mohole” physics to Einstein’s relativity, and we offer a reading of a Jesuit’s interrogation of “red ant metaphysics” and “premature genuflection” that marks a new turn in DeLillo’s satires of his Catholic education. We close by disagreeing with a 1976 panning review of the novel as a pale imitation of Pynchon. As we say in the episode, Ratner’s fiftieth makes for a great transition into our Summer of Underworld – look for a string of episodes on that big novel from us in the next few months! Enjoy the Ratnerama rendition of our intro music, too. And the rats and the bats and the stars. And in a nod to all ARS Extants out there, this episode is being sent into the podcast universe at exactly 14:28:57 (China Standard Time).

Anticipating a summer to be spent exploring Underworld, DDSWTNP in Episode 35 take a small detour to a DeLillo short story, “Creation,” which distills DeLillo’s omnipresent motifs of Romanticism and Christian mythos, transports literal and figurative, and disillusionment with the maintenance of Edenic experience — perhaps especially for the American tourist trying to escape from, rather than into, their vacation world. This 1979 story of infidelity, manipulation, and fantasy depicts repeated journeys to a small, jammed Caribbean airport that draw thoughts about godliness, meaning, and mortal fear from an unnamed narrator who has the impulse to write but perhaps not the skills and honed perception. In “Creation” we find many unexpected things: stirring parallels to the space orbits of “Human Moments in World War III”; a precursor to the voice of James Axton to emerge amid Mediterranean islands three years later; and of course new turns on the key DeLillo topos of plane travel and the contingencies of leaving the earth for the sky. Elements of journeys in Americana, Mao II, Cosmopolis, and Valparaiso come up, and we conclude that Rupert the cab driver may be the hero of this tale, or the figure who understands these affairs the best. We give listeners quite a few reasons to read or re-read this under-appreciated story that DeLillo would later choose to place first in The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories (2011). The cover image incorporates part of Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98) by Paul Gauguin, who seems the likely reference point when the narrator of “Creation” says of his canceled seat on a flight out, “I’ll marry a native woman and learn how to paint.”

In Episode 34 DDSWTNP sit down for a revelatory talk with Tom LeClair, a founding critic in the study of DeLillo, his longtime friend and liaison to the literary world, and a figure who has both written fiction shaped by DeLillo’s and (he suggests) seen his own stories turned into scenes and dialogue by DeLillo himself. We get into LeClair’s relationship with DeLillo going back more than forty years, starting from the time the author sent him a copy of Ratner’s Star and proceeding to a 1979 interview in Athens that illuminated a then rather reclusive and secretive writer, including the story behind a card DeLillo handed out in those years reading “I don’t want to talk about it.” We also ask LeClair questions about his many readings of DeLillo’s and others’ works over the years, starting from his major books In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel (1987) and The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction (1989), studies that initiated LeClair’s career-long examination of encyclopedic works that form categories of “systext,” “monsterpiece,” and others he has defined in his many major magazine and newspaper reviews and in his current substack. What does LeClair make of the many mentions of “systems” in Underworld? What does a line from Point Omega suggest to him about the possibility someday of a DeLillo biography? What does LeClair mean when he calls DeLillo a thoroughly “intuitive” writer and an artist obsessed his whole life with embodiment, birth, death, and fear? Is “mystery” the right word for what drives DeLillo’s narrative seeking, and is Catholicism a useful lens? What to make of the ending of Zero K? Why did DeLillo want to visit Beirut with LeClair? And what do these two talk about when they have lunch together? The interview also gets into depth on the many comparisons LeClair sees with his own fiction, its set of Kierkegaardian maneuvers through the Greece-based world of basketball player Michael Keever, the hero of Passing Off (1996) who begins for LeClair a series of examinations of games, terrorism, and some familiar DeLillo territory that extends through the four other Passing novels that LeClair has published in the thirty years since. Cover photograph by Kinga Owczennikow. A native of Poland, Kinga Owczennikow is currently based in New York City. She holds a BA (Hons) in Photography from the University for the Creative Arts in the UK. Kinga is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, a member of the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel and an exhibiting member of the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City. Kinga had a solo exhibition “The secret paths of Hong Kong” at the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw, in 2011. Her photographic work has also been exhibited internationally in group shows. Her first photobook "Framing the World" was published by Ephemere in Tokyo, in 2025.

“Here they come, marching into American sunlight.” In Episode 33, DDSWTNP follow Mao II from this opening line into a chilling view of a mass Moonie wedding at Yankee Stadium, and on into the story of reclusive novelist Bill Gray, whose work, maybe, has a chance of deprogramming the mind and language of Karen Janney, one of the participants in that wedding – but maybe not, given the totalizing dominance by images that this novel documents. Our conversation delves into the several rich dialogues Mao II is known for, especially that about (quoting Bill) the “curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists,” the differing attempts by writers and bomb-makers to “alter the inner life of the culture” and “make raids on human consciousness” that DeLillo juxtaposes in this novel, which follows the writer from his cloying “bunker” to London, Athens, and (almost) Lebanon, while also taking in scenes from Iran, China, and the homeless encampments of lower Manhattan. Throughout we discuss the many followers of and sequels to Mao and Maoism DeLillo analyzes, all the ways his characters foolishly seek, outside the values of deep reading and the novel, scenes of “total vision” and messianic “total being,” the “lightning-lit” language of information and the terrorist’s mastery of “the language of being noticed.” We examine in detail as well the effects of Andy Warhol’s work as DeLillo sees it; what it means that readers never learn much at all about the content of Bill’s famous novels; the commonalities he has with Rushdie, Salinger, Pynchon, and DeLillo himself; and why terrorist go-between George Haddad loves word processors so much. We also have a lot to say about the ailing, injured body and spirit of Bill Gray, as well as the simplicity of spoons and what they might teach us about objects and art. Mao II is a book that, as we say in the episode, sums up much of the DeLillo that came before it, lays the groundwork for the masterpiece to come, and contains so many of what have come to seem over the years since 1991 (and over the run of our episodes) the foundational DeLillo ideas and questions, especially ones about politics, violence, and images. Hope you’ll have a listen and, if moved, tell us what you think!

We do have our favorite but surely wouldn’t mind if Thomas Pynchon won the Nobel Prize too . . . and in Episode 32 we finish off 2025 by considering Shadow Ticket, the noir detective take on the 1930s by a writer who was surely a key influence on the early DeLillo (we read from an unpublished DeLillo letter summarizing that relationship) but who also seems to have been reading works like Running Dog over the years (or so we imagine in unpacking Shadow Ticket scenes invoking Chaplin and a “German Political Celebrity” named Hitler). We try to understand how Pynchon’s latest examination of historical and potential fascism works in its 1932 setting, ranging from Milwaukee to Hungary, where reluctant protagonist and “sentimental ape” and “sap” Hicks McTaggart keeps adding on to his P.I. “tickets” in a strange search for a Wisconsin heiress and her Jewish musician lover but also what might ultimately be justice (a far from simple thing). Shadow Ticket is loads of serious fun, where Pynchon manages to examine the direst of turning points amidst scenes of bowling alley and motorcycle lore, dairy strikes, Prohibition’s black markets, dance hall and speakeasy glamour, and something called “Radio-Cheez.” Bela Lugosi, vampires, a beautiful pig in a sidecar, and some of the most tasteless lamps in the world also play a role. The real content here for Hicks, though, is the prospect of spiritual and other forms of peace in a world where weapons from clubs to guns and submarines operate according to mysterious laws of “apport” and “asport,” occult material that interweaves with Hicks’s strike-breaking past and raises connections to Gravity’s Rainbow. Is Hicks’s fellow orphan and young protégé Skeet Wheeler the father of Vineland’s Zoyd, headed out to California as the novel ends? What’s the meaning of Hicks failing to return to his home country, and what does cheese gangster Bruno Airmont’s submarine fate have to do with Bleeding Edge? Are Hungary’s shifting borders a new kind of “Zone”? What’s going on in the novel’s many Statue of Liberty references and its anachronistic allusions to a “Face Tube” for flirtation in bars? And how does this always funny writer, now in his late eighties, keep coming up with all these absurd songs (we sing some) and hilarious mock-movies like the one featuring “Squeezita Thickly” swimming in soup pots (Shirley Temple, is that you?)? Teasing out many connections to Gravity’s Rainbow, Against the Day, and Vineland, this episode makes reference to just about all of Pynchon’s other works, including even V. and his earliest short stories. At the same time, you need come to it with nothing but an interest in Pynchon’s life and work. We doubt that we get every reference to history or previous Pynchon right or mount interpretations we won’t later want to revise, but on this brand-new and captivating late work from a masterful author, we hope in nearly three hours of deep conversation and laughter that we’ve made a good start on the many critical readings to come.

In Episode 31 DDSWTNP get the chance to talk about DeLillo with his friend, colleague, and editor Gerald Howard, whose distinguished career in publishing at Viking Penguin, Norton, and Doubleday spanned nearly 50 years and was marked by his work not only on Libra but important books by David Foster Wallace, Paul Auster, and so many others. We hear Gerry recount first reading the DeLillo of Americana and “Total Loss Weekend” in the 1970s, seeing a book titled “Panasonic” (eventually, White Noise) arrive at Viking Penguin, and having an 800-page manuscript about the JFK assassination later hit his desk. So many great stories mark this episode, including DeLillo’s funny “speech” upon receiving the National Book Award for White Noise, his reasons for seeking a new publisher after The Names, the legal reasoning behind the Author’s Note at the end of the hardcover Libra, and what Gerry for personal reasons regards as one of the funniest of DeLillo’s many funny passages: an editor’s remarks to Bill Gray about the literary marketplace in Mao II. Gerry talks as well about Catholicism, DeLillo’s massive influence on younger writers, and who, along with DeLillo, comprised his personal “trinity” of greatest authors. And at the end we wish a happy 89th birthday to Don DeLillo! With this interview episode, we also extend the biographical “Lives of DeLillo” series we began with our November 20 releases the past two years. Huge thanks to Gerry for sharing so many remarkable stories, insights, and readings. Be sure to pick up Gerald Howard’s new book, The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature, available this month from Penguin Random House and discussed at the end of this episode. Finally, a note on production: when other technology failed us, we decided to record this interview as a phone call, with obviously a lower sound quality than our listeners are used to. Gerry was wonderfully patient and flexible through it all, and his voice comes through clearly, in a recording that, in its crackles, we’d like to think, captures some spirit of DeLilloan Ludditism. Image of Mao II woodcut in episode cover art is courtesy of Gerald Howard.

In Episode 30, DDSWTNP once again use the occasion of the Nobel Prize (which on October 9, 2025, was awarded to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai) to talk about a prize Don DeLillo did win: the 2013 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. We dig into the award presentation and an interview he gave then about his whole career, from how he begins his novels and finds their structures, to the reading he did on a park bench in the 1950s, the influence advertising work had on his writing, and the inspiration he has found in the artistry of jazz and film. This episode culminates on the title question, “So what?”, which is the revealing remark DeLillo remembers making upon seeing Americana in published form – and a key, we think, to understanding the humility, ambition, and restless work ethic that has driven his work over the five decades since. For the reader new to DeLillo, this interview and episode offer a good overview of his major concerns and literary techniques. And for readers at any stage with DeLillo’s fiction, this one also goes well with our previous two Nobel episodes, 3 and 17, where we discuss his “The Artist Naked in a Cage” and “A History of the Writer Alone in a Room.” Listen to this episode too for many other callbacks to our earlier episodes, including 5 and 28. For video of the Library of Congress Prize presentation and the interview of DeLillo conducted by Marie Arana, an editor at the Washington Post, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AObZbCKlEc8&t=722s Thanks for pointing out and providing some sources for this episode to: Tim Personn (https://linktr.ee/timpersonn), Joel in Toronto, and Curt Gardner (https://perival.com/delillo/delillo.html).

In Episode 29, DDSWTNP go to space to get a good look at the earth in a time of war, turning to one of DeLillo’s greatest short stories, “Human Moments in World War III,” first published in July 1983. We examine this tale of two future astronauts who have become soldiers for its strategic engagement with the tropes of science fiction, its eerie portrayals of the so-called “Overview Effect” available from a spacecraft window, and its compression and renewal of motifs from Americana, End Zone, and Ratner’s Star. Nostalgia, patriotism, history, the soldier’s mindset in following inhuman commands, and even the role of poetry and voice – all these come to be recast in DeLillo’s shrewd take on an era of “Star Wars” defense initiatives, a Cold War giving way to hot wars, and very tricky ways out of Mutually Assured Destruction. Along the way we read the 1980s thoughts of an expert on lasers in space, consider what it means to have an alien perspective on one’s earthly home and diurnal rhythms, and speculate on connections between “Human Moments” and White Noise still to come.

We’re still not done with Libra – or Libra is not done with us! In Episode 28, DDSWTNP pick up threads left hanging after our three-part treatment of DeLillo’s JFK novel. While tackling a wide variety of subjects, this episode homes in on Anthony DeCurtis’s 1988 interview with DeLillo for Rolling Stone (and later re-published in expanded form), “An Outsider in This Society.” We’re led to discuss DeLillo’s canny interview articulations in general, his method of writing by day and reading more history by night, and his reply to the suggestion that on the basis of Libra some readers regarded him as “a member of the paranoid left”: “I don’t have a program.” Along the way we also draw in vivid evidence of how DeLillo subtly reworked the voice of Marguerite Oswald from testimony in the Warren Report, what fellow Oswald novelist Norman Mailer had to say about Libra, and all that is illuminated by an exchange of letters to the New York Times between DeLillo and one of the Warren Report investigators. We also try here to understand as fully as possible the nuances of DeLillo’s ideas about historical fiction that emerge in the incredible DeCurtis interview: what DeLillo means when he says Libra is “a piece of work which is obviously fiction,” touts novels’ ability to “redeem” readers’ “despair,” and makes the powerful claim that “fiction rescues history from its confusions.” We quote enough that listeners will get plenty of insight even without having read the DeCurtis interview in full, and we look forward to applying many of the lessons about history learned here to future works like Underworld. “Some stories never end,” as DeLillo writes to begin “Assassination Aura,” and that’s true of this episode’s cover image, which uses a National Enquirer cover from March 2025 about new releases of JFK files. The interlude clip near the beginning is from Oswald’s August 1963 interviews on WDSU-TV in New Orleans. Finally, as we note in the episode, thanks to Joel in Toronto for an Instagram comment (we’re @delillopodcast) that inspired our return to the DeCurtis interview.

So who killed JFK? We still don’t know, but we’re concluding our series on DeLillo’s conspiratorial history with Episode 27: Libra (3). This episode begins by focusing on the unexpected injection of humor and depth that comes with Jack Ruby, another reluctant shooter, in the novel’s second part. We draw into this episode some comparisons of Libra to other artists’ paranoid visions of conspiracy, including Oliver Stone, Norman Mailer, and Thomas Pynchon. We spend ample time on the newspaper-clipping and TV-watching of CIA wife Beryl Parmenter, one of several figures here who make Libra a canny narrative of media and information history. And we close with detailed debate and speculation about why DeLillo’s concluding “Author’s Note” – with its powerful notion that “readers may find refuge here” – has changed over the years. Like Nicholas Branch, we're overwhelmed by all that still could be said about Libra (and we may still say it in a future episode!), but we conclude our three-part analysis here.