Americana (Penguin Modern Classics)

Americana (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Don Delillo (Author)

Synopsis

His first novel, Don DeLillo's "Americana" passionately articulates the neurotic landscape of contemporary American life through a disintegrating embodiment of the American dream. Prosperous, good-looking and empty inside, 28-year-old advertising executive David Bell appears on the surface to have everything. But he is a man on the brink of losing his sanity. Trapped in a Manhattan office with soulless sycophants as his only company, he makes an abrupt decision to leave New York for America's mid-west. His plan: to film the small-town lives of ordinary people and make contact with the true heart of his homeland. But as Bell puts his films together in his hotel room, he grows increasingly convinced that there is no heart to find. Modern America has become a land that has reached the end of its reel...Don DeLillo (b.1936) was born and raised in New York City. "Americana" (1971), his first novel, announced the arrival of a major literary talent, and the novels that followed confirmed his reputation as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in late-twentieth-century American fiction. DeLillo's comic gifts come to the fore in "White Noise" (1985), which won the National Book Award, "Underworld" (1997), hailed by Martin Amis as 'the ascension of a great writer', "Cosmopolis" (2003), adapted into a film by David Cronenberg, due to be released later this year, and "Falling Man" (2007), a novel about the aftereffects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. If you enjoyed "Americana", you might like DeLillo's "Libra", also available in "Penguin Modern Classics". "He's a writer who, once you read him, makes you want to read everything he's done". (Martin Amis, "Sunday Times"). "Witty, clever and incisive...a marvellously realized plot". ("Time Out"). "Nearly every sentence of "Americana" rings true...DeLillo is a man of frightening perception". (Joyce Carol Oates).

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Edition: 1st Penguin Classic Edition
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 02 Mar 2006

ISBN 10: 0141188235
ISBN 13: 9780141188232

Author Bio
The author of thirteen novels, five plays, and numerous short stories, Don DeLillo was born in 1936. Americana (1971), his first novel, announced the arrival of a major literary talent, and the novels that followed confirmed his reputation as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in late-twentieth-century American fiction. DeLillo's comic gifts come to the fore in White Noise (1985), which won the National Book Award, and Underworld (1997), with its vivid portraits of actor Jackie Gleason and standup comedian Lenny Bruce.