American literature of the second half of 20 century

Don DeLillo

• In the allegorical novel End Zone (1972), DeLillo analyzes the unique language used by American-football players, contrasting it with the brutality of the game itself. Great Jones Street (1973) examines the rock-music industry, setting its corporate world against an unsuccessful individual singing career. White Noise (1985), a study of the effect of an environmental catastrophe on the family of a professor of Hitler studies (see Hitler, Adolf), won the 1985 National Book Award for Fiction and established DeLillo as one of the foremost American postmodernist novelists. Libra (1988) uses the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald as a metaphor for the contemporary United States. Mao II (1991) addresses the social role of the media and human tendencies toward conformity. Underworld (1997) looks at the effects of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war on American life.