Don Delillo
Don DeLillo’s *Americana* is a profound exploration of contemporary American life, published by Penguin Adult on March 2, 2006, in a Trade Paperback Edition. This novel follows David Bell, a 28-year-old advertising executive who, despite his outward success, grapples with an inner emptiness. In a quest for authenticity, he leaves New York City for the Midwest, aiming to document the lives of ordinary people. However, as he attempts to piece together his film, he confronts the unsettling realization that the essence of America may be elusive.
Readers will find a narrative that delves into themes of disillusionment and the search for meaning in a fragmented society. DeLillo’s incisive prose captures the neurotic landscape of modern existence, reflecting on the American dream’s disintegration. With 384 pages, this edition invites readers to engage with the complexities of Bell’s journey and the broader implications of his experiences within the fabric of American culture.
Official synopsis Publisher
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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