Book contents
- Don DeLillo In Context
- Don DeLillo In Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Context, Content, Conflict
- Part I Places
- Part II History and Politics
- Part III Media and Pop Culture
- Chapter 10 Film
- Chapter 11 Television and Mass Media
- Chapter 12 Plays and Performance
- Chapter 13 Sports
- Chapter 14 The Internet
- Chapter 15 Signs
- Part IV Literary Contexts
- Part V Material Contexts
- Part VI Social and Cultural Constructions
- Part VII Writing and Writers
- Further Reading
- Index
- References
Chapter 13 - Sports
“Fascinating Ways to Lose a Game”
from Part III - Media and Pop Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 May 2022
- Don DeLillo In Context
- Don DeLillo In Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Context, Content, Conflict
- Part I Places
- Part II History and Politics
- Part III Media and Pop Culture
- Chapter 10 Film
- Chapter 11 Television and Mass Media
- Chapter 12 Plays and Performance
- Chapter 13 Sports
- Chapter 14 The Internet
- Chapter 15 Signs
- Part IV Literary Contexts
- Part V Material Contexts
- Part VI Social and Cultural Constructions
- Part VII Writing and Writers
- Further Reading
- Index
- References
Summary
In an article on football in DeLillo’s work written for The New Yorker, Jake Nivens discusses how the sport became “fertile material for [DeLillo's] career-long investigation of language”. The shared prominence of football within End Zone (1972) and The Silence (2020) is telling, but DeLillo’s interest in sport in general extends throughout much of his work. As Nivens suggests, language is key to how this theme develops – however, analysing sports in DeLillo’s writing more broadly may enable discussion of other aspects of his work.
Many existing studies of sport in DeLillo’s writing focus on particular depictions within particular texts. For example, the role of football in End Zone has been the subject of much critical investigation. Similarly, baseball plays a pivotal role in Underworld (1997) –most famously in its semi-autonomous prologue. Building on these studies, this chapter provides a broad overview of DeLillo’s writing on sports, tracing the ways it provides a unique corpus of work within his oeuvre. It traces the development of this theme as it oscillates in importance throughout his career, exploring the commercial and critical responses it has been subject to.
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- Information
- Don DeLillo In Context , pp. 126 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022