The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language by David CowartRobert L. McLaughlin
David Cowart. Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language. Univ. of Georgia Press, 2002. 257 pp. $45.00.
David Cowart has made a career of offering incisive, elegant, and revelatory interpretations of contemporary literature. His newest book covers the career of Don DeLillo from Americana to The Body Artist. The overarching argument here focuses on language in DeLillo’s work, especially the tension between the contemporary recognition that language is superficial and self-referential and the conviction that language gestures toward something numinous beyond itself. Cowart does not, however, limit himself to this theme, as rich as it is: his insightful readings of each of the twelve novels explore psychology, science, history, geopolitics, sports, and popular culture, drawing knowledgeably on such sources as Freud and Lacan, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, Derrida and Baudrillard, and a host of literary artists and literary critics. Individually, the readings here open up the novels in new and valuable ways. Taken together, they position DeLillo in an adversarial relationship with the postmodern, resisting and trying to transcend the depthlessness usually associated with it. Finally, they serve as models of learned, careful, imaginative literary analysis. This book takes an important place in the growing field of DeLillo studies. [Robert L. McLaughlin]