Editing Don DeLillo (section)

===1980s===
The beginning of the 1980s saw the most unusual and uncharacteristic publication in DeLillo's career. The sports novel ''[[Amazons (novel)|Amazons]]'', a mock memoir of the first woman to play in the National Hockey League, is a far more lighthearted novel than his previous others. DeLillo published the novel under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell, and later requested publishers compiling a bibliography for a reprint of a later novel to expunge the novel from their lists.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}}

While DeLillo was living in Greece,<ref name="latimes.com">{{cite news|last=Rayner |first=Richard |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-caw-paperback-writers3-2010jan03,0,4308244.story |title=Tuning back in to 'White Noise' |work=Los Angeles Times |date=January 3, 2010 |access-date=March 16, 2010}}</ref> he took three years<ref name="nytimes"/> to write ''[[The Names (novel)|The Names]]'' (1982), a complex thriller about "a risk analyst who crosses paths with a cult of assassins in the Middle East".<ref name="nytimes.com"/> While lauded by an increasing number of critics, DeLillo was still relatively unknown outside small academic circles and did not reach a wide readership with this novel. Also in 1982, DeLillo finally broke his self-imposed ban on media coverage by giving his first major interview to [[Tom LeClair]],<ref name="jstor.org">{{cite journal|title=An Interview with Don DeLillo: Conducted by Thomas LeClair|journal=Contemporary Literature|date=Winter 1982|volume=23|issue=1|pages=19–31|jstor=1208140|doi=10.2307/1208140|last1=Leclair|first1=Thomas|last2=Delillo|first2=Don}}</ref> who had first tracked DeLillo down for an interview while he was in Greece in 1979. On that occasion, DeLillo handed LeClair a business card with his name printed on it and beneath that the message "I don't want to talk about it."<ref name="jstor.org"/>

With the 1985 publication of his eighth novel, ''[[White Noise (novel)|White Noise]]'', DeLillo rapidly became a noted and respected novelist. ''White Noise'' was arguably a major breakthrough both commercially and artistically for DeLillo, earning him a [[National Book Award for Fiction]] and a place in the canon of contemporary postmodern novelists.<ref name="nba1985" /> DeLillo remained as detached as ever from his growing reputation: when called upon to give an acceptance speech for the award, he simply said, "I'm sorry I couldn't be here tonight, but I thank you all for coming," and then sat down.<ref name="entertainment.timesonline.co.uk"/><ref name="online">{{cite news|last=Alter |first=Alexandra |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704094304575029673526948334?mod=WSJ_Books_LS_Books_11 |title=What Don DeLillo's Books Tell Him |newspaper=Wall Street Journal |date=January 30, 2010 |access-date=April 19, 2022}}</ref>

''White Noise'''s influence can be seen in the writing of [[David Foster Wallace]], [[Jonathan Lethem]], [[Jonathan Franzen]], [[Dave Eggers]], [[Zadie Smith]] and [[Richard Powers]] (who provides an introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of the novel).<ref name="latimes.com"/> Among the 39 proposed titles for the novel were "All Souls", "Ultrasonic",<ref name="newyorker.com"/> "The American Book of the Dead", "Psychic Data" and "Mein Kampf".<ref name="perival_a">{{cite web|url=http://perival.com/delillo/whitenoise.html |title=White Noise – Don DeLillo – 1985 |publisher=Perival.com |access-date=November 23, 2013}}</ref> In 2005 DeLillo said "White Noise" was a fine choice, adding, "Once a title is affixed to a book, it becomes as indelible as a sentence or a paragraph."<ref name="perival_a" />

DeLillo followed ''White Noise'' with ''[[Libra (novel)|Libra]]'' (1988), a speculative fictionalized life of [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] up to the 1963 [[assassination of John F. Kennedy]]. DeLillo undertook a vast research project, which included reading at least half of the [[Warren Commission]] report (which DeLillo called "the Oxford English Dictionary of the assassination and also the [[Joycean]] novel. This is the one document that captures the full richness and madness and meaning of the event, despite the fact that it omits about a ton and a half of material.")<ref name="theparisreview.org" /> Written with the working titles "American Blood" and "Texas School Book", ''Libra'' became an international bestseller, one of five finalists for the National Book Award, and the winner of the next year's ''[[The Irish Times|Irish Times]]'' Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize.<ref>{{Cite news |date=September 24, 1989 |title=Don DLillo Wins Irish Fiction Prize |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/books/don-delillo-wins-irish-fiction-prize.html}}</ref>

The novel also elicited fierce critical division, with some critics praising DeLillo's take on the Kennedy assassination while others decried it. [[George Will]], in ''[[The Washington Post]]'', declared the book an affront to America and "an act of literary vandalism and bad citizenship".<ref name="perival.com">{{cite web |title=DeLillo Detractors |url=http://perival.com/delillo/detractors.html |access-date=March 16, 2010 |publisher=Perival.com}}</ref> DeLillo responded "I don't take it seriously, but being called a 'bad citizen' is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That's exactly what we ought to do. We ought to be bad citizens. We ought to, in the sense that we're writing against what power represents, and often what government represents, and what the corporation dictates, and what consumer consciousness has come to mean. In that sense, if we're bad citizens, we're doing our job."<ref name="ny" /> In the same interview DeLillo rejected Will's claim that DeLillo blames America for Lee Harvey Oswald, countering that he instead blamed America for George Will. DeLillo has frequently reflected on the significance of the Kennedy assassination to not only his own work but American culture and history as a whole, remarking in 2005, "November 22nd, 1963, marked the real beginning of the 1960s. It was the beginning of a series of catastrophes: political assassinations, the war in Vietnam, the denial of Civil Rights and the revolts that occasioned, youth revolt in American cities, right up to Watergate. When I was starting out as a writer it seemed to me that a large part of the material you could find in my novels—this sense of fatality, of widespread suspicion, of mistrust—came from the assassination of JFK."<ref name="perival_b" />