Don Delillo's Pursuit Of Modernism

Ranked among one of the most important canonical American novelists and regarded as the sharpest social critic of contemporary American life, Don DeLillo satirically penetrates aspects of contemporary American society—its rampant paranoia and malaise, its myths, obsessions, manias and crowd psychology, the power of mass media, the spread of cultural politics, and the excesses of consumer culture. Underworld, DeLillo's 1997 magnum opus, is widely considered as his greatest novel to date. It represents the culmination of his novelistic career. Underworld contains everything of a half-century America. One of the most distinctive and important aspects in Underworld is the unprecedentedly multitudinous depiction of a number of artists and their artistic production in Cold War and post-Cold War American society. In Underworld, DeLillo identifies with the critical roles of the artists and the value of art. He portraits a group of vivid artists and their artworks: Pieter Bruegel's oil painting The Triumph of Death; Sabato Rodia's construction of Watts Towers; Sergei Eisenstein's silent film Unterwel; Lenny Bruce's ad-lib stage monologue; Ismael Mu(n|~)oz's graffiti art and Klara Sax's installation art on the desert.With an in-depth examination and analysis on the artists and their artistic creation in Underworld, this thesis aims to extract and generalize the common denominators the artists and their artistic production share despite their drastic diversity in background, style, form, periodization and manners. Applying the art theories of representative modernists Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Wassily Kandinsky and Friedrich Nietzsche to the critical roles of the artists and their art, this thesis reads Underworld in light of the artistic views of modernism. This study proves that the revealing and redemptive power of Underworld's artists and their artistic creation best demonstrates and tallies with the essential artistic views of modernism. Based on this, this thesis even goes a step further exploring the relationship between the author of Underworld—Don DeLillo himself and the artists in the novel. By examining the likenesses they share in terms of artistic practice and DeLillo's identification with the artists, the thesis also provides some reflection on DeLillo's own"artistic creation"—literary writing and his art's medium—language in a repressive society filled with media repetition and endless consumption that greatly cripples the role of a novelist and the libratory power of language. This thesis consists of six parts: Introduction chapter gives a brief introduction to Don DeLillo and Underworld as well as the most important studies on them. Chapter One is the theoretical framework upon which this thesis is based on. It explores the close relationship between modernism and art, focusing on theoretical views about the critical role of artist and the revealing and redemptive power of modernist art by representative theorists of modernism. Chapter Two tries to question the widespread and habitual practice of labeling DeLillo as a"postmodernist". It explores in Underworld the multitudinous characteristics of modernism, proving that modernism is as important as postmodernism for understanding DeLillo's achievement in Underworld. It also lays the foundation for the interpretation of the artists and art in Underworld from the perspective of modernist art theories. Chapter Three is the main part of this thesis; it examines the artists and art in Underworld, extracting and generalizing the common traits the artists and their art in Underworld share, proving that the revealing and redemptive power of Underworld's artists and their artistic creation best illustrates the essential artistic views of modernism. Based on Chapter Three, Chapter Four further explores the relationship between Don DeLillo himself and the Underworld's artists. It compares their similarities and examines DeLillo's status as a novelist and his preoccupation with his art's medium—language, in a media saturated era. The concluding part emphasizes that Underworld's artists and their artworks represent the essential characteristics of modernist art rather than that of postmodernism, reconfirming the augment that the representation of artists and art and the emphasis on the power of language are testimonies to Don DeLillo's pursuit of modernism in Underworld.