In Episodes 6 and 7: Ratner’s Star (1) and (2), DDSWTNP go spelunking and digging in the myriad caves, holes, and burrows of DeLillo’s mind-bending, encyclopedic novel of “serious play,” his exploration of outer space, the sedimented history of Earth, and so much in between. Mathematical, scientific, and theological insights and uncertainties mingle on every page as DeLillo follows Bronx native Billy Twillig, numbers prodigy and pubescent teenager, in his encounters with message-decoders, nonsense-speakers, and slapstick philosophers, human aliens of every stripe. Amidst much laughter and awe at passages inane, profound, and often simultaneously both, Ratner’s Star emerges in our analysis as a neglected early metafictional masterpiece, a book that set the stage for more famous mega-narratives of hidden connections like Libra and Underworld. #pantsonfire #boomerang #manmoreadvancedthedeeperwedig #batguanomarket #k.b.i.s.f.b. #mymouthsayshello

We also announce the extended deadline for recording your favorite DeLillo passages and having your voice be part of an upcoming DDSWTNP episode! By January 15, 2024, record a contribution at https://www.speakpipe.com/delillopodcast. Happy new year to all!

Texts used in the making of these episodes:

David Cowart, Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language. U. of Georgia P., 2003

Tom LeClair, In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel. U. of Illinois P., 1988.

Mark Osteen, American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo’s Dialogue with Culture. U. of Pennsylvania P., 2000.

David L. Pike, Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s: The Bunkered Decades. Oxford UP, 2022.

Michael Streit, “Tertium Datur: Making Contact in Don DeLillo’s Ratner’s Star.” MA Thesis, U. of British Columbia, 2018. https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0366140

“Writing is a form of personal freedom.It frees the mass identity we see in the making all around us . . . If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we’re talking about when we use the word ‘identity’ has reached an end.” –Don DeLillo, Letter to Jonathan Franzen, 1994, cited in Franzen’s “Why Bother?” in How To Be Alone: Essays (FSG, 2002)