We live in DeLillo-esque times. In the aftermath of September 11^th, 2001,
America is experiencing a dizzying convergence of Don DeLillo's most fright-
ening themes. We are living White Noise, its fear of death merged with mod-
ern manifestations of fascism (for the Right, abroad; for the Left, at home).
We fear outbreaks of human made contaminants, with DeLillo's Nyodene D
replaced by scientifically engineered anthrax. We are witnessing the physical
displacement of thousands of New Yorkers, and feeling the spiritual displace-
ment of millions of Americans, as dust shrouds lower Manhattan in ethereal
embodiment of white noise. We are living Libra, fearing our conspiring and
incompetent federal bureaucrats of the CIA and FBI, suffering the trauma of
American blood spilled, enduring the tragedy captured indelibly on film, so
the towers can fall, and fall, and fall, as Lee Oswald “is shot, and shot, and shot”
(Libra 447). We are living Mao II, its title now reminiscent of typographic
Twin Towers and the number 11; its threat of Middle Eastern terrorism
replacing the Cold War; its renewed appeal of cults and cults of personality;
its wanted despots gaining aura in hiding, and its terrorists intent upon media
exploitation. We are living Underworld, with its cover's juxtaposed imagery of
the Twin Towers and the cross, now looking like crosshairs; its mutual sense
of threat and paranoia; its apocalyptic fear revised but renewed. Looking at the
media's position in the spectacle, the sense of America in the balance, and the
plight of New Yorkers forced to evacuate the area known as Ground Zero (a
term that DeLillo may as well have made up), one gets the distinct impression,
as DeLillo himself might put it, that there are things Don DeLillo knows.

Or not. Critic James Wood, DeLillo's long-time detractor, writing in The