Several years ago Don DeLillo archived all of his notes, drafts, manuscripts, correspondence and various other written material (up to 2003) at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, located at the University of Texas at Austin.
I’ll talk more about this archive in class, but I wanted to send you the link to a New York Times Book Review article that DeLillo had cut out and included in his research materials for Mao II: “Writers and Dictators” by Michael Levitas, then the editor of the book review. Presumably, then, the article had inspired some of DeLillo’s thinking about his novel. In particular, DeLillo had highlighted the closing paragraph:
A bleak prognosis, but perhaps no worse than that of a younger Argentine writer, Martin Caparros, who is 31: ”There’s a difference between the 60’s people and us,” he said. ”They thought the novel would change the world. We don’t know what will change the world, but it won’t be the novel.”
This pessimism — that the novel can no longer change the world — is something we’ll have to address in class.