World Literature, Fiction Subjects

Americana

Name: Americana
Author: Don DeLillo
ISBN: 9788432215322

by Don DeLillo, Gian Castelli Gair (Translator)

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Overview

David Bell personifica el sueño americano. Con tan solo 28 años, es un apuesto ejecutivo de televisión que ha llegado a lo más alto. Pero bajo esta apariencia perfecta, Bell se siente atrapado en una obsesiva película contemporánea: una rutina hecha de imágenes fragmentarias, conversaciones superficiales y sexo rápido. Su única escapatoria es hacer su propio rodaje. Con la intención de filmar un documental, Bell parte en un viaje a través del país. Su objetivo es retratar fielmente los pequeños pueblos y sus gentes, descifrar la esencia americana. Pero a medida que el viaje avanza y los fotogramas de la filmación cobran forma real, una idea se instala en la mente de Bell: quizás no haya nada que descifrar; Estados Unidos ha llegado al final de su propia película. Americana es la primera novela de Don DeLillo, el impresionante punto de partida de una de las obras más originales y trascendentes de la literatura contemporánea: «Casi todas las frases de Americana suenan reales, con autenticidad más allá de los estereotipos. DeLillo es un hombre de una escalofriante percepción. Una de las más impresionantes y sofisticadas primeras novelas que he leído», Joyce Carol Oates.

About the Author, Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo published his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written twelve novels, including White Noise (1985) which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra (1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and by Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

In 1997, he published the bestselling Underworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Biography

Growing up in his working class Bronx neighborhood in the 1940s and '50s, Don De Lillo was far more interested in sports than in books. A listless student, he did not develop an interest in reading until he was 18 and working a summer job as a parking attendant. Desperate to fill in the long, boring hours of downtime, he discovered the literature of Faulkner, Joyce, and Hemingway. He attended Fordham University and worked in advertising for several years before seriously pursuing a writing career.

When De Lillo's first novel, Americana, was published in 1971, it received modest reviews. Seven books followed over the next 14 years, steadily generating more critical praise but few sales. Then, in 1985, he hit pay dirt with White Noise, a brooding postmodern masterpiece about a Midwestern college professor and his family in the aftermath of an airborne toxic accident. It proved to be De Lillo's breakthrough, earning him both a National Book Award and an avid cult following.

Since then, De Lillo has gone on to produce a string of superb "literary" novels that fairly brim with big ideas yet also capture the essence of contemporary culture in all its infuriating banality. Cited by younger writers like Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace as a major influence, De Lillo remains a reserved and private, albeit gracious and genteel man who seems a bit uncomfortable with fame.

Among the many honors De Lillo has received are the Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize for Libra (1989); the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Mao II (1991); and the Jerusalem Prize, William Dean Howells Medal, and the Riccardo Bacchelli International Award for his magnum opus Underworld (1997). In addition, three of his novels received high marks on a 2006 survey sponsored by The New York Times to name the single best work of American fiction of the last 25 years.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In search of his roots, a successful but unhappy TV executive takes off for the heartland of America. ``This first novel is peopled with characters alienated not only from one another, but from themselves. It has the smell of staleness and despair. It is also, with its deadly accurate observations, its veracious dialogue, and its consistency of view, brilliantly written,'' maintained PW. (July)