Amazons Media Watch - a novel by Cleo Birdwell/Don DeLillo - 1980

This page lists the known reviews of Cleo Birdwell/Don DeLillo's 1980 novel (written with help from Sue Buck), Amazons.


In recent years here have been a number of articles "re-discovering" Amazons:

  • In Bookforum (Dec/Jan 2008) "The Puck Stopped Here" by Gerald Howard gives most of the facts. Howard edited several of DeLillo's books.
  • Amazons came into the world more in the style of a put-on than a hoax. DeLillo wrote the book in collaboration with Sue Buck, a friend and colleague from his Ogilvy & Mather days and a dedicatee of White Noise. She apparently provided such hockey expertise as was needed and the raw material concerning Cleo's idyllic Ohio childhood. DeLillo's editor at Knopf, his publisher at the time, was insufficiently amused, and so the two were allowed to sell the book elsewhere on the condition that DeLillo's authorship be hidden. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston picked Amazons up and proceeded to publish it with deadpan skill, slyly eliding the question of its factual nature.
  • Flavorwire offered "When Don DeLillo Switched Genders" by Jason Diamond (July 17, 2013).

  • The Weeklings then had "Amazons: Don DeLillo's Obscure 'Intimate Memoir'" by Victoria Patterson (Jan. 7, 2014).

  • Grantland followed with "A Tale of Two Dons: DeLillo's 'Forgotten Memoir' and Novello's Yearbook About Sheep by Tess Lynch (Jan. 13, 2014).

    Nation: October 18, 1980 - "A Pro's Puckish Prose" review of Amazons by J.D. O'Hara, pp. 385-386.


    New York Times: September 16, 1980 - review of Amazons by C. Lehmann-Haupt.



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    Last updated: 13-JAN-2014