A novel by Don DeLillo
Published by Houghton Mifflin, 1971, 388 pages. Jacket photograph
by Peter Jones.
Paperbacks issued by Pocket 1973 (cover
image), with a later second printing (cover
image), and by Penguin in 1989 (reissue
cover) and (current cover).
The Penguin reissue has the following notice: "In preparing
this edition for publication, the author has made some cuts in
the original text; there is no new material." I noticed about
a page cut from the hardcover pages 5-6; I believe about ten pages
were cut altogether.
Dedication: "to Barbara Bennett" (his future wife)
What it's about:
The autobiography of David Bell, writing toward the end of the
century from a "remote" island, looking back at his
youth, his days as a young New York television executive, and
his journey across America making a film.
Here's the original dust jacket
copy.
First line:
"Then we came to the end of another dull and lurid year."
What it's really about:
DeLillo began this novel in 1966, working on it for four years,
"hurling things at the page." He says, "It's not
an autobiographical novel. But I did use many things I'd seen,
heard, knew about." Apparently DeLillo had a real breakthrough
about halfway through writing this book, and he suddenly felt
that he had found writing skills that he had not possessed before.
DeLillo wrote a short piece for Epoch in 1972 called "Notes Toward a Definitive Meditation (By Someone Else) on the Novel 'Americana'".
In light of the later Libra, note that the David Bell retraces JFK's route through Dallas in the final paragraph.
Critical Response:
Most critics agreed that the plot of Americana was not
the most original. But some recognized the skills that DeLillo
already possessed with language; Christopher Lehmann-Haupt had
this to say: "DeLillo made me the willing victim of his verbal
assaults. He rearranged my brain cells to think the world his
way and to continue composing DeLillo-like phrases long after
I had laid his book aside." On the other hand, the NYT Book
Review thought differently: "There is no real identity to
be found in this heaping mass of tossed word-salad."(!)