"Like a Donut Maker, Only Slower": Don Delillo's Advice to Writers

<p>This dissertation acts as a compendium and an analysis of DeLillo's writerly counsel, with an eye to how this advice might promise fresh ways to consider and analyze his fictions. Chapter one focuses on DeLillo's statements to the larger writing world - advice found in interviews and published essays. While he has never outlined a formal gradus for prose writers, a careful reading of these texts finds DeLillo returning again and again to what the writer should take pains with - or avoid, ignore, or eschew. But DeLillo has also given advice more directly. Chapter two focuses on writing advice in correspondence between DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. Chapter three is devoted to the epistolary relationship between DeLillo and Jonathan Franzen. In Chapter four I compare DeLillo's advice with that of a selection of his contemporaries: William Gass, William Gaddis, Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and Thomas Pynchon.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Campus Access Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English Language and Literatures

Year

2012

Author dc:creator

• Jones, Raphael

Contributors dc:contributor

• David Cowart

• Arts and Humanities
• English Language and Literature

Statement dc:rights

• © 2012, Raphael Jones

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/1077

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarcommons.sc.edu:etd-2078