DeLillo News & Notes (Special): commemorating the four-year anniversary of DFW's suicide

In lieu of DeLillo-related news, I would like to commemorate the four-year anniversary of DFW's suicide by providing a handful of links to sources that all highlight his relationship with DeLillo in some way.

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- "I don't enjoy this war one bit"

This is a letter that DFW wrote to DeLillo in October, 1995. The letter seems to carry so much more weight when we remember that at this time, both writers must have been working on what would become arguably their most important books (for DFW, Infinite Jest; for DeLillo, Underworld). While it is difficult to choose just one passage from this letter to excerpt, one can't not be moved by these candid words:

I sent it to you because your own fiction is important to me and because I think you're smart and because, if you do end up reading it and end up saying something to me about it, I stand a decent chance of learning something.

One sees in this letter just how much DFW is struggling with his fiction psychologically. It is unfortunate that he did not live a longer life, or he may have been able to realize these words, which DeLillo wrote back to him in November:

At this point discipline is inseparable from what I do. It's not even definable as discipline. It has no name. I never think about it. But there's no trick of meditation or self-mastery that brought it about. I got older, that's all. I was not a born novelist (if anyone is). I had to grow into novelhood.

- "See the inside of some of Wallace's books"

The Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas has a collection of books that belonged to DFW. A few of these, including Players and Ratner's Star, DeLillo wrote. While this website only provides a quick glimpse into these books, it's enough for one to see how much value DFW placed on DeLillo, seeing as he inscribed voluminous notes onto the title pages of both of these books.

- "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction"

This essay, which I was pleased to find on the Internet, is still one of the best readings of DeLillo, and it is certainly the best reading of the scene in White Noise about "the most photographed barn in the world." Again, it is difficult to extrapolate a single passage from this brilliant essay, so I would just recommend reading it for yourself. Like the two links above, this essay again demonstrates how important DeLillo was to DFW.