John Paul Russo points out that the Little Italy setting of Underworld (1997), Don DeLillo's sprawling novel, contains “innumerable Mediterranean ties” (2003, 196). However, these traits can be associated with one of DeLillo's earlier novels, The Names ([1982] 1989). Although unlike Underworld, this text does not refer explicitly to the author's Italian immigrant background, the Mediterranean in its different incarnations acts as a highly significant background in ways that allude indirectly to Italian and Italian American motifs as well as to universal elements. The Names follows a group of American expatriates based in the Eastern Mediterranean, predominantly in Greece but also in Jerusalem, parts of the Arab world, and the Indian subcontinent. Although The Names might thus be considered as an “international novel” almost in the vein of Henry James, it borrows also from other genres, in particular espionage and thrillers, as the narrative overlaps...
Don DeLillo's Exit East: Exploring the Mediterranean and Resisting Orientalism in The Names
Francesca de Lucia holds a master's degree from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and a PhD from the University of Oxford, UK. She was an associate professor at Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China, and has taught at Minzu University of China, Beijing. She is the author of Italian American Cultural Fictions: From Diaspora to Globalization (Peter Lang, 2017) and of articles on different aspects of ethnicity and American identity in literature, including “Ethnic Investigations of the American Crime Scene: Comparing Domenic Stansberry and George Pelecanos” (2022).
Francesca de Lucia; Don DeLillo's Exit East: Exploring the Mediterranean and Resisting Orientalism in The Names. Italian Americana 1 August 2024; XLII (1-2): 1–9. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/2327753X.42.1.2.03
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