Writing from the Center and from the Periphery of the Culture—Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo

Abstract

Mailer and DeLillo have been very aware of the other’s work and they have exchanged correspondence, although they have very different personalities—Mailer an extrovert and DeLillo an introvert. DeLillo writes from the periphery of the culture, observing, while Mailer wrote from the center, working to change it. For DeLillo—not only in the voice of his characters, but in his own voice—the terrorist has overtaken the novelist in the power to change the culture, but the sexually and violently “hipster” voice of the young Nick Shay in Underworld endures in memory and longing.