Mao II by Don DeLillo
"Mao II" by Don DeLillo is a novel that explores the complexities of the modern writer's role in a media-saturated world. The story follows Bill Gray, a reclusive novelist who has withdrawn from public life for over twenty-five years, believing that fame reduces him to a mere commodity. Set in 1989, the narrative delves into themes of isolation, identity, and the impact of violence and fanaticism on artistic expression. Gray's journey leads him to reconsider his withdrawal when he becomes involved in an attempt to free a kidnapped Swiss poet in Beirut, which ultimately underscores his struggle to reclaim his creative voice amidst contemporary pressures. DeLillo weaves in broader cultural critiques, questioning the significance of writers in an era where their influence seems diminished by the overwhelming presence of media. The novel paints a poignant picture of a writer grappling with the tension between individual creativity and societal conformity, culminating in an exploration of the elusive nature of artistic impact in a changing world.
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Subject Terms
Mao II by Don DeLillo
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1991
Type of work: Novel
The Work
When Mao II opens, novelist Bill Gray has elected to withdraw from public scrutiny for more than twenty-five years. The author of two books that, in the 1950’s, had found a cultlike following, Gray decided that such celebrity status made him a commodity and retired to a bunkerlike compound outside Manhattan. In that time, he has worked endlessly revising a novel-in-progress that rests in dozens of boxes and binders in his compound. Gray knows the book is a waste but cannot bring himself to acknowledge that. With curmudgeon eccentricity, Gray sees himself as the last fragile vestige of the written word, the last individual voice in an era of electronic media wherein the individual vanishes. DeLillo uses religious cults, communism, terrorism, and the media to suggest the cultural addiction to conformity.
The novel is set in 1989. Gray has reasoned that his withdrawal has, in fact, simply made him more of a celebrity. He decides to re-engage the world. He first agrees to sit for a photo shoot and then, far more dramatically (and disastrously), to assist in an international campaign to free a Swiss diplomat and minor poet who has been taken hostage in Beirut. However, when he participates in a public reading in London, he realizes that the consciousness-raising event is merely a publicity event that his publishers are using to promote the release of Gray’s long-awaited new novel. Determined to help the kidnapped poet, Gray recklessly (or perhaps heroically) decides to go to Beirut in person to offer himself in a trade for the poet. As he travels to Lebanon, Gray finds his imagination deeply moved to empathize with the Swiss poet and feels himself for the first time in a long time ready to write with renewed energy. Ironically, he is swiped by a careening taxicab in Athens and dies days later from unsuspected internal injuries on a ferry bound for Beirut. He dies ingloriously and anonymously—his identity papers are filched even as he collapses on the boat’s deck.
With unsettling directness, DeLillo cautions against the hope of artists and writers campaigning successfully against the contemporary forces of violence and fanaticism, suggested here by the shadowy figure of the terrorist. Although Gray fails to save the poet (after Gray’s death, the poet simply disappears into the forbidding underground world of the Middle East), Gray does, briefly, reclaim his imaginative energy—and that, DeLillo surmises, may be all for which the writer in the troubling contemporary era can hope—a theme holding considerable resonance in the post-September 11 world. Amid the special pressures of the late-century, media-driven world, DeLillo questions the value of the writer’s long-established privilege to withdraw from society to create art in a sort of protective isolation. Without offering easy answers, DeLillo sees only the impossibility of the contemporary writer ever having the impact and clout of writers before the media age. What DeLillo fears is the marginalization of writers, the determination by the culture to simply disregard writers and their novels as central to the culture. It is a most unsettling anatomy of the contemporary writer.
Sources for Further Study
American Book Review. XIII, October-November, 1991, p. 18.
Booklist. LXXXVII, February 15, 1991, p. 1162.
Chicago Tribune. June 23, 1991, XIV, p. 1.
Commonweal. CXVIII, August 9, 1991, p. 490.
The Economist. CCCXIX, June 15, 1991, p. 86.
Kirkus Reviews. LIX, March 1, 1991, p. 266.
Library Journal. CXVI, April 15, 1991, p. 124.
London Review of Books. XIII, September 12, 1991, p. 13.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. June 9, 1991, p. 3.
Maclean’s. August 12, 1991, p. 43.
New York Magazine. XXIV, June 17, 1991, p. 84.
The New York Review of Books. XXXVIII, June 27, 1991, p. 17.
The New York Times. CXL, May 28, 1991, p. C15.
The New York Times Book Review. XCVI, June 9, 1991, p. 7.
The New Yorker. LXVII, June 24, 1991, p. 81.
The Observer. September 1, 1991, p. 54.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVIII, April 12, 1991, p. 44.
Quill & Quire. LVII, July, 1991, p. 50.
The Spectator, CCLXVII, September 7, 1991, p. 34.
The Times Literary Supplement. August 30, 1991, p. 20.
The Village Voice. XXXVI, June 18, 1991, p. 65.
The Wall Street Journal. June 13, 1991, p. A14.
The Washington Post Book World. XXI, May 26, 1991, p. 1.