“Supermarkets this large and clean and modern are a revelation to me. I spent my life in small steamy delicatessens with slanted display cabinets full of trays that hold soft wet lumpy matter in pale colours. High enough cabinets so you had to stand on tiptoes to give your order. Shouts, accents. In cities no one notices specific dying. Dying is a quality of the air. It's everywhere and nowhere. Men shout as they die to be noticed, remembered for a second or two. To die in an apartment instead of a house can depress the soul, I would imagine, for several lives to come. In a town there are houses, plants in bay windows. People notice dying better. The dead have faces, automobiles. If you don't know a name you know a street name, a dog's name. 'He drove an orange Mazda.' You know a couple of useless things about a person that become major facts of identification and cosmic placement when he dies suddenly, after a short illness, in his own bed, with a comforter and matching pillows, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, feverish, a little congested in the sinuses and chest, thinking about his dry cleaning.”

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About Don DeLillo

American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, screenwriter, and essayist

Donald Richard DeLillo is an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, screenwriter, and essayist. He is known for fiction that takes on modern life and its pressures, from consumer culture and television to politics, economics, sport, and the digital age. Across novels, stories, plays, scripts, and essays, DeLillo returns to the systems and language that shape public and private life. His work also engages with nuclear war, art, and mathematics, often tracing how ideas, media, and technology affect the way people think and speak.

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Books by Don DeLillo

Cosmopolis

2003

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Underworld

1997

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Falling Man

2007

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Mao II

1991

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