In Episode 31 DDSWTNP get the chance to talk about DeLillo with his friend, colleague, and editor Gerald Howard, whose distinguished career in publishing at Viking Penguin, Norton, and Doubleday spanned nearly 50 years and was marked by his work not only on Libra but important books by David Foster Wallace, Paul Auster, and so many others. We hear Gerry recount first reading the DeLillo of Americana and “Total Loss Weekend” in the 1970s, seeing a book titled “Panasonic” (eventually, White Noise) arrive at Viking Penguin, and having an 800-page manuscript about the JFK assassination later hit his desk. So many great stories mark this episode, including DeLillo’s funny “speech” upon receiving the National Book Award for White Noise, his reasons for seeking a new publisher after The Names, the legal reasoning behind the Author’s Note at the end of the hardcover Libra, and what Gerry for personal reasons regards as one of the funniest of DeLillo’s many funny passages: an editor’s remarks to Bill Gray about the literary marketplace in Mao II. Gerry talks as well about Catholicism, DeLillo’s massive influence on younger writers, and who, along with DeLillo, comprised his personal “trinity” of greatest authors.

And at the end we wish a happy 89th birthday to Don DeLillo! With this interview episode, we also extend the biographical “Lives of DeLillo” series we began with our November 20 releases the past two years. Huge thanks to Gerry for sharing so many remarkable stories, insights, and readings. Be sure to pick up Gerald Howard’s new book, The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature, available this month from Penguin Random House and discussed at the end of this episode.

Finally, a note on production: when other technology failed us, we decided to record this interview as a phone call, with obviously a lower sound quality than our listeners are used to. Gerry was wonderfully patient and flexible through it all, and his voice comes through clearly, in a recording that, in its crackles, we’d like to think, captures some spirit of DeLilloan Ludditism. 

Image of Mao II woodcut in episode cover art is courtesy of Gerald Howard.

List of works mentioned in this episode:

A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. New York: Dutton, 1978.

Don DeLillo, “Total Loss Weekend,” Sports Illustrated, Nov. 27, 1972. https://web.archive.org/web/20110822080327/http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1086811/index.htm

Gerald Howard, “Stockholm, Are You Listening? Why Don DeLillo Deserves the Nobel.” Bookforum, April/May 2020. https://www.bookforum.com/print/2701/why-don-delillo-deserves-the-nobel-23926

---. “The Puck Stopped Here: Revisiting ‘Cleo Birdwell’ and her National Hockey League Memoir.” Bookforum, December/January 2008. https://www.bookforum.com/print/1404/revisiting-cleo-birdwell-and-her-national-hockey-league-memoir-1406

---. “The American Strangeness: An Interview with Don DeLillo.” Hungry Mind Review, 1997. https://web.archive.org/web/19990129081431/www.bookwire.com/hmr/hmrinterviews.article$2563

---. “I Was Gordon Lish’s Editor.” Slate, October 31, 2007. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/10/editing-the-infamous-gordon-lish.html

---. The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triump of American Literature. Penguin Random House, 2025. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/561292/the-insider-by-gerald-howard/9780525522058

Listeners interested in Gerald Howard’s huge impact on publishing in general might turn to the pages about his achievements in Dan Sinykin’s Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature (Columbia UP, 2023) and D.T. Max’s Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (Penguin, 2012).

A correction: DeLillo’s remark on “around-the-house-and-in-the-yard” fiction is from Robert R. Harris’s “A Talk with Don DeLillo,” New York Times Book Review, Oct. 10, 1982.