『마오 Ⅱ』에 나타난 포스트모던 문화와 테러리즘 시대의 소설과 소설가

Abstract

As one of the prominent writers of contemporary American literature, Don DeLillo has contributed to American literature and culture with his insightful comments and literary representation in a variety of novels. He poignantly criticizes the American culture that has driven Americans to lose their subjectivity and humanity with its power to disorient and mislead. In Mao II, DeLillo explores the relationship between novels and terrorism as well as novelists and terrorists influenced by postmodern culture in which media and images are appropriated by terrorists, reducing novelists’ role as the shaper of the consciousness of the mass. This paper explores the way in which the author represents the main character, Bill Gray, a novelist, whose response to the ever changing phenomenon of the postmodern culture that has affected his writing project. The paper argues that while he laments over the reduced role and status of the authors who have struggled with ever more powerful media and spectacles that draw the mass’s attention and interest, he still makes an attempt to maintain his role and dignity in preserving humanity and subjectivity of the mass by stimulating the mass’s consciousness and shaping the cultural assets. It also looks at how terrorism has appropriated American media and culture that have promoted the reproduction of images and consumerism.