SOURCE: “Consuming Narratives: Don DeLillo and the ‘Lethal’ Reading,” in The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 27, No. 2, Spring, 1997, pp. 190–206.

In the following essay, Moraru explores the ways DeLillo's novels thematize the contemporary production and reception of narrative art, focusing on readers' “negative” or “distorted” responses to the texts.

He didn’t really think he would have ended among the dead, injured or missing. He was already injured and missing. As for death, he no longer thought he would see it come from the muzzle of a gun or any other instrument designed to be lethal … Shot by someone. Not a thief or deer hunter or highway sniper but some dedicated reader.

(DeLillo, Mao II 196)

This excerpt from DeLillo’s 1991 novel sets forth a poignant critique of the social response to narratives in an age that has integrated “aesthetic production” into “commodity production” (Jameson 4). Along with a whole series...