This is an “accepted manuscript” for an article forthcoming in Journal of American Studies. It will appear in a revised form, subsequent to editorial input by Cambridge University Press. This article is copyright 2014 Cambridge University Press. This version of the paper is made available as green open access in accordance with the publisher's policy. (This policy is, incidentally, one of the best green OA policies I've seen for the humanities, as it lets me make work available at the time of acceptance via an accepted manuscript and will, in time, let me release the final version of record.)
"Too many goddamn echoes": Historicizing the Iraq War in Don DeLillo's Point Omega
This piece provides a detailed engagement with Don DeLillo's depiction of the 2003 Iraq war in his latest novel, Point Omega. Framed through both formal aesthetic signposting of the interrelations between modernist and postmodernist practice and also through explicit thematic comparison between the conflicts, I trace DeLillo's treatment of Iraq in Point Omega back to his earlier writing on the Cold War in Underworld and focus upon the ways in which this comparative historical metaphor can be read with particular emphasis upon its implications for the nation state.
The piece can be downloaded from this site, from Academia.edu or from the Lincoln repository (once approved).