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- Title
Ephemeral Gods and Billboard Saints: Don DeLillo's Underworld and Urban Apparitions.
- Authors
WASSERMAN, SARAH L.
- Abstract
In this essay, I examine the hyper-modern apparition with which Don DeLillo concludes Underworld alongside a “real-life” image, said to look like the Virgin Mary, which appeared in April 2005 in Chicago on the wall of a highway underpass. I argue that discussing these two apparitions together highlights how both images transform urban surfaces and waste, creating new sites around which collectivities take shape. The pairing also illustrates the mode of perception that the apparitions engender, one that makes urban realities of class dispossession and minority displacement visible. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's notion of the wish image and Merleau-Ponty's concept of “perceptual faith,” I argue that these apparitions evoke the otherworldly but ultimately insist upon the material dimensions of urban life.
- Subjects
CHICAGO (Ill.); UNDERWORLD (Book : DeLillo); MARIAN apparitions; DELILLO, Don, 1936-; GHOSTS in literature; CITIES &; towns in literature; CATHOLIC Church; UNDERPASSES
- Publication
Journal of American Studies, 2014, Vol 48, Issue 4, p1041
- ISSN
0021-8758
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1017/S0021875814001236