From Wiseguys to Whiteguys: The Italian American Gangster, Whiteness, and Modernity in Don DeLillo’s Underworld and Frank Lentricchia’s The Music of the Inferno

Abstract

ABSTRACTFew tropes, if any, succeed in unveiling the interplay of the development of modern capitalism and the hegemonic place of whiteness in our culture as the Italian American gangster does. Mario Puzo’s and Francis Ford Coppola’s the Godfather is the figure that embodies this interplay. As such, it provides the starting point for the reinvention of the Italian American gangster that Don DeLillo and Frank Lentricchia achieve in Underworld and The Music of the Inferno, respectively. These Italian American writers create versions of the Italian American gangster that decompose the historical unfolding of modernity in America and its ideological corollary, the success story of assimilation. Historical memory is the tool that DeLillo and Lentricchia share to undermine the mainstream narrative of assimilation. The contextualized close reading of Underworld and The Music of the Inferno that I conduct presents these novels as post-Godfather literary elaborations of the above-mentioned interplay and its inversion.