Tibetan Buddhism in Don DeLillo's Novels: The Street, The Word and The Soul

Abstract

Joseph Dewey divides Don DeLillo's novels into three chronological stages: the first, in which he embraced the street; the second, in which he tested his own deep fascination with the word; and the third, in which he turned to the implications of the soul. Dewey's three stages have a parallel in the Tibetan Buddhist Tri-Kaya , with the street corresponding to the Priesthood ( Sangha ), the word to the Scriptures ( Dharma ), and the soul to the Buddha . This essay traces the remarkable development of DeLillo's spirituality through the three stages of his writing. In contrast to Dewey's view that DeLillo channeled his Catholicism into his evident fascination with the vision and metaphors of Eastern traditions, the present essay argues that DeLillo developed his sense of spirituality primarily from Tibetan Buddhism, and then channeled that spirituality back into Catholicism.