“Writing as enlightenment”: Don DeLillo’s Buddhism and postsecular writing

Abstract

This essay conducts a cross-cultural study of Don DeLillo’s novels from a Buddhist perspective. DeLillo’s writing has long been concerned with profound spiritual and religious yearning, but it has often been read within a Catholic context due to the author’s Catholic background. This essay argues that DeLillo’s engagement with mysticism also owes debts to his knowledge of Buddhism. By referring to DeLillo’s early adulthood experience in the 1960s, I position DeLillo’s novels in a postsecular narrative which means not only the resurgence of religious belief in a secular age but the coexistence of various beliefs in both social and literary context proposed by John McClure. Specifically, this essay will examine DeLillo’s Buddhist engagement within the framework of three turnings of the dharma wheel, namely, the four noble truths, emptiness and Buddha nature. This new framework would allow me to explore systematically how DeLillo’s Buddhist imagination has filtered into the fabric of everyday life of his characters. And reading through the lens of Eastern religion would also open up new possibility in understanding both DeLillo and contemporary American postsecular literature.