With the publication of Falling Man (2007), Don DeLillo, author of fourteen novels to date, has become one of the most significant postmodern American writers. Constantly preoccupied with history, politics, and the cultural crises of contemporary America, DeLillo is a serious writer whose works have received many important prizes: White Noise ( 1985) won the National Book Award, Mao H ( 1991) the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction,, Undenvorld (1997) the William Dean Howells Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, an honor given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. Chen Junsong, correspondent of Foreign Literature Studies, interviewed Don DeLillo in March 2009. In the interview, DeLillo talks about his aesthetic concerns and the key themes in most of his major works. Although widely recognized as a distinguished American postmodern writer, he sees himself as a modernist in the line of Joyce, Faulkner, and Dos Passos. As both an insider and an outsider of contemporary America, DeLillo thinks that we are living in dangerous times, and we are surrounded by terror. Also as a social critic, DeLillo considers living in the margins a privilege for writers. In his opinion, the more marginalized a writer is, the more crucial his work becomes, because his ultimate goal is to keep fiction alive.
