DeLillo's Americana: A Pre-DFW David Foster Wallace Novel

TL;DR

An influence essay by the DFW Words blogger "Don" arguing that Don DeLillo's 1971 debut Americana is a template Wallace worked from — that Infinite Jest "just as easily could have been called Americana" — supported by a run of verbal and thematic parallels: the too-formal executive patter, a Zen guru who prefigures Lyle, free-associating late-night radio hosts (DeLillo's 3-a.m. monologuist against Madame Psychosis's freak-show-circular litany), a grammarian mother "shrouded in familial mystery with incestuous overtones", and — its most concrete catch — the same fixation on the number of holes in a telephone mouthpiece that becomes IJ's videophony bit. The parallels also reach Oblivion's "The Suffering Channel", the Brief Interviews Q&A format, and the Kenyon speech, making it an oeuvre-wide DeLillo-influence case with IJ at the center.

Key claims

• DeLillo's Americana is, Don argues, hugely influential and a specific source for Wallace: "Don DeLillo's debut novel Americana seems like one of those novels whose influence cannot be overestimated."
• Wallace's own admiration is on record: he called DeLillo the "best fiction writer alive" and "even singled out Americana as one of his favorite DeLillo novels."
• The central claim: "There are some interesting parallels with Americana in his own work, particularly Infinite Jest, which just as easily could have been called Americana" — Don even counts "at least 9 instances of some form of the word" infinity in Americana, "which seems notable in a not terribly long book of 377 pages."
• Diction parallel: the Americana office executives talk like Wallace characters — "a bit too formal, a bit verbose, pretty funny and weirdly eloquent" — set against Pemulis-and-company banter from IJ.
• Character symmetries: "Each book has a mother character who is a grammarian shrouded in familial mystery with incestuous overtones"; the fragile Zen professor Hiroshi Oh "bears a resemblance to the oiled guru Lyle in the weight room at ETA" (scene 039); a shared St. Dymphna reference (a blind tennis player in IJ, a school in Americana).
• The strongest textual echo: "There is the same reference to the holes in telephone receivers" — Americana's narrator counting thirty-six mouthpiece holes against six earpiece holes, which becomes IJ's videophony aside about a handset's 6 earpiece pinholes and "(6^2) or 36" mouthpiece pinholes (scene 047).
• Media/spectacle echoes: free-associating late-night radio hosts in both books — DeLillo's 3-a.m. monologuist set against the freak-show recruiting circular ("Come one come all") read out on Madame Psychosis's broadcast (scene 053); and a DeLillo filmmaker whose project sounds "like a cross between James Incandenza's concept of Found Drama and his film The Joke".
• Beyond IJ: Americana's TV executive itching to put something disgusting on the air is matched to "the television exec in The Suffering Channel who wants to broadcast a person who can excrete little crap figurines"; the novel's second-half Q&A dialogues "sound like a brief interview with a hideous man"; and a stray Americana "pale flame rising" line even "connects with Wallace's Kenyon commencement speech".

Theories & evidence

THEORY: DeLillo's Americana is a direct template for Infinite Jest

• Crux: delillo-influence
• Stance: advances
• Evidence:
  • [author] Wallace called DeLillo the "best fiction writer alive" and named Americana a favorite — his stated esteem grounds the influence claim.
  • [inference] Parallel inventory: too-formal executive diction; grammarian mother with incestuous mystery; Zen guru ↔ Lyle; St. Dymphna; free-associating radio hosts (the freak-show circular read on Madame Psychosis's show is the IJ half of that pair); a self-reflexive filmmaker ↔ J.O.I.'s Found Drama / The Joke.
  • [text] The telephone-holes correspondence — Americana's thirty-six mouthpiece holes vs. six earpiece holes, reappearing near-exactly in IJ's videophony passage (6 earpiece / 36 = 6² mouthpiece pinholes, scene 047). The single most exact verbal echo Don presents.
• Notes: Don concedes the argument's looseness in-source ("this isn't the most rigorous monograph on the subject … you're just gonna have to trust me on the whole dialogue thing") — a self-aware limitation on the diction leg, recorded cite-as-written. The case is oeuvre-wide, not IJ-only: the excreted-figurine TV exec keys to Oblivion's "The Suffering Channel", the Q&A dialogues to Brief Interviews, and a stray line to the Kenyon speech, so treat the block as delillo-influence evidence with IJ as one (central) instance among several DFW texts.

Themes

Literary influence and lineage (DeLillo as Wallace's model); media, television, and spectacle; the videophony/telephony motif; self-reflexive filmmaking; the grammarian-mother and family-mystery pattern; irony and sincerity across the oeuvre.

Cross-references

• The End Zone parallels post by the same blogger — the companion DeLillo-influence argument, focused on ETA rather than media/telephony.
• Scene anchors: Lyle in the ETA weight room (scene 039); the videophony telephone-holes passage (scene 047); the freak-show recruiting circular (scene 053).
• Reaches beyond IJ to Oblivion ("The Suffering Channel") and This Is Water (the Kenyon speech), where the same DeLillo debts recur.

Notable passages

• "There are some interesting parallels with Americana in his own work, particularly Infinite Jest, which just as easily could have been called Americana."
• On the phones: "There is the same reference to the holes in telephone receivers".
• "Each book has a mother character who is a grammarian shrouded in familial mystery with incestuous overtones."
• On the ETA guru: Hiroshi Oh "bears a resemblance to the oiled guru Lyle in the weight room at ETA".