ABSTRACT
Don DeLillo’s literary depictions of consumerism and waste management have been widely acknowledged. This chapter outlines the development of his works toward something that might be termed the literature of recycling. In a sample of his novels written since the early 1980s, during a period that has seen waste become a general focus of art production, a gradual change from consumerist fantasies to practices akin to the circular economy emerges. DeLillo’s works often depict the city as a system based on the circulation of matter. They also bring forward literature’s potential in reflecting and affecting societal ideas about several types of waste. Furthermore, his texts illustrate some metaphorical connections between waste management and literary production, encouraging the view of literature itself as part of urban materiality. Waste, they argue persuasively, is a fundamental fact of urban civilisation with its own kind of agency and a rich allusiveness to other urban materialities.
