Genesis Computers: Project Management and Cost Control

Genesis Computers: Project Management and Cost Control Executive Summary Genesis is engaged in supply of PCs to the home market and in development of software. During the past year, project costs of the company have tended to go beyond projections and have become a matter of grave concern. The project management team has been given the task of analysing the situation and devising measures to control costs. This report contains a detailed analysis of the problems facing the company and provides recommendations to bring project costs under control. It is structured into separate sections and after beginning with a small introductory write up, takes up the various factors involved in project cost control, along with recommended measures and suggestions. 1. Introduction Genesis Computers is in the business of selling and maintaining personal computers for home use. The company also develops software solutions for its clients. The customers of the company buy PCs, as well as bespoke software. Clients can be segregated into customers who buy computers, customers who buy software and those who buy both. All customers are provided with free warranty periods for both hardware and software. Many of them prefer to enter into annual maintenance contracts at the end of the warranty period. In consonance with customer expectations, Genesis sells only branded computers. In addition to PCs, some customers also need printers and scanners, which the company provides. As the market of the company is limited to customers who need PCs for home use, the number of computers sold to individual clients remains restricted. Some clients who run small businesses from their homes occasionally place larger orders, along with bespoke software. The company is experiencing overruns in project costs. Cost escalations are occurring regularly in both hardware and software components, with resultant erosions in profitability, delays in project completion and decrease in customer satisfaction. It has now become imperative to ensure that cost budgets are maintained and customer expectations with regard to quality and delivery met appropriately. It is the objective of this assignment to investigate the reasons for cost overruns and develop appropriate measures to control identified problems. Consideration has to be given to the small size of the company. The recommendations should thus be simple, logical and convenient to implement. 2. Cost Overruns Measures to control project costs need to account not only for the costs incurred for procurement of hardware and development of software, but also for those incurred for maintenance and rework during the warranty period. Apart from these expenses, project costs need to incorporate all direct or indirect expenses attributable to the project. As warranty costs for hardware are protected by back to back arrangements with hardware vendors, this assignment will focus on the other cost elements involved in project execution. Cost control must necessarily be a multi disciplinary exercise. This fact needs to be conveyed to all departmental heads and their cooperation obtained. It needs to be recognised that cost reduction exercises that happen without the full cooperation of all departments will probably be stillborn and doomed to failure. a. Estimation and Quotations: In many cases the genesis (!) of cost overruns lies in improper preparation of estimates and quotations. Preparation of estimates is often the preserve of sales and marketing functions. The sales department in Genesis reports directly to the CEO and its eagerness to clinch deals occasionally results in inadequate cost estimation and low quotations. It is recommended that the estimating exercise be converted into a multidisciplinary function for an initial period of six months. During this period managers from projects, procurement, software development, finance and sales departments should take part in the estimation function. Managers drafted for this exercise will need to be informed of the urgency of the exercise, the necessity of carrying out detailed estimation exercises and the need for speed in preparing estimates. It must be ensured that sales response times do not get diluted due to the necessity of carrying out estimation exercises. It is also essential to ensure that the p rocedure for estimation be in line with the methodology used by the company for preparing project budgets. The estimation exercise, while incorporating direct and indirect costs, must provide for accurate forecasting of time required for software development. It needs to be emphasised that most software development costs are functions of time and labour and the underestimation of time is a causal factor behind preparation of incorrect estimates and subsequent overruns. b. Budgeting: The budgeting exercise takes place only after receipt of the order; with budgets sometimes being very different from original estimates. It is important to prepare the budget, de novo, after receipt of the order on the basis of the order specifications for hardware and software. The hardware requirements and prices agreed upon need to be checked with procurement prices to ensure the presence of determined margins. A software development process consists of specific steps e.g. analysis of software, elements, architecture, implementation, testing, documentation, training, support and maintenance. The budgeting process must necessarily account for the time required for separate processes, incorporation of buffers and slacks, application of accurate costing rates and incorporation of other direct and applicable indirect costs, including the apportionment of overheads. c. Supply Chain Management: Efficient control of costs relating to the hardware component in projects will be best served by improving the supply chain management of the machines, peripherals and accessories, traded by the company. Most projects contain both software and hardware elements. As such, they also have a delivery time framework that is in consonance with software development time. This factor, fortunately, provides enough time to the purchase department for procurement of hardware, even after receipt of the order. Genesis must take advantage of this slack in hardware procurement time to ensure minimum stocking and reduced inventory levels. The project managers need to coordinate with the staff of the procurement department and the vendors, thereby ensuring that while low inventories do not lead to delays in receipt of material, ordered supplies are received â€Å"just in time† to ensure timely delivery. Introduction of this practice will lead to reduction in inventory, freeing of inventory car rying costs, more careful buying and sharper project execution practices. d. Project Monitoring and Execution: Improvement in any aspect of project management; be it cost, delivery or quality, essentially starts with project managers. Each order, as soon as it is signed, must be allotted to a suitable project manager. The choice of project managers is important in order to ensure that chosen managers are competent enough to handle allotted projects and moreover, have enough time to devote to the execution of their projects. Overloading project managers or allotting projects to unsuitable managers is the surest way to invite problems in project execution. Improper project management can lead to costs going over budget or to late deliveries, with problems getting compounded when large number of projects come up for parallel execution. There are three basic dimensions to successful project management, control of time, scope and cost. These dimensions work like three sides of a triangle, with a change in any one parameter affecting the other two. Research shows that less than 10 percent of all projects are delivered to their original cost and schedule estimates. One reason associated with this failure rate lies in the tracking of effort and cost – estimates should be tracked over time comparing planned to actual outcomes.(McManus, 2006) Project managers must control the scope and time of the project and ensure that they comply with originally laid out plans. It is generally seen that this approach, if implemented sincerely solves many of the problems that lead to cost overruns. Project managers are responsible for a number of issues, the main ones being planning, designing objectives, controlling risk, estimating and allocating resources, organising work, acquiring resources, assigning and directing activities, controlling execution, monitoring and analysing progress, implementing route corrections, ensuring compliance with cost, time, quality and delivery norms and managing issues. Execution of many software projects also involves the utilisation of outside experts who are paid in line with the time expended by them while working on the project. Outside experts need to be monitored with more care because of their distant location and other commitments. Specific attention needs to be given to monitoring the various phases of different projects. If estimation and budgeting are done with a fair degree of comprehensiveness and accuracy, proper monitoring and route corrections procedures help greatly in keeping projects on track. Project monitoring involves a number of variables. It is recommended, in the first instance, that all mangers use standard software like MS Project to monitor and control projects. In addition to use of standard project monitoring tools, monthly financial reviews also help in controlling project costs. It is recommended that these financial reviews should be regularly held and attended by project managers, finance personnel and the CEO. The focus of these reviews should be on cost and time overruns. These reviews will help enormously, not just in locating reasons for overruns but also in quantifying the costs that remain to be incurred. It is imperative that reporting of costing data, at this stage, should draw only upon the information available within the existing finance function. Changes in systems relating to collecting and recording of costing data should be looked at only after the present recommendations are implemented and followed, for at least one year. It would be premature to do otherwise. 3. Closing Review and Conclusion: The conclusion of any project must necessarily be accompanied by a detailed closing review focussing on time, scope, cost, and customer satisfaction. The review should deal not just with negative variances but also with areas where good project execution practices have been able to achieve savings in time and costs. This will enable project managers to focus and localise practices that have worked favourably during project implementation. The project management team must use these completed reviews as major information sources for designing project cost control measures. They must draw from the lessons learnt and conclusions reached to prepare a detailed manual outlining company practices for monitoring and controlling project costs. The CEO and the finance department should keep the issue of project cost control alive during the year and design a reward system for staff responsible for executing very successful projects. It is suggested that these measures be implemented immediately and quarterly reviews be held thereafter to assess their effectiveness in achieving project cost control. Bibliography Ho, M, 2005, Managing Project Quality: Cost, Control and Justification, DM Review, Retrieved December 23, 2006 from www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleID=1040055 Hormozi, A. M., Dube, L. F. (1999). Establishing Project Control: Schedule, Cost, and Quality. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 64(4), 32. Relkin, J, 2006, 10 ways to effectively estimate and control project costs, Tech Republic, Retrieved December 23, 2006 from articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878-6078705.html

Understanding Zapatista Longevity :: Mexico Economics Politics Zapatista Essays

Understanding Zapatista Longevity When Mexican President Vincente Fox rode into office on a wave of popular support in 2000, he inherited the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas. In 1994, the largely indigenous Zapatista movement began a military campaign to protest economic and political disenfranchisement. Vincente Fox claimed that he could solve the Zapatista uprising in â€Å"15 minutes.† Like his predecessor, he has failed to solve the problem. How did the Zapatistas achieve such longevity in the confines of the â€Å"perfect dictatorship?† When Mexico entered the international economy, it opened itself to global scrutiny. Mexico’s trading partners have kept an eye on Mexico’s human rights record. Mexico simply could not crush the Zapatista rebellion with an iron fist: â€Å"Mexicans and the international community will not accept a genocidal war in Chiapas† (Collier 167). Furthermore, global connections empowered Mexican human rights organizations to exert more leverage on the Mexican government to moderate their repression. The Zapatistas were particularly adept at using the internet to voice their demands and to protest the excesses of the Mexican government. The Mexican government also faced legal restraints which prevented an all-out war on the Zapatistas. After the uprising 1994 and the government counter-attack in 1995, the federal congress passed a law for dialogue in 1995. This foreclosed the option of a unilateral show of force by the Mexican army in areas under Zapatista control. The jungles of Chiapas also made a complete military victory improbable. The government changed its tactics to end the rebellion, resorting to low intensity war. Paramilitaries with differing levels of tacit and explicit support terrorized Zapatistas and their sympathizers. The killings in Acteal in 1997 that claimed the lives of 45 innocent people remains a particularly gruesome example of paramilitary massacres. Most importantly, the Mexican government lots the war of ideas. Though the Mexican government maintained a virtual monopoly of the press, Marcos and the Zapatistsas managed to diffuse their ideas and goals across the country. Though many did not support their violent tactics, the Zapatistas brought attention to the â€Å"plight of those at the losing end of Mexico’s economic globalization, particularly the indigenous groups who were losing both their livehood and their hopes for self-determination† (155). Marcos’ articulate and incisive letters put the government on the â€Å"moral defense† (168). Despite the government’s efforts, support for the Zapatistas increased. The government believed it had scored a victory when it revealed in 1994 that Sub-commandante Marcos was in fact a non-indiginours former philosophy student.

Literary Criticism of Don DeLillo

Literary Criticism of Don DeLilloâ€Å"It's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work. When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery, in part.† –Don DeLillo, from the 1979 interview with Tom LeClairThere are a number of books and essays which are devoted to analysis of Don Delillo's writing. This page concentrates on the books only (for the most part), with most recent on top.Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo (2010)Great to see the publication of this book of essays from the DeLillo Conference held in Osnabrà ¼ck, Germany in 2008 (see my page on the Conference). Edited by conference organizers Peter Schneck and Philipp Schweighauser.Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction is published by Continuum, ISBN-13: 9781441139931, 2010 (hardcover, 264 pages).Contents include: Introduction – Philipp Schweighauser and Peter Schneck M emory Work after 9/11The Wake of Terror: Don DeLillo's â€Å"In the Ruins of the Future,† â€Å"Baader-Meinhof,† and Falling Man – Linda S. Kauffman Grieving and Memory in Don DeLillo's Falling Man – Silvia Caporale Bizzini Collapsing Identities: The Representation and Imagination of the Terrorist in Falling Man – Sascha Pà ¶hlmann Writers, Terrorists, and the Masses6,500 Weddings and 2,750 Funerals: Mao II, Falling Man, and the Mass Effect – Mikko Keskinen Influence and Self-Representation: Don DeLillo's Artists and Terrorists in Postmodern Mass Society – Leif Grà ¶ssinger The Art of Terror–the Terror of Art: DeLillo's Still Life of 9/11, Giorgio Morandi, Gerhard Richter, and Performance Art – Julia Apitzsch Don DeLillo and Johan GrimonprezGrimonprez's Remix – Eben WoodDial T for Terror: Don DeLillo's Mao II and Johan Grimonprez' Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y – Martyn Colebrook Deathward and Other PlotsTerror, Asce ticism, and Epigrammatic Writing in Don DeLillo's Fiction – Paula Martà ­n Salvà ¡n The End of Resolution? Reflections on the Ethics of Closure in Don DeLillo's Detective Plots – Philipp Schweighauser and Adrian S. Wisnicki The Ethics of FictionSlow Man, Dangling Man, Falling Man: Don DeLillo and the Ethics of Fiction – Peter Boxall Falling Man: Performing Fiction – Marie-Christine Lepsâ€Å"Mysterium tremendum et fascinans†: Don DeLillo, Rudolf Otto, and the Search for Numinous Experience – Peter Schneck CodaThe DeLillo Era: Literary Generations in the Postmodern Period – David Cowart (Sept. 6, 2010)The Cambridge Companion to Don DeLillo (2008)Above is a shot of the book ‘on location' in Cambridge, with St Johns College in the background; I found the book at the Cambridge Book Shop, and the clerk told me that the book had just come in that day! (May 13, 2008)The Cambridge Companion to Don DeLillo is a new book edited by John Duvall, and it features articles covering much of DeLillo's work by many familiar names of DeLillo criticism. Published by Cambridge University Press, ISBN-13: 9780521690898, 2008 (paperback, 203 pages). There's a hardback as  well.Contents include: Introduction: â€Å"The power of history and the persistence of mystery† John N. Duvall Part I. Aesthetic and Cultural Influences â€Å"DeLillo and modernism† Philip Nel â€Å"DeLillo, postmodernism, postmodernity† Peter Knight Part II. Early Fiction â€Å"DeLillo and media culture† Peter Boxall â€Å"DeLillo's apocalyptic satire† Joseph Dewey â€Å"DeLillo and the political thriller† Tim Engles Part III. Major Novels â€Å"White Noise† Stacey Olster â€Å"Libra† Jeremy Green â€Å"Underworld† Patrick O'Donnell Part IV. Themes and Issues â€Å"DeLillo and masculinity† Ruth Helyer â€Å"DeLillo's Dedealian artists† Mark Osteen â€Å"DeLillo and the power of la nguage† David Cowart â€Å"DeLillo and mystery† John McClure Conclusion: â€Å"Writing amid the ruins: 9/11 and Cosmopolis† Joseph Conte It's unclear how much of this material is truly new; much may be adapted from previously published work.Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo (2006)Beyond Grief and Nothing is a new book by Joseph Dewey from the University of South Carolina Press. The book traces a thematic trajectory in DeLillo from his first short story to ‘Love-Lies-Bleeding'. The book examines DeLillo as a profoundly spiritual writer, a writer who has wrestled with his Catholic upbringing (the title comes from the famous line from Faulkner's ‘Wild Palms' that forms a motif in Godard's ‘Breathless') and who has emerged over the last decade as perhaps the most important religious writer in American literature since Flannery O'Connor.Dewey finds DeLillo's concerns to be organized around three rubrics that mark the writer's own cre ative evolution: the love of the street, the embrace of the word, and the celebration of the soul.Joseph Dewey is an Associate Professor, American literature at University of Pittsburgh, and heco-edited Underwords (see below). 184 pages, hardcover, $34.95.Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction (2006)Don DeLillo:The Possibility of Fiction by Peter Boxall (Routledge). I don't know much about this book, except for the fact that it's expensive! Dr. Peter Boxall is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Sussex, and has previously published on Beckett (among others).Approaches to Teaching DeLillo's White Noise (2006)Approaches to Teaching DeLillo's White Noise is a new book edited by Tim Engles and John N. Duvall. From the MLA website:This volume, like others in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, â€Å"Materials,† suggests readings and resources for both instructor and students of White Noise. The sec ond part, â€Å"Approaches,† contains eighteen essays that establish cultural, technological, and theoretical contexts (e.g., whiteness studies); place the novel in different survey courses (e.g., one that explores the theme of American materialism); compare it with other novels by DeLillo (e.g., Mao II); and give examples of classroom techniques and strategies in teaching it (e.g., the use of disaster films).The book is aimed at folks who include White Noise in their syllabus, and it includes pieces from Mark Osteen, Phil Nel, John Duvall, Tim Engles and many more.Benjamin Kunkel on Novelists and Terrorists (2005)In the New York Times Book Review of September 11, 2005, Benjamin Kunkel offers â€Å"Dangerous Characters†, an essay on the ‘terrorist novel' of the pre 9/11 era. DeLillo unsurprisingly features in the essay. It's worth reading in its entirety, but I pull out a couple quotes here that were of particular interest to me:Terrorists might be a novelist's r ivals, as Don DeLillo's novelist character maintains in †Mao II† (1991), but they were also his proxies. No matter how realistic, the terrorist novel was also a kind of metafiction, or fiction about fiction.DeLillo saw that novelists, like terrorists, were solitary and obscure agents, †men in small rooms,† preparing symbolic provocations to be unleashed on the public with a bang. Of course this could refer only to a certain kind of novelist, starting perhaps with Flaubert and ending, DeLillo suggested, with Beckett, whose work could be taken as an indictment of an entire civilization, and whose authority when it came to that civilization was paradoxically derived from his appearing to stand completely outside it.Don DeLillo: Balance at the Edge of Belief (2004)Don DeLillo: Balance at the Edge of Belief by Jesse Kavadlo, published in 2004 by Peter Lang Publishing (ISBN: 0-8204-6351-5). Here's how the back cover puts it:Don DeLillo – winner of the Nation al Book Award, the William Dean Howells Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize – is one of the most important novelists of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. While his work can be understood and taught as prescient and postmodern examples of millennial culture, this book argues that DeLillo's recent novels – White Noise, Libra, Mao II, Underworld, and The Body Artist – are more concerned with spiritual crisis. Although DeLillo's worlds are rife with rejection of belief and littered with faithlessness, estrangement, and desperation, his novels provide a balancing moral corrective against the conditions they describe.  Speaking the vernacular of contemporary America, DeLillo explores the mysteries of what it means to be human.Don DeLillo – Bloom's Modern Critical Views (2003)Don DeLillo was published by Chelsea House in 2003, edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom.The book consists of previously published critical essays on DeLillo:â₠¬Å"Introduction† by Harold Bloom â€Å"Don DeLillo's Search for Walden Pond† by Michael Oriard â€Å"Preface and Don DeLillo† by Robert Nadeau â€Å"Don DeLillo's America† by Bruce Bawer â€Å"White Magic: Don DeLillo's Intelligence Networks† by Greg Tate â€Å"Myth, Magic and Dread: Reading Culture Religiously† by Gregory Salyer â€Å"The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo† by Paul Maltby â€Å"For Whom the Bell Tolls: Don DeLillo's Americana† by David Cowart â€Å"Consuming Narratives: Don DeLillo and the ‘Lethal' Reading† by Christian Mararu â€Å"Romanticism and the Postmodern Novel: Three Scenes from Don DeLillo's White Noise† by Lou F. Caton â€Å"Don DeLillo's Postmodern Pastoral† by Dana Phillipsâ€Å"Afterthoughts on Don DeLillo's Underworld† by Tony Tanner â€Å"‘What About a Problem That Doesn't Have a Solution?': Stone's A Flag for Sunrise, DeLillo's Mao II, and the Politics of Political Fiction† by Jeoffrey S. Bull White Noise: A Reader's Guide (2003)Don DeLillo's White Noise: A Reader's Guide by Leonard Orr was published in 2003. The book is published as part of the Continuum Contemporaries series, sells for $9.95 and is 96 pages.Underwords: Perspectives on Don DeLillo's Underworld (2002)Underwords: Perspectives on Don DeLillo's Underworld is edited by Joseph Dewey, Steven G. Kellman, and Irving Malin, and published by University of  Delaware Press in Sept. 2002 (ISBN 0-87413-785-3 $39.50). Here is a picture & the blurb:Don DeLillo's 1997 masterwork Underworld, one of the most acclaimed and long-awaited novels of the last twenty years, was immediately recognized as a landmark novel, not only in the long career of one of America's most distinguished novelists but also in the ongoing evolution of the postmodern novel. Vast in scope, intricately organized, and densely allusive, the text provided an immediate and engaging challenge to readers of c ontemporary fiction.This collection of thirteen essays brings together new and established voices in American studies and contemporary American literature to assess the place of this remarkable novel not only within the postmodern tradition but within the larger patterns of American literature and culture as well. By seeking to place the novel within such a context, this lively collection of provocative readings offers a valuable guide for both students and scholars of the American literary imagination.The book contains:â€Å"A Gathering Under Words: An Introduction† by Joseph Dewey â€Å"‘What Beauty, What Power': Speculations on the Third Edgar† by Irving Malin and Joseph Dewey â€Å"Subjectifying the Objective: Underworld as Mutable Narrative† by David Yetter â€Å"Underworld: Sin and Atonement† by Robert McMinnâ€Å"‘Shall These Bones Live'† by David Cowart â€Å"Don DeLillo's Logogenetic Underworld† by Steven G. Kellman â₠¬Å"Pynchon and DeLillo† by Timothy L. Parrish â€Å"Conspiratorial Jesuits in the Postmodern Novel: Mason & Dixon and Underworld† by Carl Ostrowski â€Å"Don DeLillo, John Updike, and the Sustaining Power of Myth† by Donald J. Greiner â€Å"In the Nick of Time: DeLillo's Nick Shay, Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway, and the Myth of the American Adam† by Joanne Gass â€Å"Don DeLillo, T.S. Eliot, and the Redemption of America's Atomic Waste Land† by Paul Gleason â€Å"The Unmaking of History: Baseball, Cold War, and Underworld† by Kathleen Fitzpatrick â€Å"Underworld or: How I Learned to Keep Worrying and Live the Bomb† by Thomas Myers â€Å"The Baltimore Catechism; or Comedy in Underworld† by Ira Nadel The book also includes a bibliography of Underworld reviews and notices by Marc Singer and Jackson R. Bryer.Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language (2002)Don DeLillo – The Physics of Language by David Cowart was published in Feb. 20 02 by the University of Georgia Press. Here is a link to more info: http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/don_delillo/Cowart examines the work of DeLillo with an emphasis on language; DeLillo's use of it in the novels, and the way in which characters in the books are characterized by different types of language. He divides the novels into three groups: the tentative early novels (End Zone, Great Jones Street, Players and Running Dog), the popular fictions (White Noise, Libra and Mao II) and the works of great achievement (Americana, Ratner's Star, The Names, Underworld and The Body Artist).Throughout his twelve novels, DeLillo foregrounds language and the problems of language. He has an uncanny ear for the mannered, elliptical, non sequitur-ridden rhythms of vernacular conversation (the common response to â€Å"thank you† has somehow become â€Å"no problem†). His is an adept parodist of the specialized discourses that proliferate in contemporary society – in sport, business, politics, academe, medicine, entertainment, and journalism. The jargons of science, technology, and military deterrence offer abundant targets, too. But the author's interest in these discourses goes beyond simple parody, and it is the task of criticism to gauge the extra dimensions of DeLillo's thinking about language.Underworld: A Reader's Guide (2002)Don DeLillo's Underworld: A Reader's Guide by John Duvall was published in early 2002. The book is published as part of the Continuum Contemporaries series, sells for $9.95 and is 96 pages.The book has five chapters: The Novelist, giving background on DeLillo; The  Novel, the main section of the book with an analysis of the main themes; The Novel's Reception, on the initial reviews of Underworld; The Novel's Performance, on the subsequent academic treatment; and Further Reading and Discussion.Critical Essays on Don DeLillo (2000)Critical Essays on Don DeLillo, edited by Hugh Ruppersburg, and Tim Engles, published b y G.K. Hall, appeared in 2000. Contains a section of book reviews and a section of essays, covering each novel through Underworld.The essays are:â€Å"For Whom the Bell Tolls: Don DeLillo's Americana† by David Cowart â€Å"Deconstructing the Logos: Don DeLillo's End Zone† by Thomas LeClair â€Å"The End of Pynchon's Rainbow: Postmodern Terror and Paranoia in DeLillo's Ratner's Star† by Glen Scott Allen â€Å"Marketing Obsession: The Fascinations of Running Dog† by Mark Osteen â€Å"Discussing the Untellable: Don DeLillo's The Names† by Paula Bryant â€Å"‘Who are you, literally?': Fantasies of the White Self in Don DeLillo's White Noise† by Tim Engles â€Å"Baudrillard, DeLillo's White Noise, and the End of Heroic Narrative† by Leonard Wilcox â€Å"The Fable of the Ants: Myopic Interactions in DeLillo's Libra† by Bill Millard â€Å"Libra and the Subject of History† by Christopher M. Mottâ€Å"Can the Intellectual Still Speak? The Example of Don DeLillo's Mao II† by Silvia Caporale Bizzini â€Å"Excavating the Underworld of Race and Waste in Cold War History: Baseball, Aesthetics and Ideology† by John N. Duvall â€Å"Everything is Connected: Underworld's Secret History of Paranoia† by Peter Knight â€Å"Awful Symmetries in Don DeLillo's Underworld† by Arthur Saltzman American Magic and Dread (2000)Mark Osteen's book on DeLillo, American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo's Dialogue with Culture, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in June, 2000. The book examines DeLillo's work from some of the early stories thru Underworld.Modern Fiction Studies (1999)Modern Fiction Studies special issue on DeLillo (Vol 45, No. 3, Fall 1999), includes 10 essays, including work from such friends of the site as Phil Nel, Mark Osteen and Jeremy Green.Undercurrent (1999)In May 1999 an all-DeLillo issue of Erick Heroux's online journal Undercurrent appeared (Number 7). It co ntains the following essays:â€Å"Celebration & Annihilation: The Balance of Underworld† by Jesse Kavadlo â€Å"DeLillo's Underworld: Everything that Descends Must Converge† by Robert Castle â€Å"The Inner Workings: Techno-science & Self in Underworld† by Jennifer Pincott â€Å"American Simulacra: DeLillo in Light of Postmodernism† by Scott Rettberg â€Å"Baudrillard's Primitivism & White Noise: ‘The only avant-garde we've got'† by Bradley Butterfield â€Å"Beyond Baudrillard's Simulacral Postmodern World:White Noise† by Haidar Eid Postmodern Culture (1994)The January, 1994 issue of Postmodern Culture featured the DeLillo Cluster, four essays all dealing with DeLillo edited by Glen Scott Allen and Stephen Bernstein.Glen Scott Allen, â€Å"Raids on the Conscious: Pynchon's Legacy of Paranoia and the Terrorism of Uncertainty in Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star† Peter Baker, â€Å"The Terrorist as Interpreter: Mao II in Postmodern Con text† Stephen Bernstein, â€Å"Libra and the Historical Sublime†Bill Millard, â€Å"The Fable of the Ants: Myopic Interactions in DeLillo's Libra†Don DeLillo (1993)Don DeLillo is a book by Douglas Keesey, a part of the Twayne's U.S. Authors  Series, published by Macmillan, 1993, 228 pages. This book has a chapter on each novel, as well as brief summaries of the stories and plays.Keesey's reading of DeLillo's work is that his novels â€Å"engage in the intensive study of media representations of reality that threaten to distance us from nature and from ourselves.† Thus he links Americana to film, End Zone to language, etc.I found the chapter on Americana quite interesting, as Keesey rebuts those critics who categorized this book as a typical first novel, poorly constructed and lacking charcter development. He argues that on closer examination DeLillo is clearly in control of the book's structure and characters, having made â€Å"fully conscious aesthetic choices.†I tried to get this book through a store, but they couldn't get it, so I ended up buying direct – call 1 800 323 7445 to order.There's an article by Keesey in Pynchon Notes 32-33 entitled â€Å"The Ideology of Detection in Pynchon and DeLillo†.Introducing Don DeLillo (1991)Edited by Frank Lentricchia, 1991. Published by Duke University Press, 221 pages. Lentricchia is the editor of South Atlantic Quarterly and Professor of English at Duke.The book consists of 12 articles:â€Å"The American Writer as Bad Citizen† by Frank Lentricchiaâ€Å"Opposites,† Chapter 10 of Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo  Ã¢â‚¬Å"An Outsider in This Society†: An Interview with Don DeLillo by Anthony DeCurtis (an expanded version of the November 1988 Rolling Stone interview)â€Å"How to Read Don DeLillo† by Daniel Aaron  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Clinging to the Rock: A Novelist's Choices in the New Mediocracy† by Hal Crowther â€Å"Postmodern Romance: Don DeLillo a nd the Age of Conspiracy† by John  A. McClure â€Å"Some Speculations on Don DeLillo and the Cinematic Real† by Eugene Goodheart â€Å"The Product: Bucky Wunderlick, Rock ‘n Roll, and Don DeLillo's Great Jones Street† by Anthony DeCurtis â€Å"Don DeLillo's Perfect Starry Night† by Charles Molesworthâ€Å"Alphabetic Pleasures: The Names† by Dennis A. Foster â€Å"The Last Things Before the Last: Notes on White Noise† by John Frow â€Å"Libra as Postmodern Critique† by Frank Lentricchia More on Frank and Don†¦Jason Camlot delivered an interesting address entitled ‘Frank Lentricchia's Don DeLillo: â€Å"Introducing†, Postmodern Modernism and the Academic Fear of Death' which was given at University of Oregon, May 1993. I am happy to say that this work is now back on the web, hosted here at Don DeLillo's America.Here's a taste:What, then, can be said to make Lentricchia's work as a critic equally relevant and eff ective? In a most obvious sense, it is the position he assumes in relation to the important author that he is introducing that works to establish his own importance. Don Delillo was already a popular author soon after 1985, and by this time he was becoming a significant object of academic attention as well, but these two facts had little bearing on one another, but rather were two distinct phenomena. At least this is what Lentricchia's role as editor and introducer seems to suggest. It is as if the true social significance of Delillo could not exist until a critic such as Lentricchia recognized it, patented it, in a way, by introducing Delillo as the last of the modernists in the postmodern era.New Essays on White Noise (1991)This is a short book of critical essays on White Noise, which is also edited by Lentricchia, published by Cambridge University Press in 1991 (115 pages).The book has five essays:â€Å"Introduction† by Frank Lentricchia â€Å"Whole Families Shopping at N ight!† by Thomas J. Ferraro â€Å"Adolf, We Hardly Knew You† by Paul A. Cantor â€Å"Lust Removed from Nature† by Michael Valdez Moses â€Å"Tales of the Electronic Tribe† by Frank Lentricchia Here's more info on the book.In the Loop – Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel (1987)By Tom LeClair, 1987. Published by University of Illinois Press, 244 pages. LeClair is Professor of English at University of Cincinnati. This is a look at all of DeLillo's novels (through White Noise) in the context of the â€Å"systems novel†. Includes a complete DeLillo bibliography.First Epigraph: â€Å"Somebody ought to make a list of books that seem to bend back on themselves. I think Malcolm Lowry saw Under the Volcano as a wheel-like structure. And in Finnegans Wake we're meant to go from the last page to the first. In different ways I've done this myself.† — Don DeLillo, â€Å"Interview,† Anything Can HappenFrom the Preface:In the Loop also de scribes the situation of the reader who has already entered a Don DeLillo novel, as my first epigraph suggests. DeLillo consistently creates polarized structures–of genre, situation, character, language, tone–that double the novel back upon itself, questioning its generic codes, its beginnings and development, its creator's position toward it, his relation with the reader, who becomes self-conscious, reflective about both his reading and himself, a mobius-stripping away of assumptions about the forms that DeLillo uses, the charged subjects he encircles with his reversals, and the act of reading from beginning to end.Here's the text of a lecture LeClair gave in March 1993 entitled â€Å"Me and Mao  II†.Other Books with DeLillo in the TitleCivello, Paul. American Literary Naturalism and its Twentieth-century Transformations: Frank Norris, Ernest Hemingway, Don DeLillo. (University of Georgia Press, 1994, 208 pages). Chapters 8-10 deal with DeLillo, End Zone and Libra in particular.Hantke, Steffen. Conspiracy and Paranoia in Contemporary American Fiction: The works of Don DeLillo and Joseph McElroy (Peter Lang, 1994).Weinstein, Arnold. Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction From Hawthorne to DeLillo (Oxford University Press, 1993, 349 pages). Chapter 14 is â€Å"Don DeLillo: Rendering the Words of the Tribe† pages 288-315.Back to DeLillo's America Last updated: 06-SEP-2010 Send in some news!

The Tools Of Washing Machine Essay - 1257 Words

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