Mao II

Mao II, published in 1991, is Don DeLillo's tenth novel. It was the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1992. The title is derived from a series of Andy Warhol silkscreen prints depicting Mao Zedong. This book was dedicated to DeLillo's editor, Gordon Lish.

Plot summary

A reclusive novelist named Bill Gray works endlessly on a novel he chooses not to finish. He has chosen a lifestyle completely secluded from life to try and keep writing pure. He, along with his assistant Scott, believe that something is lost once a mass audience reads the work. Scott would prefer Bill didn't publish the book for fear that the mass-production of the work will destroy the "real" Bill. Bill has a dalliance with Scott's partner Karen Janney, a former member of the Unification Church who is married to Kim Jo Pak in a Unification Church Blessing ceremony in the prologue of the book.

Bill, who lives as a complete recluse, accedes to be photographed by a New York photographer named Brita who is documenting writers. In dialogue with Brita and others, Bill laments that novelists are quickly becoming obsolete in an age where terrorism has supplanted art as the "raids on consciousness" that jolt and transform culture at large. Gray disappears without a word and secretly decides to accept an opportunity from Charles to travel to London to publicly speak on the behalf of a Swiss writer held hostage in war-torn Beirut.

Meanhile Karen ends up living in Brita's NY apartment and spends...
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