Episode 13: Amazons

In Episode Thirteen, DDSWTNP follow the puck into the corners with Cleo Birdwell, first female NHL player and ostensible author of the farcical, sex-fueled, “intimate” memoir Amazons, the 1980 satire of a “pseudo-profound” America that DeLillo co-wrote with Sue Buck. Amazons is a sports novel with perhaps more interest in “strip Monopoly” than hockey, more investment by Cleo in her Badger Beagles youth softball team than the New York Rangers. We discuss how this odd book came to be, how it was marketed, how DeLillo never fully owned up to it, and its nevertheless surprising place in his career’s development, a comedic lark and palate cleanser in which he makes significant moves toward the vision of White Noise. These include a disease called Jumping Frenchman, simulated death in the American home, and the character Murray Jay Siskind, seen here writing about athletes and a deeply corrupt snowmobile industry before becoming the Elvis scholar readers of the later novel know. In an episode with insights for those who have read this rare book and those who haven’t, we show that Amazons, least-discussed of DeLillo’s works, really should not be that! Support our work and enter the raffle to win a hardcover Amazons: buymeacoffee.com/delillopodcast Discussed in this episode: Gerald Howard, “The Puck Stopped Here” (2008)https://www.bookforum.com/print/1404/revisiting-cleo-birdwell-and-her-national-hockey-league-memoir-1406 David Marchese, “We All Live in Don DeLillo’s World. He’s Confused By It Too” (2020)https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/12/magazine/don-delillo-interview.htmlAn excerpt:You know who else shows up in two of your books? Murray Jay Siskind. Both times described as having an “Amish” beard. Murray Jay! Remind me, what book is he in?“White Noise.”And where else?“Amazons.”Oh god. How do you remember that? I don’t remember that.I think I just got a scoop. I don’t know if you’ve ever publicly acknowledged that you wrote “Amazons.”I probably did, somewhere or other. [Laughs.] Maybe to an interviewer from Thailand. Susan Sontag, “The Pornographic Imagination” (1967), in Styles of Radical Will (1969). Idries Shah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idries_Shah Jumping Frenchmen of Maine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_Frenchmen_of_Maine