Chromatography

This chapter aims to illustrate the extent of DeLillo’s painterly engagement with light and colour. Across the oeuvre, there are over 3500 explicit usages of colour terms. We begin with a ‘chromatic census’ which highlights the main colours that feature on the DeLillo palette, namely: primary (white and black), secondary (blue, red, grey and brown), tertiary (silver, gold, bronze, pink, orange and yellow) and minor (copper, lime, magenta, ochre, purple and scarlet). Following a preliminary introduction to the material contexts in which these colours appear – nature, cityscapes, interiors, bodies, clothing, objects etc. – we engage with philosophical traditions which have struggled with the complexities of ‘colour’. DeLillo’s work contributes to this tradition and highlights colour as a fiction written by the light. The remainder of the chapter is divided into three sections: early colour sketches (1960s/70s); waves of colour in the mid-career (1980s/90s) work; and the relative desaturation which occurs in the late fiction (twenty-first century). The readings illustrate the extent to which DeLillo’s sensory immersion in colour is not ornamental or abstract but always deftly integrated with ideas about art and politics, history and media consumerism and religion.