Ephemeral Gods and Billboard Saints: Don DeLillo'sUnderworldand Urban Apparitions

Abstract

In this essay, I examine the hyper-modern apparition with which Don DeLillo concludes Underworld alongside a “real-life” image, said to look like the Virgin Mary, which appeared in April 2005 in Chicago on the wall of a highway underpass. I argue that discussing these two apparitions together highlights how both images transform urban surfaces and waste, creating new sites around which collectivities take shape. The pairing also illustrates the mode of perception that the apparitions engender, one that makes urban realities of class dispossession and minority displacement visible. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's notion of the wish image and Merleau-Ponty's concept of “perceptual faith,” I argue that these apparitions evoke the otherworldly but ultimately insist upon the material dimensions of urban life.