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 EATING DELILLO
William Gillespie

I been eating DeLillo since I was a kid. At first DeLillo was the guy posing in a jogging suit on the Wheaties box, world class novelist. "Books do a body good." Then General Mills got slapped with fines for an environmental catastrophe: half our town was cut down by a wave of smoldering molten nacho cheese. It was horrible. If it came into contact with your skin it would stick to you and burn. Dayglo napalm. His lawyers went to work to reclaim his image, but for awhile Wheaties disappeared from the shelves. The next time I saw a box of Wheaties, it had Gore Vidal on it, posing in a jogging suit, smoking a pipe. Then DeLillo got his own cereal. There was a game on the back: it said help Billy Twillig find his way through the complex and decipher the transmission. If you sent in ten proof-of-purchase seals, they sent you a secret booklet that explained the Names. For awhile, they were giving away a shrink-wrapped, hardbound copy of Underworld as a free literary surprise in every box. Heavy book, didn't leave much room for cereal.