the 941

It sounds counterintuitive to describe such a cool, precise author as Don DeLillo as “prophetic,” a word we normally associate with wild-eyed, spirit-channeling visionaries whose prose overflows on the page, but the adjective fits nonetheless. This might not be clear if we focus only on the recent novels: Last year’s Falling Man channeled the aftermath of 9/11, while 1997’s Underworld looked in the rearview mirror all the way back to the origins of the Cold War. Hardly the stuff of future-glimpsing truth-telling.

Dig into the man’s earlier books, though, and you encounter a mind whose obsessions predicted our own. Mao II, published in 1991, concerned itself with the intersection of terrorism and art, and a collision between terrorism and high finance drives 1977’s Players. In The Names, the subject at hand this morning, DeLillo delves into international business, the intelligence game, murderous cults, religious fervor, the cacophony of language and relations between Americans and the world, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

Sounds like it could have been published this year to great fanfare. Nope. DeLillo put it out all the way back in ‘82.

But, as intriguing and rewarding as the themes listed above all are to the beauty of this novel, the book’s real center is in the way DeLillo conjures up the life of his protagonist and narrator, James Axton. An expatriate American working for a shadowy risk analysis firm based in Athens, Axton is a perfect conduit for DeLillo’s musings on airline travel, married life, dinner and drinks with friends, the Greek landscape, encounters with foreign cultures. The Names is one of DeLillo’s most intimate novels, and Axton remains one of his most fully formed creations.

People often knock DeLillo for the aphoristic quality of his prose, the simple declarations that twist meaning into pretzels. And, admittedly, this makes for dialogue that is nowhere near naturalistic. Near the novel’s conclusion, a character addresses Axton: “‘I’m not surprised to find myself here. The moment I stepped inside it seemed right, it seemed inevitable, the place I’ve been preparing for. The correct number of objects, the correct proportions. For sixty years I’ve been approaching this room.’” While we can’t picture ever having such a conversation ourselves, strict fealty to How People Really Talk is beside the point for DeLillo. He’s more interested in the flow of language and information than he is obsessed with authenticity.

And the upside to DeLillo’s knack for aphorism is that he is able to dip and dive in his prose, following the whim of the word. Here he is on being aboard a jet taking flight: “Along some northern coast at sundown a beaten gold light is waterborne, sweeping across lakes and tracing zigzag rivers to the sea, and we know we’re in transit again, half numb to the secluded beauty down there, the slate land we’re leaving behind, the peneplain, to cross these rainbands in deep night. … Nothing sticks to us but smoke in our hair and clothes. It is dead time. It never happened until it happens again. Then it never happened.”

Yep, that’s why you read DeLillo. I’m digging my way backwards through the man’s publishing chronology, so expect to hear more in the future.

Upcoming entries in The 941 Book CL-B

• Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (This 900-pager just arrived yesterday, in a beautiful, thrice-partitioned box set. It might take me a bit to finish it, already heralded as a contemporary classic, so I might have some intermediate postings on other books, like those listed below.)
• James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time
• Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah: A Personal Journey Into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System
• Whatever the fuck I get around to reading after all that.

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