Love Lies Bleeding

by Don DeLillo

Alex Hauser left New York and gave up easel painting to live and create land art in the southwestern desert. Now seventy, he has had his second massive stroke. His young third wife Lia believes that somewhere deep inside his mind is still alive, but Alex's ex-wife and son, Toinette and Sean, have come to this remote place to help him die.

Scarlet four o'clock, terminal sedation, night blooming cereus, respiratory depression, sacred datura, persistent vegetative state, love-lies-bleeding, life long devotion: the names of desert flowers and the language of death are equally potent and mysterious in this haunting and urgent play. Like "Wit" and "Whose Life Is It Anyway?," " Love-Lies-Bleeding" explores the perilous question of when life ends--or should. It is also a play about a son looking for the father who abandoned him, and it is about the odd emotional tenacity of relationships long-ended, about shared language as the antidote to loss.

Praise for Don DeLillo's previous play, "Valparaiso":

'May be the novelist's most satisfying work since "White Noise " . . . "Valparaiso" is art at its finest' "Boston Globe"

'Indisputably electric . . . fresh and pertinent' " New York Times "

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Theatre, American, Ebooks, 21st Century

97 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Donald Richard DeLillo is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, the complexities of language, art, the advent of the Digital Age, mathematics, politics, economics, and sports.
DeLillo was already a well-regarded cult writer in 1985, when the publication of White Noise brought him widespread recognition and the National Book Award for fiction. He followed this in 1988 with Libra, a novel about the Kennedy assassination. DeLillo won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Mao II, about terrorism and the media's scrutiny of writers' private lives, and the William Dean Howells Medal for Underworld, a historical novel that ranges in time from the dawn of the Cold War to the birth of the Internet. He was awarded the 1999 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2010, and the 2013 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
DeLillo has described his themes as "living in dangerous times" and "the inner life of the culture." In a 2005 interview, he said that writers "must oppose systems. It's important to write against power, corporations, the state, and the whole system of consumption and of debilitating entertainments... I think writers, by nature, must oppose things, oppose whatever power tries to impose on us."

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this is the first time I have been able to read something by Don DeLillo. I’ve tried in the past, not recently. This is a play, his third, with four characters. Staging is minimal, consisting of chairs on the stage. Set changes are made by lighting, by who is on stage, by clothing changes for one character who is in a wheelchair.

He touches, in practically so many words, the big themes: life, death, familial and sexual love, time, compassion, generosity, jealousy, resentment, desire, beauty. A man, a painter, suffers one, then two, massive strokes. His family, such as it is, gathers.

They discuss him. But mostly they discuss themselves, their needs, wants, desires. He has a second wife, much younger. She focuses on the painter, but it is her love, in the end, that she wants to preserve. They discuss what is fair treatment, what is right and what is good, now, about his life. How long should it be preserved? He dies.

The spare dry air of the southwestern desert plains is clear in a few short sentences:

ALEX
I’m just here. In winter the sharp-shinned hawk comes down to the scrub. I can sit and watch a hawk in a tree for unnumbered hours. I’m on his time. He don’t move, I don’t move. I drive to the site and stay four five days at a time. Work and sweat. Talk Spanish to my crew.

That was before, before the strokes. Time grows short, and it is almost always time for bed. What is the good, the right, the fair thing to do?

Masterly in its control, this short play condenses a lot of experience into an hour or so, without giving us any sense that the answer given here finishes the debate. It is a moment, in a wide open plain, when the sun slowly sinks into the west and the Love-Lies-Bleeding evokes color, suffering, mystery. “That’s what being in the world means. At times we suffer.”

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

"What good is a life that doesn't experience some trace of all possible lives?"
-- Don DeLillo, Love-Lies-Bleeding



"The roses in the window box
Have tilted to one side
Everything about this house
Was born to grow and die"
-- Elton John, Love Lies Bleeding



Love-Lies-Bleeding is the common name for "Amaranthus caudatus". A lovely plant to allude to in a play about death or as an opening track on a rock album. I adore DeLillo as a novelist, and I'm pretty happy with the first play I've read of his. It is a powerful look at end-of-life discussions. DeLillo loves that space. He love exploring the edge of things, the terminus, the edge of the horizon. Sometimes, the best way to explore life is to look at the choices we make regarding life -- and death.

The set-up is pretty simple and spare. Four characters: an artist, dying; his son; his second wife; his fourth and current wife. After two strokes, the artist is in a permanent vegetative state. Debate and discussions follow. This was performed in May of 2005 and it was in March of 2005 that Terry Schiavo eventually died. I'm not sure if this play was written shortly before the litigation or during those sad events. One thing I'm sure of, however, is those who want to reduce the moral calculus of ending someone else's life into simple math short change all of our lives. I'm not sure how I feel about the Terry case, but I'm damn sure the discussion is important. This play is beating the same drum.

One other interesting piece of note about this play. In scene 3 of the last (3) act, there is a joke:

"All right, here's a joke. It's a philosophical joke. I told it to my seniors in geophysics. Goes like this. Two tiny young fish are swimming in the sea. They come upon an older fish. He says to them, Hey, fellas, how's the water? They two young fish swim on past. They swim for many miles. Finally one of the fish says to the other, What the fuck is water?"

Those of you who are David Foster Wallace fans will recognize that DFW also related this joke in a commencement address at Kenyon College that was later put into a small book called: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. This play was first performed in early May. DFW's commencement address was late May. Not sure. It was a minor part of the DeLillo play, but was developed by DFW. Perhaps, they chatted about it before. Who knows. Perhaps, one day I'll explore DFW and DeLillo's papers at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin and find out.

[Seyed Mohammad Reza Mahdavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

نمایشنامه خونِ عشقِ دروغین
دون دلیلو
ترجمه ی پدرام لعل بخش
نشر افراز
تعداد صفحات : 104

در پشت جلد می خوانید
دون دلیلو، نویسنده ی ایتالیایی تبارِ آمریکایی در سال 1936 به دنیا آمد. آثار او پرتره ای ظریف و دقیق را از زندگی آمریکایی در اواخر قرن بیستم و اوایل قرن بیست و یکم به تصویر می کشد
خون عشق دورغین ، سومین نمایشنامه ی دون دلیلو، یک نمایش سه پرده ای است که پیش از انتشار به کارگردانی نویسنده در آیداهو به روی صحنه رفت و پس از آن بارها در نقاط مختلف جهان اجرا شده است
این نمایشنامه به زندگی هنرمندی به نام الکس مکلین در سال های واپسین زندگی اش و تاثیر وضعیت او بر پسرش ، شان و همسر دوم و چهارمش، توینت و لیا، می پردازد. پس از دومین سکته ی شدید، دچار مرگ مغزی می شود و در وضعیت زندگی گیاهی قرار می گیرد و شخصیت های دیگر نمایش گرد هم می آیند تا برای سرنوشتش تصمیم بگیرند

[Mack]

in my play reading era

[Luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I Died Like the Immovable Man on a Bench  
 
Alex, a lively man, enters a vegetative state after two strokes. Lia (his wife), Toinette (ex wife), and son try to keep him alive, but for how long will they be able to take care of him? Will a day arrive when they will want to break free from a static situation?
 
Like in all the books I read by DeLillo, death is present. Death is the most dangerous illness. It is what pushes us to do crazy things in order to stay alive; but ironically it turns against us. It may even shorten life.
 
I like DeLillo's style but the main themes are getting too repetitive already (I read  6 books by him so far). I hope that the rest of the novels will not get boring (this means that im done with the plays!)

[Shaun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing little book/novella/play by the single greatest living author today. He continues to astound and amaze with his fingers so firmly on the pulse of today's "[pop] culture". Oh to be so sadly human!

Short, quick read well worth the time.

[Susan L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first DeLillo play. I definitely recognize his prose style in it, which is a good thing at times, but also somewhat of a bad thing. In White Noise he rocks the detached dialogue but in this play there were times when I was somewhat irritated, especially at the beginning because the whole play is dialogue and you just want someone to start yelling or something.

The ending was the best part, I loved both the main monologues, especially Sean's. Great title, though I wish more had been done with the plants/flowers theme. I liked the idea of these 3 people and their relationships with one another and Alex, kind of being forced in the same room at a difficult time and having to make a life and death decision.

Favorite line: "I think this is a child's syringe." (Sean)

Grade: B+

[Nick Milinazzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Not everything we feel has to be expressed, or can be expressed. We withhold some things. Some things are too powerful, or too breakable. We withhold, we suppress, we whisper. We're free to do this, you would say. We whisper to our lovers. Why? Because some things are too precious to enter the world. Because too much can be said. Because love can't bear all this saying."

After an aging artist has two strokes, his ex wife, his son, and his current wife come together to discuss his life and what will occur to him. While I've read nearly all of DeLillo's books, this is the first play of his I've ever read. Even though he is known for his profound descriptive qualities, they are not missed here. Every line and scene has been carefully crafted, distilled to their purest forms. The majority of 2025 has gone by and I have read so few books that contain the power of this short play. This is exactly what I want in my literature. It may not be to everyone's tastes, but for me it is perfect. Sparse, severe, brutal, exquisite -- quintessentially DeLillo. 5 stars.

[Harry Junior · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my introduction to DeLillo - a short, deceptively simple play, bearing some of the most human, nuanced dialogue I've ever read. The breadth of what is covered in so few pages is astonishing. I know I'll revisit.

[Franco Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doloroso, profundamente filosófico y espectacular.

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Title is this guy:
Dude is really best at novels, the longer the better. The plays aren’t incompetent, just probably would work better as long prosey things.

Set in the desert, western US, partaking therefore of the same setting as Point Omega: “I bathe myself in the light of this epic desert space” (65).

Principal object of the agon here is the disposition of a person in a “persistent vegetative state” (27).

Very much an agambenian interest in point of differentiation between life and death, the zone of indistinction where we can’t sort one from the other—life when one is “sort of presentably dead” (11), say? Is it a matter of dying “in nature’s time” (40), a “right to suffer” (41)? “Not that he’s alive. Not that he’s dead. No longer and not yet” (48).

Secondary agon concerns the gender politics arising out of the first: “a male fantasy of the caring woman” (11), carried on by several of the surviving spouses: “She’s one of his wives. I’m one of his wives. We’re just pussy.” (21).

Recommended for readers who think the world was flat, those who feel the erotic rumblings, and persons who love the language of body failure.

[a.g.e. montagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thing that turns us into children, alone under the sky

After The Day Room and Valparaiso (a play about TV and mass-media) here's DeLillo's third work for the stage.

The stage set is minimal, and only a small portion of the playing area is used. Light is scarce, action nigh non-existent. And words, the few that are spoken, are heavy. The language is impossibly terse. And, as usual, DeLillo's prose simply shines.

By the way, love-lies-bleeding is a flower: Amaranthus caudatus.

[Cody · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not nearly as bad as I had feared. DeLillo's gift clearly doesn't lie in theater, but, with a body of work like his, does that really matter? The dialogue is incredibly stilted; I've never met anyone (much less 4) that speak like the characters in Love-Lies-Bleeding. Still, there were a few glimpses of greatness that, in novel form, could have been canonical.

For all that, I'd read this over the titanic shitstorms that are Cosmopolis and The Body Artist any day of the week.

For completists only...

Can't wait for Zero K! May 10!

[Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful play with excellent dialogue concerning grand themes of love and death. A nice way to dip your toe into a DeLillo if you aren't ready to commit to a novel. In case you're wondering. Love lies bleeding is the name of a flower, the desert Mariposa. It's tied in intricately to the characters' lives. The irony of the title is also encapsulated in the persistent vegetative state of Alex, a Hemingway-like desert artist figure. His ex-wife, current wife, and adult son are caregivers and witnesses to Alex's life.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

BORING! What is this crap. Not one of these characters is interesting or likable. And none of these characters seem to care about any of the other characters... hey guess what. Neither do I.

And who talks like this? It was all circuitous fragmented nonsense. A full length play and not one real conversation between anybody. I don't know how these people can talk so much while saying nothing at all. What was the goal of this play? How to take bad poetry and make it into a play?

There is also nothing that drives this play forward. No burning questions that need to be answered. No conflict or arguments. Anybody reading this already knows how it ends. So what are the burning questions that keep readers reading in order to find out the answers? None apparently. You could skip 20 pages anywhere in this book and not miss anything important.

This play seems to be trying so hard to be interesting and deep but falls flat on it's face and actually does the opposite. We're just supposed to trip over ourselves fawning over the guy because what, we're told he was supposedly some kind of big-time interesting artist? I didn't see it. Because it was not demonstrated. If you can't show this with any dialogue then I'll tell you what the "protagonist/hero" character at the center of this story actually comes across as- boring, uninteresting, douchebag. Wow, an artist that had more that one wife over his lifetime, huh, how interesting and unusual. And his abandoned son hated him? So clever. And they all are at his bedside trying to determine how to humanely end his life sooner. Gee interesting. Was not impressed by this guy at all, so how can I be sad or moved even a tiny bit by his paralysis or dying.

How do you write a story about the most dramatic event in life- death, that yet has no drama in it at all. So what else is there that we can get out of this story? Do any characters grow and change throughout the story- nope. Do we identify or have empathy with any of them- nope. Is there anything inspiring to take from this story- nope. Will i completely forget about this play a couple days from now- yep.

Maybe great actors and sets could bring more life to this play. I don't know. Doubtful.

Death can be a great subject when handled appropriately. I actually really like a good somber deep story about loss as much as the next guy... if I actually care about any of the characters. I'm sure there are a lot of great stories about death out there. This wasn't one of them.

[cami · Rating 4 out of 5]

today we read this play in north american literature class and, honestly, the class was a bit boring. i found the book really interesting though. i thought it was very subtle the way the author could bring up to debate such delicate theme as euthanasia, a very important one as well. lia not knowing if she could follow through this decision even if alex asked her to, the question of what peace are we talking about when we say things like "this person needs to rest, needs peace". are we really talking about this person or are we talking about ourselves? our peace? our conscience's sake? i also found strong and so profound alex and toinette's conversations as well as alex and lia's but the one i found the strongest was the conversations between alex and sean, his son. so sad... he didn't know his own father, he didn't even know how to talk to him, how to call him. he couldn't even look at him and was able to make such a big decision still. was sean thinking about his own peace and rest? peace from all this awkwardness between the two, from all the distance they have built for years? i find this play a good one to reflect upon these matters like euthanasia and father-and-son relationships. apart from this, i thought it was so lovely the way they remembered alex for his love for plants in that conversation.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play was much simpler and more heartfelt than the other two. It dealt in ideas of death and the morality of euthanasia - whether we have a right to take life if nothingness lies ahead, even if that means putting an end to suffering.

DeLillo also shows the pain of family and friends who must decide this thing, especially in a world where it cannot be legally performed.

It’s a beautiful, concise, simple play that will leave you feeling like you just need to sit down and breathe for a second.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Because I say to myself, What good is a life that doesn’t experience some trace of all possible lives? What’s the point of being only who we are? Isn’t this the sort of unspoken limitation we live with, most of us, all the time? I mean shouldn’t the man on the subway train, the man on a park bench who has no shoes, who’s too beaten down even to beg, sitting there, so frail and soiled — shouldn’t I be able to be in his life, be who he is, even for half a minute?”

[David Sheward · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Borrowed from Lincoln Center library) Don DeLillo's novels are cold but this play is warm. The sons and two wives of a dying artist struggle with euthanasia. Moving and real. I loved the details as the artist recalls seeing his first dead person on a NYC subway when he was a child. His father was reading a newspaper and the artist tried to remember the name of his dad's favorite sports columnist. That little detail made the memory so striking.

[Marta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love-Lies-Bleeding (2005)

Pensavo un argomento del genere mi avrebbe toccata di più, invece lo stile casereccio dell'eutanasia mi ha un po' urtata.

[Michael Forsyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 to be more clear this is significantly better than average although not in the firmament of greatness of 4, 4.5, or 5 stars.

[karina · Rating 4 out of 5]

gonna do a one man play of this and invite all my friends

[Shane Skelcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short play about the struggles of what it means to have lived a good life. Quick read, powerful message, but I don’t think I’m a reading the play guy. Overall, enjoyed the read but didn’t love it.

[Cassandra Cammarata · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, DeLillo always hits. Play DeLillo is 💋

[David Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Goddammit I wish this was longer.

[henrique. · Rating 3 out of 5]

nunca tinha lido nada dele, mas o homi escreve bem mesmo
um monte de fala brutal, me deixou c vontade de ler mais peças (acho que essa foi a primeira peça que eu li por vontade própria)

[Waleed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unremarkable

[Zach Freeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love-Lies-Bleeding seems like a continuation, or alternate telling of the novel The Body Artist. A (much) younger woman marries an older man who has had a long, eventful life before her, and now he's dying (or in The Body Artist, he's dead) and she sits and thinks and talks and nothing much happens.

While DeLillo is clearly a talented writer, I think that his talents don't transfer to novels, and definitely not to plays, as well as other reviewers seem to think they do. Maybe he should write some poems, or some philosophical ponderings. This is the third work of DeLillo's that I've read, and what I've noticed is that there is always a point in the story when you get to a monologue by one character that really captures the meaning of the whole story. I just wish DeLillo would write a bunch of those and put them out together, instead of writing an extra 100 pages to wrap around these little gems.

In Love-Lies-Bleeding, an old man (70s) is in a vegetative state after a stroke. His present wife (30s), ex-wife (50s), and son (30s) are all gathered to take care of him and contemplate euthanasia. I simply can't imagine this show actually being performed on a stage and not boring audiences to... well, death. Besides the lack of a real driving force in the plot, there are three acts, and probably around 15 total scenes, maybe more. Each scene is short and stilted, and while reading you can see that time has passed and maybe gather the meaning of the scene... on stage this seems like it would be far too distracting. And I know I wouldn't want to sit there through wooden deliveries of these stylistic lines.

Sometimes artistic creative work is really moving. And sometimes it's just self-indulgent and bland. I feel like this play is closer to the latter. There's a line in here where one of the stroke-victim's ex-wives remarks "I'm not sure how it works but men who don't know themselves have a power over others, those who try miserably to understand." I think Don DeLillo has a power over others for the same reason.

[Schuyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had taken a small break from DeLillo after having read his most well known work, White Noise. I was a bit disappointed with it and figured I needed some space, so to speak. Getting back into his work, I'm reminded why I love his prose and dialogue.

Of his three plays, Love-Lies-Bleeding is the first and only I've read. It is sparse territory, taking place in the south western desert of the United States and contains only four characters/actors. The main character, Alex, is an aging artist who has just suffered from a massive second stroke and as such, is in a "persistent vegetative state." So his estranged son and ex-wife have come to convince his second, younger wife to let him die. Or help him die, which is the matter at hand. It examines issues of mercy, mortality, and what it means to actually live in this world.

Its language and dialogue are meditative. Those familiar with DeLillo will recognize his style instantly. Repetition. The naming of things. The dialogue that sounds natural but in reality, no one would ever say. The poetry of his words. It foreshadows Point Omega both in its setting, mood, and tone. Love-Lies-Bleeding doesn't differ greatly from his novels style-wise and it very well could have been just another one of his novellas. But his words still give me the chills.

Of DeLillo's 18 published works (excluding Amazons by Cleo Birdwell), I have five works left. Three novels (End Zone, Great Jones Street, and Ratner's Star) and two plays (The Day Room and Valparaiso).

[DubaiReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first play.

I've never read a play before (since Shakespeare at school) so this was a new experience and required a bit of adjustment. I can't say I'm a new convert from having read this though.
It was very short, less than 100 pages, and fairly atmospheric, with the darkened ares of the room and the lifeless man in a wheelchair. Only three other characters play parts - the man's young wife, an older ex-wife and his estranged son. Each has their own reasons for being there but they are to do with love, not inheritance, which made a pleasant change.
The central discussion revolves around euthanasia. The man is obviously terminally ill and I was rooting for them to put him out of his misery. The young wife, however, is against the idea, even though she is the one nursing him full time.
There are also flash-backs to earlier times, when the man, an artist of some repute, spoke of his life and thoughts, and love of desert plants.

All in all, rather abstract. Interesting.