Dav’s
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(group member since Jul 22, 2008)
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Oh, I didn't realize this was behind a wall, here's an excerpt:October 10, 1982
A TALK WITH DON DELILLO
By Robert R. Harris
[...]
Mr. DeLillo's new novel explores how Americans work and live abroad. The protagonist, James Axton, a ''risk analyst'' for a company with C.I.A. ties, becomes obsessed with a bizarre murderous cult whose members select their victims by their initials. Mr. DeLillo describes ''The Names,'' along with ''Ratner's Star,'' as a book that was especially difficult for him to write.
''The main character,'' he says, ''resisted realization for a longer time than other characters have. It wasn't until I went away for five or six months without doing any work on the book that James Axton came alive for me. Before that, he seemed to resist entering the sentences I was writing. And every time I began to write about the cult I seemed to enter a period of anxiety. I'm not sure whether this was because I was having trouble bringing the cult members to life or whether I simply didn't want to face the reality of what they did. I wasn't sure I could be equal to the mysteriousness of the murders they committed.
''A writer can be perfectly happy with the character he creates who happens to be a mass murderer if the writer feels that his creation has been successful. But in this case, it simply didn't work that way. The characters themselves made me wish I'd decided to do a simpler novel.''
Like ''Ratner's Star,'' a book in which Mr. DeLillo says he tried to ''produce a piece of mathematics,'' ''The Names'' is complexly structured and layered. It concludes with an excerpt from a novel in progress by Axton's 9-year-old son, Tap. Inspiration for the ending came from Atticus Lish, the young son of Mr. DeLillo's friend Gordon Lish, an editor.
[...]
This thread prompted my to do a little googling, and I found this wonderful interview:http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/16...
It compares the (then) new novel The Names to Rantner's Star. These two happen to have been my two favorite Don DeLillo books for nearly decades (now Falling Man has jumped up to join them). It was nice to see him equate them.
