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Elegantly written, as always, but could have done much more with this idea.
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Running Dog
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DeLillo's Running Dog, originally published in 1978, follows Moll Robbins, a New York city journalist trailing the activities of an influential senator. In the process she is dragged into the black market world of erotica and shady, infatuated men, where a cat-and-mouse chase for an erotic film rumored to 'star' Adolf Hitler leads to trickery, maneuvering, and bloodshed. With streamlined prose and a thriller's narrative pace, Running Dog is a bright star in the modern master's early career.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1978
This edition
- Format
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256 pages, Paperback
- Published
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July 17, 1989 by Vintage Contemporaries
- ISBN
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9780679722946
- ASIN
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0679722947
- Language
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English
Characters More characters
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Moll Robbins
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Earl Mudger
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Glen Selvy
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About the author
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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."
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."
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A confounded thriller that seems conceived by the same writer as the other novels but not quite carried out by the guy who usually delivers page after page of perfectly attuned phrases. Seems rushed, simply. Could be rewritten and rock: an old porn film shot in Hitler's bunker right before his end might be available; a Senator's proxy, a former Vietnam POW it turns out, is after it; a journalist for a middling radical magazine is on the case; shadowy forces not so well characterized are giving chase. In the end the film shows a human form who may be Hitler impersonating Charlie Chaplin, who famously impersonated Hitler, to entertain children. There's something to work with there, but in this version, it's too muddled for me, things throughout suffering from disbelief because the art -- as it is in everything else DeLillo's written for the most part -- isn't irrefutable.
DeLillo is always a hyper-reliable author, presenting a more real version of reality rendered in his absolutely particular, superhumanly attentive prose, even if his characters, scenarios, stories might be a little implausible. In this, the prose rarely achieves that level; the dialogue is difficult to follow but not as stylized, honed, musical, funny, and therefore not just forgiven but savored; the characters don't often animate beyond their name, usually just a surname here; and there are few thematic balls in the air, as usual elsewhere.
Some phrases on page 208 (of 246 total) -- "Vietnam, in more ways than once, was a war based on hybrid gibberish . . . where technical idiom was often the only element of precision, the only true beauty, he could take with him into realms of ambiguity" -- almost make all this seem intentional (hybrid gibberish evoking realms of ambiguity) but not enough to make this one seem like more than connective tissue among the major muscle groups of Libra (shadowy conspiracy) and White Noise (Hitler Studies) to come? Might try to read it more slowly, carefully, patiently at some point once I've read everything else and re-read a few others too.
DeLillo is always a hyper-reliable author, presenting a more real version of reality rendered in his absolutely particular, superhumanly attentive prose, even if his characters, scenarios, stories might be a little implausible. In this, the prose rarely achieves that level; the dialogue is difficult to follow but not as stylized, honed, musical, funny, and therefore not just forgiven but savored; the characters don't often animate beyond their name, usually just a surname here; and there are few thematic balls in the air, as usual elsewhere.
Some phrases on page 208 (of 246 total) -- "Vietnam, in more ways than once, was a war based on hybrid gibberish . . . where technical idiom was often the only element of precision, the only true beauty, he could take with him into realms of ambiguity" -- almost make all this seem intentional (hybrid gibberish evoking realms of ambiguity) but not enough to make this one seem like more than connective tissue among the major muscle groups of Libra (shadowy conspiracy) and White Noise (Hitler Studies) to come? Might try to read it more slowly, carefully, patiently at some point once I've read everything else and re-read a few others too.
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Part of the point here is that the conspiracy is so deep that it is impossible to parse. So that means we are left with a plot that deliberately impossible to understand, which is fine for me. The problem is that the events that happen are often inscrutable even on the micro level, I had to read scenes over and over to actually understand who had killed whom, big events were shockingly unclear on the page. So rarely did I understand what was even happening within a scene, and that made for a frustrating reading experience. Outside of Moll, most of the characters blend together. I could never keep straight which man was which, and maybe that's the point, but it really just left me on the outside the whole time.
The dialog is cinematic and often crackling. The prose is very clever at its best moments. But in the end I just felt like this book actively doesn't want you to have a good time, and not in an interesting or challenging way. It does not balance out to anything interesting enough to justify how hard it is to enjoy. Maybe I'll read it again sometime and see if I can follow better.
The dialog is cinematic and often crackling. The prose is very clever at its best moments. But in the end I just felt like this book actively doesn't want you to have a good time, and not in an interesting or challenging way. It does not balance out to anything interesting enough to justify how hard it is to enjoy. Maybe I'll read it again sometime and see if I can follow better.
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Illicit desires, paranoia, secret murderous organisations, the sex industry. Running Dog takes place in a kind of shadow world. Essentially it focuses on Glen Selvy who works for a nefarious government intelligence unit that has secretly gone into profitable private business. A U.S. Senator who collects erotic objets d'art is investigating the unit, so Selvy is employed to get dirt on the Senator. However a relationship with a female investigative journalist causes him to have a change of heart and soon he is on the run from two hired killers. Constructed like a mosaic of broken fragments of glass in which the storyline is reflected, the novel never conforms to what one expects of a political thriller but the prose is often mesmerising and I found much that was edifying. 4+ stars.
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Another audiobook read where I don’t feel like I had the best retention, which is different from the two precious DeLilo audiobooks I did. Interesting book at points, but I wasn’t finding the prose as good as in previous books of his I’d listened to.
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Was a sex tape made in Hitler's bunker? If there was, would you want to see it? That is the question at the heart of this novel full of erotica collectors, mercenaries, politicians, and journalists. It's dark, it's funny, it's sexy, and I still don't know if I'd watch the movie.
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More of the same but better. This thriller suggests sex and power are now commercial spectacle, not transgressive fulfillment.
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Don Delillo - fotografia de Isaac Hernández
“Cão em Fuga” (1978) é o sexto romance do escritor norte-americano Don Delillo (n. 1936) – no original “Running Dog” não é mais do que o nome de uma revista.
Don Delillo inicia “Cão em Fuga” com uma frase emblemática - “Aqui não vais encontrar gente comum.” – e com um assassinato.
Na primeira parte – “Arte Erótica Cósmica” - encontramos Lightborne, um decadente negociante de arte nova-iorquino, com uma galeria denominada “Arte Erótica Cósmica”, obcecado por um suposto filme pornográfico filmado em 1945 no bunker de Hitler, em Berlim, nos últimos dias da 2º Guerra Mundial, “eventualmente”, protagonizado pelo próprio Führer, com imagens duma orgia sexual entre nazis.
Ninguém parece ter visto o filme, mas é em torno desta especulação, num rumor que se acentua, que Lightborne investiga e que procura vender a “mercadoria” – “Uma única cópia. A película original.” - a vários compradores; entre os quais o senador Lloyd Percival, um coleccionador aficionado pelo erotismo, que tem em Gren Selvy, um empregado, um testa-de-ferro sempre presente nas exposições e nos leilões e a Richie Armbrister um jovem de vinte e dois anos, “rei” da indústria cinematográfica ligada à pornografia.
É num dos leilões efectuados por Lightborne na sua galeria que a jornalista Moll Robbins, da revista "Running Dog", que está a fazer uma investigação jornalística para escrever um artigo sobre o mercado da arte erótica que conhece Gren Selvy, um agente duplo (ou triplo?), um homem cheio de regras e de rituais, “(…) não era detective. Não construía modelos explicativos teóricos a respeito de um qualquer acto criminoso. Tal como não se ocupava de aspectos decisórios.” e para quem “as armas de fogo e respectivos componentes constituíam um inventário de valor pessoal.”, e que pretende “(...) envolver-se apenas com mulheres casadas (...)" o que "(...) permitia-lhe definir o estilo de uma determinada relação, os limites do seu próprio envolvimento (...). A vida reduzida a fragmentos intensos. Um idêntico prazer em chegar e partir. Algumas dessas mulheres sentiam o mesmo, sem dúvida; as suas idas e vindas eram regidas por factores externos. O que adicionava força e profundidade e gradação ao acto sexual.”; premissa que Selvy não cumpria.
Na segunda parte – “Matriz Radial” – a subtrama centra-se no senador Lloyd Percival e na CCP/DRD (Comissão Consultiva de Pessoal/Departamento de Registos e Despesas) um organismo oficial de fachada para fiscalização orçamentária de toda a rede de serviços secretos dos EUA, criando um braço operacional, a empresa “Matriz Radial”, cujo dono é um ex-militar no Vietname Earl Mudger, especialista no financiamento de operações clandestinas contra governos estrangeiros; mas que se vai autonomizando em acções de terrorismo e espionagem internas, num mundo de ligações empresariais complexas e ambíguas, onde as teorias da conspiração governamental – militar e industrial - se conjugam entre o passado, o presente e o futuro.
Por fim, a terceira parte – Marathon Mines – o nome de um antigo campo de treino militar do governo norte-americano, num último capítulo, onde Delillo une as pontas soltas de uma narrativa com várias subtramas, permitindo desvendar os enigmas do enredo e formular conclusões sobre as inúmeras temáticas, com destaque para as relações complexas entre a arte, a investigação jornalística e a política, e onde o crime e o sexo sem amor, mas com paixão desmesurada, se revelam de uma forma banal e pervertida.
Don Delillo descreve e caracteriza admiravelmente as personagens principais e secundárias de “Cão em Fuga”, com diálogos curtos e intensos, em que os diferentes protagonistas exprimem as suas convicções e as suas opiniões pessoais, revelando por vezes uma melancolia e uma nostalgia arrebatadora, mas simultaneamente uma enorme agressividade.
“Cão em Fuga” é um livro imprescindível para os fans incondicionais de Don Delillo.
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