Elegantly written, as always, but could have done much more with this idea.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More of the same but better. This thriller suggests sex and power are now commercial spectacle, not transgressive fulfillment.

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.

Dependable Don does it again. This is a sort-of sequel to Great Jones Street, which was about a goofily named Bob Dylan stand-in. (His name is Bucky Wunderlick). That novel has my favorite single passage in all of DeLillo, where Bucky's neighbor recites the old thing about infinite monkeys and typewriters, but reverses it to wonder whether infinite writers would start making monkey noises. This one (Running Dog) is about the Rolling Stone stand-in from GJS trying to find a reel of film that might have a sex tape from Hitler's bunker on it. The big reveal of what's actually on the tape is incredible, and is now up there in my personal canon of Best DeLillo stuff (stuff so it includes passages like the monkeys and writers, 100-page long sections like the entire baseball opening to Underworld, and individual sentences like "Midnight in Dostoevsky"'s "Be serious, we're serious people" or Mao II's immortal "Measure your head before ordering.")

The Graye Report

An investigation has been conducted pursuant to your request and authorisation concerning "Running Dog", a novel written by the American author Don DeLillo, in order to ascertain the literary and other merits of the novel. The results of my investigation are set forth below under headings designed to facilitate your perusal and analysis.

This report is made available to you at your express request, as you have employed me for that purpose. It is a privileged and confidential communication, and the information contained herein is not to be disclosed to others, verbally or otherwise.

The Entrance

I was driving an unmarked car north of Hudson.

I hadn't expected to see a woman. Not after dark, on these streets. Coming this way, striding nicely. She had long hair, darkish blond, and from twenty yards, and closing, I could see how attractive she was. Her black coat was open, revealing a bright red dress. She was eye-catching all right. If she was in the business at all, she wasn't working streets. Easing up on the accelerator, I thought she was a discrepancy in the landscape. A welcome sight, sure, but also slightly disquieting - she didn't fit the picture.

After she passed my car, I watched in the rearview mirror as she approached the demolition site, moving in that nice brisk sexy stride. A perennial all-pro, I thought. I figured I'd swing around the block and catch her again at the end of the same long street. With nothing better to do, I wanted a second look.

I drove around the block and stopped. The street was empty. I let the car inch forward. No one in sight. It had taken me very little time to circle the block. At the rate she was walking she would have reached this part of the street right about now.

The headlights picked up dust, a fairly heavy accumulation. It seemed to be coming from the second-story level of a construction scaffold in midblock. A possible discrepancy. No dust a couple of minutes ago. Dust now. Building should be unoccupied. Crew's gone home.

I got out of the car. I went to the front of the building and took a look at the scaffolding. I felt the dust in my eyes and mouth.

I hoisted myself up a series of interlocking rods and beams until I reached the second-story platform, about eighteen feet above street level. There was an unblocked window here, the one they used to empty the building of its contents.

I directed the flashlight inside. It picked her out through clouds of plaster dust. She was on her back, vivid in the grey haze, head twisted to one side. There was blood still coming out of her, midbody, beneath the rib cage.

I stepped through the window, and realised I had just entered a Don DeLillo novel.

The Settings

DeLillo positioned his novel in six different settings:

1. the art world;

2. the networks of manufacture and distribution of pornography;

3. the covert intelligence community;

4. the American federal political environment;

5. the family (the Mafia);

6. the world of investigative journalism.

You could call each of these worlds a "System" (if you were so inclined).

As in Systems Theory, there is a boundary at which one system stops and another starts.

You could say that this novel works at the boundaries where one system meets another.

The Systems

Whether or not you agree with Tom LeClair that this is a n  “Systems Novel”,n DeLillo gives us enough Systems clues to contemplate.

The woman in the red dress in The Entrance (above) is actually a German transvestite male systems engineer called Christoph Ludecke.

He has acquired the original and only copy of an allegedly pornographic home-movie featuring the occupants in Hitler’s Berlin bunker shot in the last days of the Third Reich.

Earl Mudger, a veteran with experience in special paramilitary programs run by Air Force Intelligence, commander of a fighter-bomber squadron in Korea and former Vice-President of Distribution at Process Management Systems in Oklahoma City (which specialised in production flow systems and automation), is now the head of a covert intelligence organisation code-named “Radial Matrix”, which has spun off from PAC/ORD (the Personnel Advisory Committee, Office of Records and Disbursements, which is now being investigated by a high level Senate Committee led by Senator Lloyd Percival):

“What you have in Mudger is the combination of business drives and lusts and impulses with police techniques, with ultrasophisticated skills of detection, surveillance, extortion, terror and the rest of it.”

It turns out that Ludecke had done contract work for Radial Matrix.

Mudger’s wife is Vietnamese. He employs an assassination team of two former ARVN rangers (one, his wife’s brother, Van, and the other, Cao) who are skilled with knives. It's possible that one of them might have killed Ludecke. Either way, it doesn't sound like a very effective systems management strategy to kill the only person who knows where the home-movie is.

There are many more interesting characters, but you’ll need to read this combination police procedural/espionage thriller to find out the details. Needless to say, most of them want to get their hands on the home-movie.

The Sexual Conquests and Spiritual Quests

“Moll [Robbins] was suspicious of quests. At the bottom of most long and obsessive searches, in her view, was some vital deficiency on the part of the individual in pursuit, a meagerness of spirit.”

The novel is broken into two narratives: one in which various characters are in pursuit of the movie, and the other where Glen Selvy (a former trainee of one of Mudger’s operations and member of Senator Percival’s staff responsible for advising on his art acquisitions) turns his back on the quest and seeks spiritual fulfilment in death (preceded by sex with the two main female characters, Moll Robbins [an investigative journalist with the alternative “Running Dog” magazine] and Nadine Rademacher [a nude storyteller in a Manhattan sex shop]).

The Nomenclaturist Novel: Don DeLillo as Nomenclatourist

The thriller aspect of this novel is accomplished in its own right. However, as you would expect from DeLillo, there is a metaphysical aspect that is both challenging and equally rewarding.

This sixth novel provides an opportunity to reflect on DeLillo’s style and subject matter at a macro level. Here are some thoughts:

Like DeLillo, at the beginning of a novel or perhaps even the beginning of a life, we start with a blank page, all is secret, all is mystery. We are curious about what lies in the world beyond the blank page. So we invent, add or find words. We name things, until we have created a world, a world formed and shaped by nomenclature. When we have only partly finished, there are still secrets, there is still mystery, but we often identify it as conspiracy. We know something, but not everything, of the relationships between people, or between people and things. There are still things for which we do not have words. The more information we acquire, the more we expect to possess knowledge and understanding, the more we expect mystery to recede. However, mystery has a way of persisting. It tends to outlast or survive history and science, for there will always be things beyond our understanding, things that still mystify us, things about which we remain curious, things which lure us into the mystic.


SOUNDTRACK:

Zabriskie Point - Final scene

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=guOmJM8...

Roy Orbison - "So Young" (Love Theme From "Zabriskie Point") (1970)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NZwdTkB...

Beatles - "Within you! Without you!"

https://vimeo.com/42590181

George Harrison- "The Inner Light"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ttqE...

Elvis Costello & The Attractions - "Everyday I Write The Book"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekrzL...

Van Morrison - "Into The Mystic"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEvsD...

Joe Cocker - "Into The Mystic" (Live in Baden)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdgxx...



April 16, 2017

I love Don DeLillo but this one just didn't do it for me.

I did get one really good phrase out of it which was "If Bullshit was music you'd be a brass band!"

A bunch of spies, journalists, and politicians looking for Nazi porn shot in Hitler’s bunker, what’s not to love?