“It’s Times Square Saturday night. Everybody’s in costume. Cowboys, bikers, drag queens, punk rockers, decoy cops, Moonies, gypsies, Salvation Army regulars, Process evangelists in dark capes, skinhead Krishna chanters in saffron robes and tennis sneakers. Glitter and trash everywhere. Hot pants, blond wigs, slouch hats, silver boots. Late-season heat blasts. Waves of humid air pour over the crowds. Horns blowing, engines revving, music wailing from loudspeakers in record stores. There is swamp fever in the air. Everybody’s soaked through with sweat, eyes glassy and distant. Priests, doormen, movie ushers, French sailors, West Point cadets, waitresses in dirndls, Shriners wearing fezzes.”

This is 5-stars from anyone but DeLillo, but a 4-stars in his canon. A political thriller, obsessed with jargon and coldness and history. The intrigue all centers around a particular pornographic film that several organizations just absolutely need to possess (ex-CIA shadow corp, US senator, the mob, a second-rate collector of erotica).

The characters are, as always, obsessed with minutiae and getting to the heart of their own personal mysteries. DeLillo doesn’t waste a lot of time telling us the “why” behind their actions and if he does he doesn’t spell it out literally. He knows, like we do, that the “why” is personal and liable to change at a moment’s notice. It’s multilayered and complex and impossible.

The “thriller” action, when it does happen, is subdued but still hits hard—even if it revolves around a tin of butter cookies or the implication of violence.

“Terror isn’t the erotic commodity it used to be. We know too much. We’ve seen.”

“Vietnam, in more ways than one, was a war based on hybrid gibberish. But Mudger could understand the importance of this on the most basic of levels, the grunt level, where the fighting man stood and where technical idiom was often the only element of precision, the only true beauty, he could take with him into realms of ambiguity…Correspondents filled their dispatches with these, using names as facets of narrative, trying to convey the impact of violent action by reporting concatenations of letters and numbers. Mudger loved it, both ironically and in the plainest of ways. Spoken aloud by sweaty men in camouflage grease, these number-words and coinages had the inviolate grace of a strict meter of chant.”

This was a much more rewarding read the second time around.

3.5 stars. An entertaining short novel that is full of ideas and a number of events. The novel begins with a man dressed as a woman being murdered. We learn that he was involved in the business of the sale of a film supposedly showing orgies in Hitler’s bunker.

Two main characters in this novel are Glen Selby, who works as a special, mainly ‘arts’, buyer for a US senator who collects erotic art objects. However his main job is working as a government intelligence officer. Glen has been trained in the use of fire arms. Moll Robbins is an investigative reporter for semi underground ‘Running Dog’ magazine.

It’s a bit of a jumble of a book with lots happening. Glen picks up a nude storyteller (prostitute). Glen and Moll have lots of sex. There is a screening of Hilter’s bunker home movies and the viewers reaction to seeing Hitler’s friends is quite amusing.

DeLillo fans should find this book a satisfying read.

This book was first published in 1978.

Intriguing, fun, a bit all over, a bit overcooked, but plenty entertaining.