Abandoned after 70 pages. Pretentious but also dumb. Author hates all his characters and ogles at foreign countries. Unlike other critiques of expats (Forster, Greene, Rush, Naipul), DeLillo seems to write about Americans abroad not because he’s particularly interested in this group of people, but because it provides a shortcut to establishing that his characters are sinister or at least flawed. They work for international corporations! Some of which are banks! What really drives me nuts is that while DeLillo dunks on his own expat characters, he himself seems swept up in the excitement and adventure of his foreign setting—in a way that feels very reminiscent of some of the more pathetic characters in the (better) books by other authors.

Maybe all my concerns are addressed in remainder of book. This is my first DeLillo, and I’m baffled that he’s considered such a talented stylist. “Twin boys, teenagers, walked with their father along the harborfront. . . . The boys were closer to eighteen than thirteen.” (34) What a strange way to say 16/17!

Sétimo romance de DeLillo, precedendo a publicação de Ruído Branco, que impulsionou a sua ascensão no panorama literário internacional, Os Nomes, apesar das críticas favoráveis, continua a ser um título imerecidamente menosprezado dada a sua qualidade, mas também por se desprender da crítica à sociedade americana pela qual o autor é reconhecido, para nos apresentar uma meditação política e espiritual do início da década de 80.

"When I work," he goes on, "I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear."

in Guardian

Superficialidade é algo que não encontrarão neste romance. Embora apresente um estilo analítico, algo que se deve ao carácter do narrador, o executivo James Axton (simultaneamente o principal protagonista), as descrições de DeLillo são detalhadas, procurando sempre atingir um significado mais profundo, revelar uma ideia que não é aparente. Esse nível de detalhe é transportado para os inteligentes diálogos, cuidadosamente construídos e muitas das vezes entrecortados pelas divagações de James.

“Começava a considerar-me um eterno turista. Havia nisto qualquer coisa de agradável. Ser turista é fugir da responsabilidade. Os erros e os defeitos não se colam a nós como em casa. Somos capazes de vaguear por continentes e línguas, suspendendo a actividade do pensamento lógico. O turismo é a marcha da imbecilidade. Contam que sejamos imbecis. Todo o mecanismo do país hospedeiro está adaptado aos viajantes que se comportam de um modo imbecil. Andamos às voltas, aturdidos, olhando de esguelha para mapas desdobrados. Não sabemos falar com as pessoas, ir a lado nenhum, quanto vale o dinheiro, que horas são, o que comer ou como o comer. Ser-se imbecil é o padrão, o nível e a norma. Podemos continuar a viver nestas condições durante semanas e meses, sem censuras nem consequências terríveis. Tal como a outros milhares, são-nos concedidas imunidades e amplas liberdades. Somos um exército de loucos, usando roupas de poliéster de cores vivas, montando camelos, tirando fotografias uns aos outros, fatigados, disentéricos, sedentos. Não temos mais nada em que pensar senão no próximo acontecimento informe.”

Os Nomes foca-se, sobretudo, na importância da linguagem para a humanidade e no distanciamento da realidade, na ausência de paixão que afecta James. Separado da sua família, e sem um rumo definido para a sua vida, James acaba por se interessar pelo mistério que envolve os assassinatos ritualistas, sendo esse o principal motor da narrativa, que quebra a rotina do analista americano impelindo-o a compreender esse seu interesse e, através do conhecimento das razões por detrás dos seus intentos, perceber-se melhor a ele próprio.

“Sabemos que havemos de morrer. Isto é, em certo sentido, a nossa virtude redentora. Nenhum animal sabe isso excepto nós. É uma das coisas que nos distingue. É a nossa tristeza particular, este conhecimento, e, por conseguinte, uma riqueza, uma santificação.”

Não deixa de ser impressionante verificar como, através da complexidade inerente às questões existenciais com que personagens se confrontam, entre as profundas reflexões políticas, sociais, religiosas e linguísticas, Don DeLillo consegue dar liberdade ao leitor no que a conclusões diz respeito, como que entreabrindo a porta que permite alcançar as respostas, enquanto diminui as distorções que afectam o nosso raciocínio, submergindo as vozes enganadoras que nos tentam desencaminhar constantemente.

“- Neste século, o escritor tem mantido uma conversa com a loucura. Podemos quase dizer que o escritor do século vinte aspira à loucura. Alguns conseguiram-no, evidentemente, e ocupam lugares especiais na sua consideração. Para um escritor, a loucura é uma destilação decisiva do eu, uma edição decisiva. É o submergir das vozes enganadoras.”

"En cierto modo, apenas existimos. Se trata de una vida difícil. Hay numerosos inconvenientes. Las células pierden contacto unas con otras. Surgen diferencias en torno a la teoría y a la práctica. Durante meses, no ocurre nada. Perdemos tesón, enfermamos. Algunos han muerto. Otros han decidido marcharse. ¿Quiénes somos, qué hacemos aquí? Ni siquiera hay peligro de que la policía nos identifique como criminales. Nadie sabe que existimos. Nadie nos busca".

The book's sole flaw - (if you discount its lack of popular "entertainment value") - is the device of the murders among DeLillo's otherwise brilliant political commentary and incisive investigation into relationships, "Americana" and language itself. The murders, and the ensuing speculative dialogue surrounding them, however, clank and clunk through the novel's otherwise perfect structure and superior phrasing.

A deeply enigmatic novel about roots. Most of the characters are rootless, travelling from one country to another monthly in the name of largely incomprehensible work. The narrator's wife is an archaeologist, his son has invented a language. Behind everything is a mysterious cult who carry out a chain of murders, always choosing victims whose initials match the place they are killed in. The writing is often exalted.

There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in this book, but to me the overriding theme was distance, disconnection and alienation and how disconnection and alienation become a sort of perverse backward way into reconnection. We see this first and foremost in the narrator's separation from his wife and his attempts to find ways to reconnect with her. We see it again in the cult -- alienated, separated from society, and creating the ultimate separation by committing murders, which are also a weird form of reconnection. As the cult members say, the murders are the logical and necessary end of their program. There is distancing and disconnection in the use of language, alphabets, names and words -- they create connection, but also misunderstanding and necessary distance by being by their nature a semiotic step removed from the things that they signify. The sense of alienation and distance is enhanced by the way that DeLillo uses words and descriptions and by his narrative technique. It is masterful, but also a bit disturbing. It gave me a pit in my stomach that made me put the book down a couple of times before I could finish it. Overall, I found it to be a bleak view of the modern human condition. On one level, I wish that DeLillo had thrown us a bone of hope at the end, but I guess it was ultimately better that he didn't and that instead of giving false hope he stays true to his bleak vision to the bitter end.

This has to be the densest DeLillo novel I've read. There's a large cast of characters, multiple plot-lines, and some serious theoretical/thematic stuff going on, all in under 350 pages. The one thing DeLillo gets criticized for the most, it seems, is that he's prone to letting style run rampant, leaving his novels empty and vapid. I've never really felt this way about any of his books, though this one seemed to come the closest. All the characters are kept at a great distance from the reader, especially (or at least most importantly) the narrator, who we never really get to know, for all his hip DeLilloesque musings, which he (or else the author) uses to distract from what he's really feeling, what his real motivations are, his thoughts, his desires. In The Names, style dominates so fully that none of the characters, I'd say, are even real people, but instead are just vehicles for DeLillo's theoretical message, and plus his stylistic, poetic prose. Which, fine. The prose is absolutely top-notch here, and the theory is totally compelling. This is definitely a novel that warrants at least two reads.

Still, there were times when I felt myself losing interest, due to the distance that DeLillo maintains between his reader and his characters. The most emotionally resonant aspect of the novel concerns the relationship between the narrator and his wife and son (and but because his wife plays only, really, a brief, developmental role in the novel's first section, it's the son who provides the novel with its real emotional gravitas). The son, like all of DeLillo's best children, is delightfully precocious, though here DeLillo keeps him somewhat vulnerable and childlike; unlike, for example, White Noise's over-the-top-but-still-amazing Heinrich. Still, the oddly named Tap is only nine, and he's writing a novel, which is . . . noteworthy? Anyhow, during the interactions between the narrator and his son, my ears perked up and my heart started beating again. I started to care on more than just a surface, aesthetic level. Tap is clearly what makes the narrator tick, emotionally speaking. Thus, I only wish these interactions would have been more frequent and less far-between.

Here's an interaction (not between Tap & his father) indicative of what I'm talking about:

"Everybody is like everybody else."
"You can't mean that."
"Not exactly. Not stated exactly so."
"We overlap. Is that what you mean?"
"I'm not sure what I mean."

It's worth noting the absence of dialogue tags; the novel rarely uses them. All of DeLillo's characters, not only within a single novel but throughout his entire body of work, sound the same, which is fine only because his dialogue is so riveting in the way it's both incredibly realistic and wonderfully, almost comically stylized. This was pushed a bit too far, though, in The Names. Here, we have two characters who could, really, be any two characters in any of DeLillo's books, but what's truly frustrating about the interaction is that one of the characters seems (finally) to want to really say something, to make a statement, and to establish a sort of identity for him/herself through this declaration. When that declaration is met with the slightest bit of resistance or skepticism (not that the skepticism is directed at the content of the statement; it's almost as if the second character is skeptical of any statement which would allow another character to establish that desired identity), the speaker immediately retreats into a neutral and safe ignorance. We're left, once again, with a character who's unable to take a stand, make a statement, become a real person. The conversation becomes another hip bit of DeLilloesque poetry, a (dare I say) vapid interaction between two detached, aloof characters. Sure it's enjoyable on an aesthetic level, but it's hard to sustain a novel on aesthetics alone.

The overall theme of the novel is language—not written language or spoken language per se, but the means by which we, as humans, communicate. The narrator travels to multiple exotic locales, ostensibly on business but not really doing anything besides walking around making observations. There's a subplot about a series of cult murders, but this never really seems to go anywhere, and in any case, it didn't really interest me (again, I would like to read this again). Everything fits together really well, thematically, and DeLillo manages to say a ton about language without directly being like, This is a book about language. And the book's final section is . . . some kind of wonderful.

I seem to be pointing out a ton of flaws in this book, which, I guess the only thing I can say in its defense is: Don DeLillo wrote it. If you're a fan, this is worth reading. It's dense, it's saying something, it's full of poetry. Read it slowly, though. Don't expect to fly through it like you would a Mao II or a Cosmopolis. There's a lot going on here, which is why I'll go back to it in good time.

This is the DeLillo I know and love. A few years ago, I decided to start at the beginning of DeLillo's career and work my way up to the books I have already read. Basically, anything from 'Underworld' and before were new to me. With 'The Names' finished, I find myself down to two books left (eeeeep!).

I enjoyed DeLillo's early works. The pre-The Names era, I'll call it. The books had elements of the DeLillo I admire, but were a bit loose in ways his later work isn't. Not a bad thing. In fact, I really liked some of those earlier work.

It was in 'Running Dogs' where I finally felt "ohhhh. it's starting" (kind of). Then, "The Names". A beautiful novel with that sharp dialogue and beautiful passages and abstract ideas. Ohhh. Swoon for this one.

I love White Noise, Libra and Underworld, but The Names completely went over my head. It was good and interesting at times, and I really appreciated some of the descriptions and comments he makes on culture, but found the overall message incredibly opaque (some might even say pretentious) and the reading experience itself was pretty tedious. Would very much like to hear what makes this so brillant according to some people as I would be hard pressed to even deliver a decent summary of this book. All I can say is this would make for a terrible introduction to Delillo's work, White Noise is a much better entry point.

Here is a caveat: I read poetry, novels, and short stories for both pleasure and work: to enjoy the writer's use of language and to learn how the writer did what he or she did, and to take away from the experience lessons for myself in my own work. As a writer, I give this novel 5 stars; as a reader, I give it 3 stars.

As a writer I stand in awe of DeLillo's use of language. He is constantly surprising you with his quirky and inventive use of words and phrases.

As a reader, be prepared to find not much of a story to drive any sort of action. There is no readily apparent narrative arc. The dialogue is unreal. People don't speak like this. I think DeLillo provides hints at the struggles with story he experienced while writing this novel: "What we lacked was a subject"; "...a shouted dialogue lacking sense and purpose." Yeah, it kind of feels like that, like DeLillo started writing and just kept writing. On my first attempt at reading this novel I stopped at about page 47 (someone once told me: Give a book 50 pages; if it hasn't grabbed you by then, feel free to give it up). Well, I did give up; I put it away for about a year. But then I circled back to it. And I'm glad I did. As a writer more than a reader. Because that's what pulled me along. Not the story, not the characters, not the action. But the language. Which is of course DeLillo's intention.

But here is where my writer and reader minds collide. Even as I was enjoying the beautiful and startling use of language on the pages, I was thinking that these conversations could never take place because real people do not speak like this, nor does a person think like the main character thinks. If we are to believe that the main character--a risk analyst living in Greece, who used to be a technical writer--is really who he says he is, then he is in the wrong line of business. He should be a poet (a Poet Laureate, for that matter), or a novelist.

Oh. That's right. He already is. It's DeLillo.

This is where the book "falls apart" for me, in this page-by-page collision. But it's a beautiful collision. And if you can hang on for the ride you'll be rewarded with a new way of viewing the world, and the world of words.

4.5/5

What can I even say about this novel? DeLillo is a master of language, and it is fairly unsurprising that a book about such written by him is this good. There is a loose plot threaded throughout, but this is primarily a character-driven work, and the characters are working. There are businessmen, archaeologists, a child novelist, members of government agencies, and a cult. I don’t think anyone not named Don DeLillo could have made this work so well. It doesn’t really even need the bit of plot it has. The sentences and language of the novel are just so damn good, you don’t really care what’s going on in the background all that much.

DeLillo is good on America, neocolonialism, expats. But his ideas on language are disappointing as theme and plot.