62nd book of 2023.

2.5. One of the books that accompanied me to Greece, but I'll save my holiday writing for my Henry Miller review, which I'll write in the next few days around the dreaded post-holiday return to work.

Like with White Noise, I find DeLillo frustrating. This one even more so, actually. The first 50 or so pages, maybe even 100, I read before my flight to Athens and reading it put me in that sort of luminous mood a good book can put you in. I got to work elated by my commute-reading. It was gentle, there were ruminations on fatherhood, estranged marriages, language, history, and, of course, Athens. I thought, Finally, I can see the DeLillo love.

But then it got more and more DeLillo and I remembered why I didn't like him before. His dialogue became odd, unnatural, at times, seemingly built of non-sequiturs. The family stuff faded and instead the cult stuff intensified: murder, old languages. It became more abstract but didn't keep me in its hold. Once again DeLillo let go of me (reader) and went on his (writer) own journey. I was hoping to get to Underworld at some point this year, but this doesn't bode well. I'm not one to give up on a writer though, even after numerous misses. It took me a long time to like a McEwan book. A long time.

Terrorism. Mysterious murders. A sinister cult. Expatriates having wine-fueled conversations in exotic locales. Religion. Language. International intrigue.

It's got everything I love! I should love this novel. But I don't.

If White Noise is a postmodern masterpiece and Cosmopolis is un-readable dreck, than The Names falls right in the middle, comparable to Mao 2, another mid-period DeLillo that deals with politics, uncertainty, and global events and never quite satisfies.

Stylistically, DeLillo's prose is still a highlight; his dialogue is a mixture of philosophical musing and sententious one-liners, but they work. Wisdom for the sound byte age. Some choice examples:

"Americans used to come to places like this to write and paint and study, to find deeper textures. Now we do business."

Who are Americans? "Eerie people. Genetically engineered to play squash and work weekends."

"If I were a writer...how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating, to work in the margins, outside a central perception."

"Americans choose strategy over principle every time and yet keep believing in their own innocence."

There's plenty more on language, religion, marriage, Greeks, film, art. It's metaphysical. And historical. And good stuff.

But then there's the plot. Eventually the characters stop spouting aphorisms and they have to do things, but nothing that ever happens seems to interest me, let alone move me.

At the novel's conclusion, a character laments about "one more thing to vex me with its elusiveness," and I couldn't help but think that was exactly how I felt.

Mao II and The Names are tours de force of elliptical language, bracingly visceral imagery and the post-art centered world where terrorism is the new means to the hearts and minds of the masses. A deep melancholy stains every page and the climaxes are at once hushed, claustrophobic and explosively open. I'm not sure if my contradictory reviews make me or Delillo more Buck Mulligan, but either way, it's all here.

Don DeLillo gets major points for style. Seriously, he's one of the all-time greatest American prose stylists; his knack for catching the rhythms of (educated, disaffected) speech is uncanny, as is his always-apt use of the interrogative-with-no-question-mark, which I've not seen effectively used in most writing but hear in speech every day. And he always picks good themes, if you want to call them that: technology, language, consumerism, intellectualism, violence, etc.

So why is it that he so rarely manages to write a compelling novel? I loved White Noise, but was very let down by The Body Artist and later Cosmopolis. And now this. The plot drags, or there is no plot, or the plot is ambiguous, or it's ambiguous whether or not there's a plot. Resolutions are promised, promises broken.

But then, why the four stars? Well, I would say this was notably better than the other two I mentioned, if only because it's set in Greece, but also I think because it was written BEFORE White Noise and his other really good stuff, though I couldn't exactly say why that helps. As I said before, the prose style is near-perfect, which is nice. And the novel does raise some interesting questions, although I won't mention them here. Ultimately it comes down to this:

"A man finishing a peach tossed the pit into the sidecar of a motorcycle as it turned the corner where he happened to be standing. The timing was perfect, the toss deceptively casual. What rounded out the simple beauty of the thing was the fact that he did not look around to see who noticed."

There's a lot of that. If you like it, you'll probably like The Names. If not, skip it.

I approached this re-read of The Names (my third time through the book) with a little bit of trepidation: as mentioned in my review below (there is no review for my first time through because that was in 1980-something), I was aware that the second half of the book is quite confusing and I wasn’t sure what I would make of it this time.

It’s also interesting to see that this book generates some very different views. In my review below I mentioned that Geoff Dyer argues in a review that it would have won the Booker if the decision to allow American entries had been made a few decades earlier. In the same vein, Graham Foster (grahamfoster.org) writes a strong review that ends like this:

”The Names is a complex novel, but necessarily so. It is, after all, about the consequences of when the structures we use to apply meaning to the world fall apart. It’s a novel that invites the reader to think about the efficacy of our language in describing the complicated and messy experience of the world. But it’s also about how we need that language, the system that allows us to rationalise immediate dangers such as terrorism and war, the system that convinces us we are safe. With The Names, DeLillo gives us a glimpse of the alternative.”

(The complexity of the second half that I have mentioned is generated largely by the way Delillo chooses to reflect this falling apart of structures in his language).

But then, at dactylreview.com, V. N. Alexander argues that the book is a complete failure and ends a review like this:

”Sure, the book is probably better than commercial fiction. But that’s not its genre and there is a higher standard against which it must be compared. DeLillo is usually regarded as a literary figure. In general, I did not find his technique artful, interesting, or well-considered. It is true that he has more than a few nice paragraphs and does a good job characterizing the narrator’s son, but most of this novel is not worth the effort of turning the pages.”

Of course, everyone has to make up their own mind. In my case, I tend towards the view that it is a great book. It is full of quotable sentences (although some of them sound great as your read them but less so when you think about them) and observations about America (”I’ve come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.”) and the lack of a coherent plot is actually a positive thing from my perspective although I appreciate it might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

The really good news about this third reading of the novel is that I didn’t get lost in the second half! In previous readings, I’ve sort of abandoned any attempts to make sense of it and just let it wash over me. That was fine and I still rather enjoyed the experience (it is not uncommon for me to enjoy a book that I don’t really understand). But this time I kept waiting for the part where I lost any sense of comprehension and it never arrived. It’s true that the book goes to some strange places where it becomes more difficult to make a consistent whole out of the different parts, but if you stick with Owen Brademas in mind through the book, most of it hangs together a lot better than concentrating just on James Axton.

The fundamental theme of the book is the collapse of language. And this is reflected in the language in which the book is written, even to the point where the final few pages are written in the mis-spelled, ungrammatical almost invented language of Axton’s son, Tap.

I think I appreciate this novel a lot more for a third reading. It is part of my re-read of all Delillo’s works in publication order. It remains true that I see this as this first of his “fantastic five”. For a series of 5 books in a row, starting here and followed by White Noise, Libra, Mao II and Underworld, Delillo elevated himself above what he had done before (and what he would do afterwards, I think) and wrote some of my favourite books (for the record, Libra is my favourite Delillo novel, so I look forward to getting to that one for a re-read soon).

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ORIGINAL REVIEW
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There is a quote from the New York Times on the back cover of my edition of this book: "Delillo verbally examines every state of consciousness from eroticism to tourism, from the idea of America as conceived by the rest of the world to the idea of the rest of the world as conceived by America, from mysticism to fanaticism."

The book focuses on a group of Americans. They are not in America. They are in Greece and make frequent trips to other parts of the world. The only pre-requisite for where they go seems to be that there should be the threat of violence - against Americans. They are part of the "risk community" insuring large American corporations against the risks of travel. At least, that’s probably what they are: there is some ambiguity and there might be some CIA involvement.

"Americans used to come to places like this to write and paint and study, to find deeper textures. Now we do business."

It’s funny how choosing books from my TBR list at random often produces consecutive books that connect. The book previous to this was New Finnish Grammar and that is about language and so is this. Delillo is not really concerned with plot. He isn’t worried about distinct voices for his characters (they all, including the child - who is 9 not 6 as the blurb here says - a 6-year old novelist would be ridiculous, after all - talk in Delillo-speak which is unlike any dialogue you will read anywhere else). But he is, as in nearly all of his books, concerned with style and with language. Even sex is about words: "'Say heat. Say wet between my legs. Say legs. Seriously I want you to. Stockings. Whisper it. The word is meant to be whispered … Use names,' I said."

If there’s a plot, it is largely about the possible existence of a "death cult" about which the main character sets about trying to discover the truth. But, in truth, it is really about character studies and commentary on America. The second half of the book becomes less and less concerned with plot and more and more concerned with style and language. I am not 100% confident I understood it all, especially the final 50 pages or so. But it contains some beautifully crafted sentences and though-provoking comments. It is perhaps one of those books where the best plan is to let it wash over you - enjoy the craft of the writing and worry less about the plot.

In his review in The Guardian (written in 2014), Geoff Dyer argues that Delillo would have won The Man Booker prize 3 times if Americans had been allowed to enter earlier, firstly for this book and then later for White Noise and Underworld. It’s hard to disagree. Dyer ends his review with this comment about The Names: "'Are they killing Americans?' – gets asked with increasing rhetorical anxiety. The Names is a prophetic, pre-9/11 masterpiece: a 21st-century novel published in 1982." (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...).

роман - ода Греції, мові та людській ненависті. американці як відлюдники, відлюдники як убивці через мовні причини. надто багатомовний роман, але знов - родина з дивною дитиною, яка вигадує свою мову, метаморфоза як убивство.

رمان «نام‌ها» اثر دون دلیلو، رمانی تفکربرانگیز و محرک فکری است که به درون مایه‌های زبان، هویت و قدرت کلمات می‌پردازد. داستان در یونان و خاورمیانه اتفاق می‌افتد، و داستان جیمز آکس، قهرمان داستان را دنبال می‌کند که در دنیایی از مرگ‌های مرموز و فرقه‌های مرموز با محوریت اهمیت نام‌ها حرکت می‌کند.
نثر دلیلو استادانه است، مملو از توصیف‌های غنی و بینش‌های عمیقی است که خوانندگان را ب�� پرسش در مورد ماهیت واقعیت و روش‌هایی که زبان درک ما از جهان را شکل می‌دهد، به چالش می‌کشد. کاوش رمان در رابطه بین زبان و خشونت به ویژه قانع کننده است و دیدگاه منحصر به فردی را در مورد پیچیدگی های ارتباط و ارتباط انسانی ارائه می دهد.
شخصیت‌های «نام‌ها» پیچیده و جذاب هستند، هر کدام با دوراهی‌های وجودی خود دست و پنجه نرم می‌کنند و در دنیایی که اغلب احساس آشفتگی و نامطمئن می‌کند به دنبال معنا هستند. سفر خودیابی جیمز آکس هم گیرا و هم تکان دهنده است، زیرا او با مرگ و میر خود روبرو می شود و تلاش می کند تا نیروهای مرموز موجود در اطرافش را درک کند.
"نام ها"نیاز به توجه دقیق به جزئیات و تمایل به درگیر شدن با تفکرات فلسفی خود دارد، اما به خوانندگان یک تجربه خواندنی عمیقا رضایت بخش و از نظر فکری تحریک کننده پاداش می دهد.

A strange but marvelous book. The analysis of language and its limits feel like an embodied commentary on the act of novel writing itself. DeLillo's impressionist, dreamlike tendencies also make for some spell binding descriptions of the exotic locations the protagonist travels to.

“A shaved head would do wonders for this group.”

Parts of The Names read like a tract of linguistic idealism. One of the characters, Owen Brademas, (who is obsessed with alphabets, the shape of words, and a cult that kills people based on their initials’ matching place names) posits that ancient structures were erected, tombs built, in order to have a place for the words. “The river of language is God,” he says, which is pretty close to Nietzsche’s “Without grammar, God is not possible” (or was it the other way around?).

Lurking throughout the book is the Wittgenstein-ish idea that there is no meaning behind words or events but just the speaking of the words themselves, an act itself. The same character referenced above wants to run the hadj (yes, how Western) in spite of the fact that he does not believe in God. Belief is irrelevant, it’s the act that counts etc. etc. I guess that’s pretty much standard existentialism, isn’t it.

More so than in any other Delillo novel, it doesn’t matter at all who is saying any given thing. There are a lot of different characters, and a fair amount of time is spent making clear who is who, yet each is wholly defined by the comments he/she makes over drinks. I think this was done purposely. Late in the book the narrator concludes that when people visit a sacred place, the main thing they have to offer is language. And this is for sure the most talk-ridden Delillo book.

"Americans choose strategy over principle every time and yet keep believing in their own innocence. . . . The Americans learned to live with the colonels very well. Investments flourished under the dictatorship." The usual story of the US stomping out democratic uprisings and supporting ruthless militants when it serves its interests (i.e., when the leader will do whatever the US wants).

So there’s some real prescient stuff on the way world hates the US. The narrator (to alleviate guilt?) talks of the US’s position in the world in mythic terms, with the US serving as a needed archetype for the rest of the world’s fears. The characters in The Names are risk analysts, investors, economists, actuaries, spies, operatives; aloof from the turmoil and grievances of the regions they’re involved in, they dabble in them and move on. They scout out places of political turmoil and violence to see if corporations’ investments are safe; they have interesting conversations over dinner. They hoard rugs for profit and talk about the interesting things that happened to them the last time they were in Tehran. Kind of repulsive.

But these people are offset by the borderline lunatics of the book: the narrator, James Axton, and Owen Brademas. In literature, as often in life, it’s best to support the lunatics. It’s clear Delillo does. These two concoct whole other narratives for the regions they visit, and while maintaining your usual Delilloan ironclad grip on clear thought they push their thinking to out-of-bounds places. There is the tendency to draw profound conclusions from pretty much anything phenomena throws at them. “Everything is connected.”

When Delillo’s name is on a book you can bet your ass the writing will often be astounding. Throughout, often when you don’t see it coming, the writing will reach a crazy pitch. Plus the structure of The Names is just weird. It makes you feel as if you’re not quite thinking about it the right way, and that if you did you’d see the book differently.

This is my fifth or sixth read of The Names and I admire it more every time. It was my first introduction to DeLillo and the one I return to most often.

Friends and family I've recommended it to have almost universally found it too dry, so fair warning. And although I can understand that, I don't agree. I mean, it IS bone dry, but not boring. It's atmospheric and intense, fruitfully ruminative, stark. A book to slow down for, to meditate with. It's an archaeology and a prayer.

Take time with him and you'll be rewarded: DeLillo here is surgically insightful, capable of delivering whole characters with one poetic, perfect line; each setting, no matter how exotic, is so vividly evoked it's like remembering someplace I've actually been. The Names is one of those books I'll be rereading every few years for the rest of my life.

“I move past the scaffolding and walk down the steps, hearing one language after another, rich, harsh, mysterious, strong. This is what we bring to the temple, not prayer or chant or slaughtered rams. Our offering is language.”
― Don DeLillo, The Names



For 4/5 of this book Don DeLillo was surfing in Mao II, White Noise, Underworld, and Libra territory. I was jamming. Words. Names. Cults. Terrorism. It was fantastic. But there was 1/5 (yup, math works) of this book right before the last few pages where DeLillo just let go of the narrative kite. It was like I was meditating and almost ready to escape the wheel with this book Don, and at the very end your chanting just put me to sleep. Still, 4/5 of this book rocked. And maybe it was me and not you Don. Maybe. I'll review tomorrow some more. Maybe I'll even re-read the last 60+ pages. See if I can detect God or meaning in those words. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm not thinking right. Tomorrow, I'll look at this again with fresh eyes.

[Post Rest] I'm still not ready to make it five stars. It doesn't quite belong to the same orbit as those DeLillo novels listed above. HOWEVER, there was something visceral about this novel that grabbed me (and yes lost me for a bit). I remember going to high school in Turkey in the late 80s. Hell, Kurdish Marxist terrorists inadvertently saved my life (long, but true story). DeLillo's novel is an archeology of words, a history of terror, a hunt for God and the economics of understanding. It is at times a frustrating prose poem and at times glorious burp in a cave. It gives serious echoes of MAO II. It is infinitely quotable. It whirls like a dusty dervish on the sacred Name of God, reducing memory and history to the initials of the Great unknown.

Vaulting into eternity ... well perhaps not that high

Pushing the logic of hippiedom to its extreme, The Names suggests an end point - a nihilistic cult whose reason for being is to murder people whose initials correspond to the names of their locations. Bizarre, senseless, and intentionally without benefit to anyone. Helter Skelter played out in the regions that produced Western civilization, Greece and the Middle East.

This cult fascinates James, a member of the international financial gang whose roles are just about as rational as those of the cultists; and Frank, a film-maker, who wants to exploit as much irrationality as he can; and Owen, an academic who is unaccountably swept into the spiritual maelstrom of the Indian branch of the cult. Who can blame any of them? Their lives are an empty wandering without any conscious intention. Only the bizarre and senseless seems to make any sense. They obsessively move toward the cult but with nothing as directive as desire. The cult is a kind of tar baby, an inert web, that traps the protagonists for no point whatsoever.

Everyone sounds the same in The Names, men, women, children, adults, bankers and archaeologists. Without 'he saids, she saids' it is often difficult to follow conversations. And since DeLillo doesn't do reflective internal dialogue except to confuse, it's also difficult to decipher motivations. Why do couples stay together, or not? Why do the men persist in their questionable businesses and resist returning to America? What attracts his characters to the distributed cult? DeLillo's not saying.

Then there are the literary non-sequiturs. "It never happens until it happens again. Then it never happened." Does this phrase have meaning? "There was something artless and trusting in the place despite the street meanders, the narrow turns and ravens." I should think artlessness was implied by such a scene, which has no obvious connection to trust or distrust. Or "In this century, the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth century writer that he aspires to madness." This would certainly qualify for the Pseuds Corner section of Private Eye.

My problem is that I think I share much of DeLillo's experience of the world and his gripes about corporate life, American interference in the world and the casual destructiveness of global finance. But I can't place myself anywhere in his writing. I get lost, as if I've become one of his rootless, bored, superficial characters who is "vaulting into eternity." I suppose this is his intention. If so I'm left with the question 'Why?'.