The Literary Wolf Part II: Don DeLillo

American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous. Don DeLillo


I remember back in 1986, when I lived in New York City, reading about the 48th Congress of International Pen held in Manhattan (I should have gone to one of the presentations but I was a terrible attendee to events in those days). The writers who attended was a list that is legendary. Norman Mailer was President and the symposium was titled The Writer's Imagination and the Imagination of the State. Attending were a list of Nobel and future Nobel Prize winning authors: Gunter Grass, Salmun Rushdie, Czeslaw Milosz, Toni Morrison, Joseph Brodsky, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, Grace Paley, Elizabeth Hardwick, Mario Vargas Llosa, Wole Soyinka, Susan Sontag, John Irving, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut and the list went on and on. It was powerful. It was contentious. It was a hell of a lot of fun simply to read about. Salmun Rushdie did write a wonderful article in the New York Times describing it. Words flew like enraged birds, accusations, denunciations, harangues, demands, proclamations and on and on. At one point John Updike (who died as I was writing this blog) compared the American writer to the blue mailboxes found in rural America, waiting to exchange their ideas. This last was the thing I remembered most because I thought at the time that this was an incredibly boring way to view writing and the exchange of ideas. It reminded me a bit of Matisse's famous statement about wanting art to be like a comfortable chair.


Don DeLillo was not at this conference. His novel White Noise had been released the previous year and had won the National Book Award. A typically hilarious, vicious send-up of American Academic thinking, the tv media and American life in general, DeLillo was anything but a quiet blue mailbox waiting by the side of the road. He was a bomb thrower.

In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society
that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of
terror may be the only meaningful act. Don DeLillo

DeLillo was raked over the coals by conservative literary critics when he made this last quote, but they missed the point, decidely focusing on the fact that DeLillo dared call terror a meaningful act. I think the quote speaks very strongly to his own work. Whether End Zone, Great Jones Street, The Names, Mao II, or Underworld, or really any of his other work, terror has always been haunting the edges of the page, sometimes between the words, sometimes openly so. I think, also, what they may have not liked was DeLillo's association of terror with those in power as well.

I won't review the books. That has been done extensively elsewhere. I will give a few fleeting impressions of what I took away from these books. As well, I will not look at every book he has done. Simply the ones I remember and liked the most or which had the most lasting effect on me.

Great Jones Street

Bucky Wunderlick and his loft on Great Jones Street in NYC. That street in NY, as I remember it, dark and cobbly and mysterious. The loft, the feeling of all that space. A loft when they were still pretty much former factory floors and not really living spaces. His quietly soft and sexy girlfriend Opal, his crazy writer neighbor and Transparanoia - the corporation formed by his band. The opening sentence "Fame requires every form of excess." The humor, vicious.

The Names

Still my favorite of all of his work. Greece, the sunlight, the blue waters, the heat. DeLillo said an interview he tried to capture through language what he felt from the Greek landscape. The mystery of the serial killings. The filmaker Frank Volterra (who I thought, simply from a feeling, nothing concrete, was based on Francis Ford Coppola). The CIA. The feeling of quiet, of anger, of aridity. The wonderful line about how, if America is the world's myth, the CIA is America's myth. These are the things that stay with me.

End Zone

One word - funny.  The idea of football equals war is nothing new but the humor that DeLillo brings to the idea is what makes it so original and fun. Gary Harkness, a kind of career college quarterback, too intellectual for the game but loves it. The coach they call the Hauptfuherer. The philosophical dialogue about the football being aware that it is a football in a game aware of its own footballness. The idea of men of destiny sitting up late at night, having piercing eyes and never being found in phone booths. I open this book at random and find something funny every time.

White Noise

 The one most people have read. Still, don't let that stop you. The airborn toxic event. Jack Gladney, the professor of Hitler studies who speaks no German, making his way through his career like an illiterate relying on others. Mass hysteria from the ideas of impending calamity. Stores emptied of products due to coming snowstorms. DeLillo gets under the craziness that comes with the tabloids in the supermarket, the groundless fears and phobias, the endless diets and health plans that provide us with a false sense of control. A feeling of modern life out of control but no one knows it yet.

Underworld

Brilliant. The sense of time scattered over decades - the 50s with the famous Giants vs. Dodgers game with Ralph Branca pitching to Bobby Thomson while Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleeson and J. Edgar Hoover look on from their box seats. The weave through time, the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Klara Sax, the artist, an amazing character we see as a young, viril woman and later as an aged, Georgia O'Keefe figure. The sense of menace.  The highway shooter. A famous baseball's journey. Our world encompassed in tiny, delicate details. Brilliance.

There are many, many other books that I won't go into here. Ratner's Star, Mao II, Running Dogs, Libra and the more recent work. Any book of his is worth the read. I spoke of the ones that touched me the most.  DeLillo astounded me the first time I read him. He astounds me with each successive reading. As with Bulgakov he is a wolf. As with Bulgakov, DeLillo is an unlawful phenomenon.

 












The Literary Wolf

 The best writers, to my mind, are like wolves: they skirt along the edges of society picking out the fattest among us, the most spoiled, the most overindulged, and they make a meal of it for the rest of us to enjoy. Mikhail Bulgakov and Don Delillo are such wolves. This isn't a comprehensive examination of their work, merely an appreciation. Click on a bookcover to see available editions at Amazon. Other links will take you to informative pages about each writer.

Mikhail Bulgakov

"In the broad field of Russian letters in the USSR I was the one and only literary wolf. I was advised to dye my fur. Absurd advice. You can dye a wolf, clip a wolf ---- he still doesn't look like a poodle."           Mikhail Bulgakov letter to Joseph Stalin, May 30th, 1931

 Bulgakov never hid behind the dyed fur of a poodle. In his life, in his work he showed the bristly, silvery hairs of the wolf he knew himself to be. Denied the ability to publish, teased by having his plays rehearsed but never given an opening night, he responded by writing a novel at once brilliant, beautiful, caustic, cynical and romantic beyond compare.  

The Master and Margarita  starts off as easy as can be. Simple almost, effortless. Two men discussing whether Christ actually existed. Then they meet a third. A stranger who tells them not only that Christ did exist but he, the stranger, was there. Then you are pulled into the second layer of the novel, the novel within the novel, the Christ novel written by the Master. The voice grabs you instantly. It is the powerful voice of the omniscient narrator, a voice that commands respect, that doesn't let you look away. It is sublime. Alternating between the chapters of 20th century Moscow with the year of Christ's death, Bulgakov makes the most unexpected combination work - a story of satire about the state of Russia under communism, a heartfelt love story about a Margarita's faith in her love and her lover, the Master and the Master's story of the relationship of Pilate and Christ - a novel that, because no one will publish it, has driven the Master to a nervous breakdown. A friend once said to me that it is the ultimate story of good and evil and the necessity of evil in order for there to be any good. "Manuscripts don't burn." Says the devil to the Master. This proved to be prophetic of Bulgakov. His manuscript of The Master and Margarita confiscated by the secret police, was discovered in their archives after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Bulgakov's other novels and short stories don't get quite as much attention, and definitely not as much adoration, as The Master and Margarita. But his isn't a case of a one-trick pony. These other works, written as a one time shot by any other writer would still be worth their place on the library shelf.

The White Guard

"Great and terrible was the year of our Lord 1918, of the Revolution the second. Its summer abundant with warmth, its winter with snow, highest in its heaven stood two stars: the shephards' start, eventide Venus; and Mars -- quivering, red."  The White Guard

 This opening sentence is one of the loveliest I have ever read. I often simply open the book to read this and marvel at how adroitly, artfully Bulgakov brings us in. A year of extremes, of love, of war. The story is about one family, the Turbins, in Kiev during the 72 days in 1921 that the Ukraine was caught between the Germans on one side, the fleeing Whites from Russia and the oncoming Reds. The government was functioning under the illusion of autonomy but their leader, called the Hetman, was really just a puppet for the Germans. It is one of the finest books about war, revolution and love that one can read. In its own way it is a kind of more intense War and Peace with more war than peace and happening over a shorter time span. But Bulgakov's depicition of this family, of their lives, their loves, their thoughts is equal to Tolstoy so vivid will this family remain in your mind's imagination.

Heart of a Dog


Easily the most strange of all Bulgakov's work. Professor Fillip Fillipovich Preobrazhensky inplants the pituitary gland and testicles of a man into Sharik, a stray dog. As the dog becomes a man, takes on the wonderful name of Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, becomes a member of the apartment board and gets a job on the Moscow Cleansing Department getting rid of cats, the Professor watches his life become hell. As a satire it is perfect. Bulgakov shows the corruptness of the Soviet system and the greed and avarice of human beings in general. Slim, compared to his other books, but powerful.

A Country Doctor's Notebook  

In 1916 - 1917, just before and then during the revolution, Bulgakov worked as a doctor in the northwest Russian countryside - "32 miles from the nearest electric light." The stories are atmospheric, describing winter snowstorms, the night, the frigid cold and the entire landscape in a way that almost feels more like Chekhov's Russia than Revolutionary Russia. The stories are dramatic, humorous, scary and even, with the story Morphine, hallucinogenic (Bulgakov was addicted to Morphine during this time). I remember reading these stories while living in Moscow during the winter. A marvelous experience. But I have read it again since and enjoyed it equally and didn't miss Russia in the winter one bit so vivid does Bulgakov make his descriptions. With this book, with each book by Bulgakov, I realize how extraordinary he is as a writer.

Black Snow

Often called his "theatrical novel", Black Snow was unfinished when finally published. It is a highly satirical account of Bulgakov's time working at the Moscow Art Theater under Stanislavski as a writer and dramaturgue for the company. Bulgakov acquired the job throught he intercession of Stalin after Bulgakov had written Stalin that he wanted to emigrate because he could not make a living. The book's humor is dark, at times bitterly so, and yet it has such a degree of out and out hilarity that I often found myself laughing out loud. It helps, also, to know the history of Stanislavski, the Moscow Art Theater and the style of acting known as The Method because Bulgakov's rendering of all of this is so well done. I was reminded of Chekhov's letters wherein he would complain about Stanislavski, his "method" and how Chekhov's plays were being ruined. Bulgakov's depiction of the feuding theater directors - Stanislavski and his partner Nemirovich-Danchenko - his depiction of Stanislavski's phobias (for instance not wanting a gun to be shot on stage because of the effect this once had on a member of the audience in the past - presumably referring Chekhov's Uncle Vanya) and the crazy politics and co-opting that Bulgakov had to partake of as a member of the company. Unfinished as it is it is the novel is ample proof of Bulgakov's ability to skewer the people in power by his depiction of the mentality that prevailed during that time period.

There are other books and stories, notably The Fatal Eggs, Diaboliad, as well as a book of his plays. However the books mentioned above are the books I have enjoyed the most and return to again and again for the sheer enjoyment and beauty they offer. At a dinner party given by the writer Vikenty Veresayev Boris Pasternak wanted to give a toast to Bulgakov. The hostess jumped in and said they should toast Veresayev first. Pasternak is quoted by Bulgakov's wife, Yelena, as saying, "No, I want to drink to Bulgakov. Veresayev is a great man , of course, but he is a lawful phenomenon, Whereas Bulgakov is unlawful." (Manuscripts Don't Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov,  A Life in Letters and Diaries by J.A.E. Curtis, Bloomsbury, 1991)

Part II: Don Delillo next post

The Content of Our Character

I walked down to the National Mall today. All along the way the streets were quiet, still, as if a set for some movie about the last man on earth. The closer I got to the mall the more people appeared until, on the mall, it was a sea of humanity. To say this day was historic is to understate what this day really was. It was transcendent. It was astonishing. It was, in the true sense of the word, awesome - inspiring a sense of awe, of almost shocked silence, of reverence. Everywhere I went people were smiling and laughing and seeming so at ease, so relaxed. Our new president is official. He has sworn the oath, given his speech, made the parade and hangs up his scarf in the White House.

I have always been proud about being American. Even in our darkest periods, when our actions strayed so very far from our ideals, I kept my pride. My pride, my patriotism is not of the jingoistic variety. I do not believe in the phrase my country right or wrong or put much faith in the symbols. I believe and put my faith in the ideals of my country. These ideals, formulated 232 years ago, by a flawed but idealist group of men, codified into a Bill of Rights, and made into laws that help us live the way we should, are what has made us so very different from other democracies. Martin Luther King, Jr. called it a promissory note and demanded that it be paid. Today was a big step in regards to that payment.

 

I remember teaching English in an Eastern bloc country many years ago, just after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It was around the time of the first democratic elections in this country. They had lived under a communist dictatorship for almost 75 years. I remember the young people I was teaching telling me how nothing would change, that their vote did not matter, that their leaders would do as they wish and the people would follow like sheep. These were their words. They had no faith because there was nothing to base their faith on. Their country had never known honest elections. I tried to explain to them how democracy works and how they must believe that they could make a difference but it was useless. In a country so long used to being without the basic freedoms that we enjoy the idea that one person can change things doesn't go very far. Barak Obamas have no chance in such a place.

You see, this is what I love about the United States, that every so often, and sometimes when the light seems most dim, we make good on the promise of the ideas that formed our country. Every child knows the lines from King's I Have a Dream speech, the one that demands "judge me by the content of my character, not the color of my skin."  Today we saw a man who was given that very fundamental right sworn in as President of the United States. By living up to King's demand we also showed the content of our character as a nation. In such moments we show the rest of the world, in the best ways possible, and in ways so much better than we have tried to show these last eight years, how our country can live up to its ideals and deliver on its promises. We show what is best in ourselves. We demonstrate democracy.

Practical Politics Part Two: Wang Bingzhang and Freedom

 

As usually happens to me I was starting a rather long blog on two literary figures and came across a compelling article in today's Washington Post about the Chinese political prisoner Wang Bingzhang. Written by his daughter, Ti-Anna Wang, a young college student named after the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, the article is a plea for the release of her father who has been held, illegally, by the Chinese government since June 2002.  Dr. Wang was one of the founders of the Chinese overseas democracy movement. He believes that China deserves a true democracy and has been unstinting in his work towards that goal. Kidnapped in Vietnam, near the Chinese border, by the Chinese secret service, he has been held in prison for seven years. Ti-Anna Wang's eloquent argument for both his release and the values of freedom and democracy can be found here: Fighting for My Father's Freedom.  The website about her father can be found here: wangbangzhing.com There is a campaign to send Dr. Wang a birthday card. Send one. Let him know that the world outside is aware and that we support his efforts. It is in the actions and sacrifice of such people as Dr. Wang and his daughter that we see what freedom can truly mean and be and also what the cost for freedom sometimes is. Let us hope and work for his release.