When Don DeLillo first learned that a conference in Paris would be devoted entirely to his work, his initial reaction was: “How can that be? I’m just a kid from the Bronx.”
DeLillo shared this anecdote and many others on September 13 in Cleveland, where he appeared thanks to the William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series. I arrived at the Maltz Performing Arts Center ready to hear what DeLillo, a writer not particularly known for embracing the spotlight, had to say about intuition, invention, imagination, trusty typewriters, and more. Here’s a sampling of some of the wisdom and humor he shared with his audience:
On his career: I’ve been a lucky writer, which not a lot of novelists can say. [Writing can be] a tough grind with vast disappointments.
On why he uses a manual typewriter (and has, in fact, used the same one since 1975): It’s the sound of the hammer hitting the page, the feel of the fingers on the keys . . . It’s not just the hand, not just the eye, but the body working in a curious way.
On the rhythm of the sentence: It’s all intuitive. For my latest novel, as I typed, I felt I was following the words and sentences rather than inventing. I felt all I had to do was finish the sentences to watch the words take shape. It was pleasurable but also seemed to take forever.
On learning Greek and its influence on his writing: The shape of the letters made them more than words to me. They were art. I began to think of writing in a very different way—not words, but groups of letters, and each letter has a shape. This changed the way I write and how I looked at words and sentences. Since then, I’ve written much more slowly.
On choosing a less accurate word for the sake of aesthetics: I have surrendered meaning to sound and even sight. I assume this is what poets do. I’m willing to sacrifice meaning for sensory pleasure.
On James Joyce: I have a visual memory of sitting in a room in sunlight reading Joyce . . . The first three chapters of Ulysses made a strong impact on me. I thought, this is language.
How he’d decide which great American authors he’d teach in a college class: It would be difficult to know what would matter most to my students. I never have taught. I would simply be at a total loss to teach books that would mean something [to students]. I would have to talk at great length about what the books mean to me, but what would it mean to them?
On writing the other: I think a fiction writer is allowed to explore any territory he or she wants to. A fiction writer uses imagination. That’s a classic element in fiction. He or she needs to be free to examine any territory.
On watching one of his plays being produced: A novelist spends years working on the novel, and if he’s like me, he doesn’t talk to anyone about the novel. But a play—you’re in a rehearsal hall, with people reading your words. They’re learning your language. [The play] becomes three-dimensional on stage, and is no longer yours but the director’s. Then it opens, and it becomes the actors’ play.
In response to an audience member reading a description of a character’s clothing in White Noise and asking about its significance: What the hell was I getting at? I wrote White Noise pretty quickly and had no occasion to re-read it; I’m not sure I read it in the first place.
On how he manages to write about big ideas: I start small. I don’t know where I’m going to go—not only at the start, but 200 pages in. I simply believe I’m going to find out. I have that intuition that the work I’m doing will tell me [what comes] next. I think I felt it on the last novel more than any other. I seemed to reach a point that was inevitable to reach, and then I took a walk.
On the power of language: I don’t read as much now. It has to do with attention span, perhaps. I sit in my chair and look at books that meant a great deal to me . . . These books helped me become a writer. The power of language—that’s always something I strived for, to discover the power of language in my own work. That’s the pleasure in writing, and also the pleasure of reading.