The Parthenon & Pollution :: Don DeLillo on Fiction

It's rare that Don DeLillo would appear in public to read or give a lecture. For many years he refused to do either. Now in his old, or older, age he has been coming out of his shell to appear in public. This is a particularly interesting gem I recently found on a page to promote his newest book Point Omega (Scribner 2010). It's an excerpt from a lecture he gave on language and the art of fiction.

Words & Whisky :: You're Allowed

So what’s with the horse head? A couple of you may have noticed pictures of an editor dressed in a centaur-esque getup… No, it might be more accurate to say he’s the opposite of a centaur, with the head of a horse and the body of a man… Hold on, is that the opposite?… Wouldn’t the opposite of a centaur have the body of an animal opposite a horse, like a mermaid? No, that doesn’t make sense either. How can anything be opposite a horse?

It Has to Live in The Air :: A Conversation with Baltimore’s Own Chris Toll

“The more trash, the better,” he said.

I agreed.

We both had some vague notion of a Baltimorean aesthetic in mind.  We both lacked any aptitude for digital photography.  We had come there, though,—to the littered Station North alleyway—to communicate as best we could.
   
It was, admittedly, a rocky start.  Our photographer had dropped out last-minute, leaving my jittery, untrained eye to capture the essence of Chris Toll, a man who I quite honestly had no idea how to talk to.  It was quickly becoming clear that the Chris Toll with whom I had become acquainted through my week-long intake of The Disinformation Phase, that strong-voiced, verbally decisive work of certain apocalypse, was locked away deep inside the man who now stood arms-folded in front of me, unapologetically tangible and soft-spoken.  A “recovering catholic,” as he would later put it.  I was utterly unprepared.