Love Lies Bleeding - Book Review

Love-Lies-Bleeding (Amaranthus caudatus-red tail fox, traduz.in Italian) is a flower that has been recognized therapeutic properties:

'This flower allows the individual to confront and transform the pain and suffering. Pointing when the pain is very intense and is expressed in the form of anxiety, anguish or physical illness. This essence is not the function of an analgesic but pushes the individual consciousness to the outside, by concentrating on himself and isolation to a transpersonal awareness of the meaning and purpose of this painful experience. '

'LIA Love-lies-bleeding. We were in India once. Alex wanted to see the caves. [...] He told me the common name. Love-lies-bleeding. Thin red flowers. Thorny.
[...]
LIA is a name so beautiful. Cuts like a knife. '
(P.21-22)

Love-Lies-Bleeding is therefore a flower but also a short play written by Don DeLillo represented the United States in 2005, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.
It is the first play I read in full, so of course it's hard to be objective.
The plot is simple: the artist Alex Macklin, after the second stroke is forced to live as a vegetable, he turns around three key persons who will discuss the issue of euthanasia. Toinette, his third wife, son Sean and his first wife Leah, the last young wife of Alex.
In each of these characters are represented the most common feelings towards an issue difficult to tackle because it brings into question the life, and determine if that is right (for morality, ethics, consciousness) or not choose death for someone Another unable to clearly express an opinion.
Leah is not the usual woman who marries someone much older than her for money or power. Far from it. Lia is the devoted love, that particular sentiment that drives her husband to look after old and sick, unable even the smallest daily actions. It is a need to Leah, perhaps selfish, but very soft in many respects. At least uncommon. Leah refuses euthanasia, firmly. Do not agree to let him go, he can not. He still needs him. To remember the happy moments, gestures and shares. To get up every day and think that maybe.
'Toinette Foul die in peace.
LIA There is peace in death. Nothing. He is what he feels and what it is now. It is Alex Macklin. And you do not have any right to interfere. '(P.17)
Toinette another form of expressing love, in my opinion. Between her and Alex we were happy years, but also a definite break, characters and expectations that, at some point, have been divided, have chosen different paths. Toinette's why euthanasia is favorable. Because he knows, feels that the journey of her former husband, comrade and rival, is not to remain helpless in a wheelchair to a bed or whatever. Toinette believes without a doubt, that is due, recognized a different ending, faster and more dignified. At the same time scared, Toinette, to something that does not know, not what he knows about the 'how' and 'what'.
'Toinette We want to do one thing ... at least I know nothing ... I can not even talk about it. View trainers' (p.14)
Sean is a complex character that the reader (audience if the play was represented) effort to 'catalog' immediately. It is not the son of Toinette even if there is a special bond between their support and confidence. Did not know his father well, indeed, emerge from their obvious fractures and silences (Sean did not see anything, the body of the father sitting or lying).

'Sean was also able to assimilate some people consume and digest. As you well know. And those who could not consume the deserted street. We must always speak well of the dead. '(P.17)
Still supporting the theory of Toinette as to have procured the necessary to help his father in a quick but painless step, honest words. It is through Sean DeLillo gives voice to those feelings less 'noble' fatigue to the situation of a loved one who has no way out but still there, still alive but unable to do anything yet able to breathe. It is obvious that Sean discomfort to the condition for a prolonged death, however, a condition that leaves nothing to those who remain ill or even close to exhaustion, debases and 'steal' time.
'It could go on for another ten years. We will continue to love him less but because its survival there will be stifled. Not dead but is not even alive. Not yet and no more. E'a halfway '(p.26-27)

The dialogues may seem slow at times, inconclusive because DeLillo does not want to strike with effect phrases or absolute truths. There are no solutions or certainties in this comedy. As the power is not the dominant narrative. Are the reflections of the characters hidden between sentences, the only protagonists. They are, in my opinion, that the reader (audience) should get to listen. The dialogues, the ways and attitudes of the three characters are a way to get to the essence of the text. The intent is not to represent realistic scenes, engaging and impact. The intent is to let ideas.
Mind.

From this text discloses no new analysis or reference to euthanasia. E'già been told everything and the opposite of everything on the topic.

But DeLillo is trying to slim, but not acute invasive.

The same relationship between the characters, past and that Alex was the first stroke during the play emerges through memories, flashbacks sudden increasingly important. It is as if DeLillo is trying to bring the audience into the lives of people in small degrees. Only at the end you will have full awareness of feelings, past trends and challenges of four different lives and yet united.
It is undoubtedly one reading this, very different from the common narrative, requires an eye more, an approach also 'physical' in a sense. To imagine the scenes, 'see' the characters in motion, focus phrases and pauses. Yet I felt very 'inside' (although not, I repeat, other benchmarks on gender). If I could see it represented in a theater I'd been comfortable.
The only less positive point is related to the translation that I was not convinced. From reader.

Review and ISSUE BRIEF NOTES
DeLillo was born in New York on November 20, 1936 to Italian parents emigrated after World War I from a small town in the province of Campobasso, Montagano.
Born and raised in the Bronx, then largely inhabited by Italian Americans, attended Catholic schools up to university, this leaves an indelible mark in many of his writings and especially in Underword (1997).
After his studies he started working as an advertising and interested in art and music, particularly jazz and write. In 1971 he published his first novel Americana that will be translated into Italian until 2000. In 1972 he published End Zone, not yet translated into Italian, and the following year Great Jones Street (translated into Italian in 1997), which tells of a rock artist who retired to live in a barren environment.
In the late seventies on a long journey training in the Middle East and India, then moved to Greece where he lived for three years and writes his eighth novel, the names that will have a good success as a "psychological thriller".
Back then in the U.S. and here he wrote his first masterpiece, White Noise with which to win the National Book Award in 1985.
Since then he has produced other notable works that have crowned as one of the greatest American writers of this millennium: the central figure of the so-called postmodernism with Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster, the first and oldest now considered a classic and one younger and eclectic.

Don Delillo - The Names - Book Review

"The numbers involved, the letters do not." (P. 241)

The names, The names. This novel by Don DeLillo, American writer born of Italian parents emigrated to the States after the First World War (see Wiki Eng; en Wiki), cited as one of the best examples of postmodern American (I read in "Telling the postmodern" of Ceserani. The same critic quoted by Ceserani, and of which, alas, can not remember his name, took such "names" and another novel to bring out the differences between the characteristics of the modern and the post-modern, reduced, finally, to a diversity of questions posed by various authors in their writings. Sorry could not be more specific, but I have the book, and reading time ago), is a novel that revolves around, within, above and below, a cult of which we know nothing, but that the protagonist, James Axton, is determined to discover, understand. A novel intellectual and American, in a sense that you can only imagine reading it. Names. A book that forced me to emphasize this practice I am continuing for another novel, more obsessive and pervasive, and write on the side. Because too many things worthy of being brought to the attention, each page a little thought that triggers something inside. A search of self that you carry and set up the obsessive search for the "cult" and its followers, and his "secret". Secret trite, banal and terrible. Everything leads to death, and only one.

"<<But why kill? >>
<<Nothing less>> he said. <<It must be that. I knew immediately that was it. I can not describe how I penetrated fully and deeply. Not as a question, not an answer. One final thing and terrible. I knew it was right. He must be. Shaking his head, killing him, crushing his brain>>.
[...] A place where men can stop creating history ... [...]
You could say that the structure is intrinsic to the madness. One does not exist without the other>>. "
(P. 242-243)

James Axton is a risk analyst for a large American company, separated from his wife with a son, Tap, lives in Athens, which moves across the Middle East to India, for his work. The stories are set in the late '70s, years not exactly peaceful in that region (as if there had been a quiet, um, there). His wife, Kathryn, works at the archaeological excavations on the Greek island, with her son, and a leader, Owen Brademas, always looking for. Something. On the island, a murder happens. Seemingly inexplicable. But then there are people who worship there, there were seemingly inexplicable killings elsewhere, there are mixed languages, there are letters, there are names.

Ta onoma.
Names.

But that's not worship. That is, the worship is just what triggers the mechanism which starts the player on the road of self. Who is James Axton, at this point in his life. What and what its relationship with the world. With the people around him, other Americans living abroad. With his son Tap, who is writing a novel, and the woman from whom they are separated but not divorced. With women he meets: "A man feels jealousy toward a woman who has never loved, which is only a friend. Do not want to know nothing of the pleasure of the senses. The stories of interest to you at issues of motifs in his life. [...] There is no need to hate someone for complacency of his misfortune. Is not it? No need to love a woman to feel possessive toward you or annoyed by his stories. "(P. 190-191).

Novel written in first person, in which the protagonist goes looking for shots, moving from dialogue to description of a landscape, or gestures of a person who is interacting in that moment (not yet). A glance that wanders, create links, poses continuing questions about himself look like, but also about themselves as language, and of himself as American.

<<All are there, of course, not just the Americans. But the other lacks a certain mythical quality that attracts terrorists. [...] America is the world's living myth. Do not feel guilty for killing an American, to blame America for some local disaster. [...]
In America we kill the wrong way. It is a form of consumerism. It is the logical extension of consumer fantasies. People who shoot from elevated homes barricades. Images pure>>. "(P. 136-137)

And there, the Parthenon, incumbent, who is there, where Axton has not yet gone, but sooner or later will be visiting.

"... The Parthenon was not something to study but to feel. It was not detached, rational, pure and timeless. There could locate the serenity, the logic and sense of stability. It was not a relic of ancient Greece but a part of city living down there. "(P. 380).

De Lillo takes you and takes you into areas you know, but you do not mind you.
There is a dispute between James and Kathryn, great, hard pages.

"The fight was long and detailed, with natural pauses, and moved by road to the terrace, inside the house and finally the roof. It was full of meanness and contempt, the usual forms of domestic assault, the decreases on where you were in agreement. ... Our anger was huge but all that we could show to pull out, they were mumbled, these replicas, and even what we did wrong. ... The dispute had its own life, a force separate from its arguments. ...
<<Bitch. Did you know>>.
<<I tried to find an alternative>>.
<<This means goodbye England>>.
<<We can always go to England>>.
<<You know, I>>.
<<What do you know? >>.
...

<<Loot. I learned to tap>>.
<<I hate this up>>.
<<I always say>>.
<<I am not the man who ... oh, never mind>>.
<<Do not you ever been. Not what you've never been>>.
The dispute had resonance. Levels had, memories. He was referring to other arguments, city, rooms, waste those lessons, our story in a nutshell. [...] Yet this was a desperate love, the conscious, floating, abstract things. It was part of the dispute. It was the same argument.
We went in silence the rest of the trail and she went to see Tap asleep. Then we sat on the terrace and immediately we started to whisper.
<<And where will study? >>
<<Let's start with this? >> "(P. 145-147)

It continues. You can not talk without reading this book without re-reading it. So dense and intense reflection, situations. Psychological thriller, the wikipedia page I linked. Mah Not really. It would be like saying that Oedipus is the first yellow of the story. Simplistic look that unless he lies, however, limited by the object boundaries, in reality, straborda.
Don De Lillo, The Names. To read, if you want to get lost in words.

<<The Sanskrit word for "node," said Emmerich, eventually came to mean "book". Granth. This branch of the manuscripts by birch and palm leaf that were tied to a cord that passed within two holes and stood with nodes>>.
A stern boss, Owen was repeated. His father laughed again because of the huge hat that he wore a vest with his suit. Besides the store at the intersection. The awning and the sign of Coca-Cola. The wooden posts sunk into blocks of ash. His mother always said: <<I do not understand a word of what you are saying>>.
[...]

<<What is a book? "Said Emmerich, is that we open a box. You know this, I suppose>>.
<<What's in the box? >>
<<The Greek word puxos. Boxwood tree. This suggests the wood, of course, and it is interesting that the word "book" in English originates from the Middle Dutch Boek, or birch, and the German boko, birch rod on which were engraved the runes. So, to summarize, we have: book, box, alphabetic symbols carved into the wood. The wooden handle of an ax or knife on which was engraved the name of the owner in runic letters>>.
<<And this is history? >>.
<<No, not history, is exactly the opposite. An alphabet is completely inert. When we read the letters chasing static. This is a logical paradox>>. "(P. 336-337).

Mao II (2) - Don DeLillo - Book Review

A writer who is preparing his new novel in decades, not leave home and live more normal lives. A poet but was kidnapped by terrorists in Beirut, it is now hostage. A photographer portrays his car only writers, while all around the world seems to be a vortex of senseless masses, fears, anxieties subways.
Some passages are cited in which the Twin Towers and the WTC, they come the goosebumps.
And then the initial description of Yankee Stadium and mass weddings is fantastic.

A child's book bibliography of Don DeLillo, who also shows his incredible ability to combine a tight narrative, intriguing, exciting, a storyline that incorporates ideas from thriller to romance noir, news and topical tale of metafiction.
Bill Gray is a writer. In the past, wrote novels that have made the history of American literature, but has never bent the rules of literary stardom. He lives hidden in the company of alcohol and his agent Scott - and the companion of the latter sex, Karen - that made him invisible to the masses, gradually hiding and creating a great case of "mystery writer" and disappeared from the shelves . Meanwhile, the photographer Brita Nilsson - who works as a photographer writers - will dedicate its next needle him. And in Beirut, a young Swiss official (and poet) is held captive by a group of terrorists.

Bill Gray, however, wants to return to play with the world and with life. His book is perhaps ready to be printed, but he wants to do more, wants to act in a society that is mainly mediated and media representation, in which if you're not appearing in videos, in which terrorist groups rise to headlines newscasts and through gestures and gory details.
The lives of these characters intertwine in Mao II, which is the ninth novel by a major American writers and portrays modern society with all its anxieties, fears for the near future. A novel about literature and the role of the writer in this society, but also reports, terrorism and failures made by the mass society and mass media (that make us poorer, alone, atomized).

Ideas for the story, of course - of course the title - the paintings of Andy Warhol symbol of pop culture, and the idea of the writer and hidden away from the media system (Pynchon, Salinger), who fights only through literature, but often unnecessary as well as his struggle is also impossible (Gray's new novel has an infinite gestation).
Many insights scattered throughout the novel, and if we think the book is the 1992 you can see above the capacity of the prophetic text - we talk about terrorism and use of mass media by these groups - and the strong link text has with the United States today: a great nation in crisis, a great nation that is afraid of the neighbor, who is at war with an invisible enemy and fierce (as throughout the West, on the other hand).

The whole book is pervaded by a sense of dread and unease permanent, as if something should suddenly happen irreparable disaster unexpected and devastating. To increase this sense of unease contribute dialogues - disillusioned, cynical, low bone, apparently unnecessary - and a sense of inadequacy in the company of the writer Gray, who for too long segregated and hidden in the house, no longer recognizes the world to which it belongs. That perhaps does not deserve it.

DeLillo's writing penetrates deep, thanks to an excellent translation of Delphine Vezzosi, and leaves an aftertaste and a vaguely anguished lynchiano still terribly current

Valparaiso: a Play in Two Acts - Book Review

Don DeLillo wrote very little for the theater. These are only two acts in which the couple composed by Michael and Livia is grappling with the interview-confession.

The press of applications and the insatiable greed of Delfina Treadweel journalist - his verbal eroticism - the two lead to catharsis of a relationship over. How to prove that the media fiction exposes the truth of conscience and matters of which they are fed.

That is a serious accident caused by a hangover of Michael through which the young son fell into a coma. Since then the two reorganize the report in the same habits as before, using the same irreplaceable regulation, which also includes a sexual compulsive, morning without kissing, but as mismatched. And this television feeds. "One minute we are assaulted in a room from our past. Every moment, you know. But what is this? How fits in our history, our psyche? The smallest touch.

Every moment is part of a whole. (...) A marriage is not made of individual episodes. I could live alone? No, I'd die of fear. I could live with another person? We had a moment of sex just before dawn. Without even a kiss. But we are not here for the kisses. My wife knows who I am? ".

Despite the height of questions of the contemporary themes, the play is a whole artificial and the presence of a classical choir to amplify the effects certainly not conducive to live.

Counterpoint - Three films, a book and an old photograph - Book Review

In terms of music, counterpoint is the simultaneous combination of more melodic sense in "horizontal" that is, considering the performance of different voices and melodic intervals in each of these paths. In his short, sharp illustrated pamphlet entitled Counterpoint - Three films, a book and an old photograph, Don DeLillo experiments on the composition of written text overlapping voices, inspired, even making influence, a set of sounds, words, still and moving images. The voices are those of three talented artists active in the second half of last century.

The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982) is the second protagonist of the films mentioned in the subtitle, Thirty short films about Glenn Gould, 32 course as Bach's Goldberg Variations - the king of counterpoint - work on which Gould narrative for all and that life was exemplary in his interpretations. The figure of the pianist is in close resonance with the first film, Atanarjuat, icy vision of ancient Inuit legend set in the Deep North, a geographic area from which inner-Gould was deeply, obsessively attracted (isolation, loneliness, ecstasy), although in life he could never reach the Arctic Canada or his idea of North.

The voice of Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) is accorded to the notes of the pianist: his book, The Loser, it opens with a suicide that is consumed in listening to the first Goldberg Variations performed by Gould. Not only. Bernhard between Gould and there was a progressive fusion: "The identity of author, narrator and characters blend into one another," says DeLillo. Gould himself in his work "is not limited to re-imagine Bach, but start a sort of corrective dialogue with himself."

The third film, Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser, opens on notes crooked plan Thelonious Monk (1917-1982), jazz icon and tunes like Round Midnight and become immortal heritage character bizarre, indecipherable, and dedicated to excess, until the schizophrenia that has undermined the last years of life. Monk is among the protagonists of the "old photo" taken at the Village in 1953, which portrays him in the company of other saints of bebop: Charlie Mingus, Charlie Parker and Roy Hanes.

While the voices of three virtuosos chase in counterpoint, the player slips in the heart of the melody to address the crucial question. The dark genius bright counterparts are - since the ancient civilizations - the loneliness, distance, introversion, isolation from society, until the inevitable disease. "What happens when introspection reaches an intensity sufficient to break the world around them?" The key question can be answered. Url silent Bernhard Etna, in Gould's fingers moving in imaginary spaces, dancing dervish of Monk is the eternal border, labile, mostly invisible, between genius and madness.

Point Omega Book Review

One of the stars of Underworld by Don DeLillo, Nick Shay, a key lesson in his reformatory. A Jesuit priest explains that the crucial action of education can be summarized as follows: looking shoes and learn to name the parties. In front of Nick inability to give the words such as shoes laces, sole, heel, tongue flap, the upper reinforcement, back, voyeur, pond, Jesuit says, "I do not know why you saw the look. And you can not watch because you do not know the names. " The meaning is clear: things every day remain hidden because we do not know their names.

Thirteen years from the Underworld, Don DeLillo explores that idea in his new book Omega Point. The novel opens with an installation on the movie Psycho by Hitchcock: the projection of a slowed down version of the film. Slowed to the point that the film runs twenty four hours. A few moments last whole minutes, and so: "Every time a player moved a muscle, every blink, it was a revelation." Even here, therefore, is to observe what is under the eyes but hard to recognize. The rings of the tent, the famous "shower scene" shaking when the curtain is pulled, and are "improvised a poem on the death hell." Finally we see. DeLillo has never stopped chasing and name things invisible.

After masterpieces as White Noise, Libra, names and absolute masterpiece Underworld, for some years the books of the New Yorker writer had no doubt disappointed. Think of text as Cosmopolis or Body Art With Omega Point will breathe again instead inspired pages, with rocky landscapes, drinks and thunderstorms. We are not at the levels of those amazing books already mentioned, but they enjoy sentences, paragraphs and pages of great literature.

Much of the novel takes place in a desert. The old Richard Elster, Theory of Defense, talks with Jim Finley, a young director who is trying to implicate him in his new documentary film (on Iraq). The two spend their days talking. It is no coincidence that the old saying of being a reader Teilard de Chardin. Between the two develops a very complex intellectual relationship. Until you see the daughter of Elster soon, however, disappear.
The book reads a lot of phrases like: "We were outside and felt the desert looming. A sterile thunder seemed to hover over the hills, lightning storm crashing towards us. Percent childhoods, he said cryptically. Meaning what, thunder perhaps slightly evocative roar that echoed over the years. "

Or: "The air was pungent and loads, and when the rain stopped, in a few minutes, we returned to the living room and resumed the conversation was interrupted when the pandemonium started coming down."
Descriptions never fail boundaries, extensions, distances, forces.

DeLillo relies on one of the characters in the book is this: "When you stripped away all surfaces, when you look down, what remains is the terror. This is what literature wants to cure. The epic poem, the story before going to bed. "

The intensity of the writing of Don DeLillo has treated American literature, speaking often of death, but always injecting a special vitality. The love for reality, for DeLillo, is a matter of strict lexical. Language is the right tool to show the hidden beauty in everyday things and that may be revealed only through the words: "Now the sunsets were just dying light, the chances of fading.

Most of the great living writers are indebted says of his work. And although perhaps DeLillo has given birth to his greatest novels, him a little recognition would still recognized. In September, in fact, every year, throw away the Nobel Prize for literature, which always smooth the author of Underworld, a candidate of gold.

Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo American mosaic

Interview with American novelist / author of The Underworld is in Italy to present his latest book.

Don DeLillo, among the greatest contemporary American authors, download all the blame on his characters. The "fault" in question is its lucid and pitiless analysis of American society, which gives us - for romance novel, as were so many pieces of a mosaic - a more complex picture. DeLillo "merely" to build the stage: "Project architecture more than I do not develop a philosophy" - said in an interview with Europe during the presentation of his latest novel, Cosmopolis, published by Einaudi - and then simply let the characters move in it. Eric Packer, the protagonist of Cosmopolis, a young billionaire around the streets of New York as a postmodern Ulysses.

"I'm never too sure how the novel take shape," says DeLillo, who began to write without aim to treat "a particular aspect of culture." But then "something happens that simply fills the novel with a sense of the culture around it (the reference is in particular the monumental fresco of the Underworld, also published by Einaudi). Eventually, he notes, are "the same people to create that world." Characters that he "does not judge," and do not necessarily share the views.

How Vija Kinski in Cosmopolis, because important, DeLillo is only that that view is "consistent with the character and the novel, the character is true, in fact. What Kinski is a case in which the lead character in the author 'in certain aspects of the culture that surrounds us. "

Particularly vivid in the work of DeLillo is always the issue of media on American society, just take the scene in Underworld where the husband forces his wife to watch yet another replica of a murder filmed live, the infamous Texas Highway Killer: 'I have to send it, why are there just for this, to provide our own diversions. Or, as in Cosmopolis, repetition of images of the death of Arthur Rapp on the screens of technological limousine protagonist: "He knew that they would continue to transmit until late at night, our night, up to exhausting the emotional impact or until all world had not seen. " Without speaking of Valparaiso, the play that sees the life of a married couple "chopped" by microphones and cameras to interview interview. "This is the way we live - we said - we are surrounded by these images all the time. It 's something that I personally could not ignore. "

Don DeLillo is at pains to point out they did not feel a "media critic" because its objective remains to "read" that exists. But the absence of negative prejudices against the same media only makes sharper eyes of those who, like him, "try to dissect everything about the culture." His work is in fact looking for something deeper than a criticism of the media, and the same culture "is something much deeper than it appears at the cinema."
A culture, American, that there are those who can interpret because, although soft power: the so-called "soft power".

How to say the sum of all aspects of American culture that are able to influence other peoples and cultures.
"I think a part of American culture come into every room in every home, every life, and it causes a lot of anger and frustration in the rest of the world." "I think it's a very powerful factor," he observes, "but I wonder if other nations are doing enough to stop this influence. Or they should. "

The issue of culture and nationality is a key in his biography interesting reading. Don DeLillo was born in the Bronx in '36, a family of Italian origin. And in a neighborhood composed mostly of Italians. Who criticizes him for having rejected its origins, the author recalls that he wrote stories about his childhood in the Italian quarter, "but then I was not a good writer." And the study says, led him to open up, wanting to embrace a broader culture. As American writer, and not just Italian-American.

Leaving behind the "label" of ethnicity, says DeLillo, an author can explore any aspect of the culture he chooses, without respecting the restrictions imposed by someone else.

Nor those represented in the audience: "I have in mind a particular person for whom I write."
DeLillo has instead very clear idea of the importance of "language itself, this is what I pay attention: the words." This comes first, "then is the character development and the unfolding of events." Those of fiction, and historical ones, "Do not think I want to explain the story" ends "but I try to put my stories in it."