Don DeLillo love
I’ve been re-reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise which, like The Waves, talks A LOT about death. Since it’s late at night and I’m just about to go to bed I’m not going to post a quote about death; but, instead, an incredible - goddamn Mount Olympus - quote about writing.
Whenever anyone asks me what my favourite book is Mao II always comes to mind. I love loads of books but the cadence of DeLillo’s phrases got me in this one, like the writer himself were leaning over the back of my sofa and whispering truths to me. If I were still a teenager, I would have scrawled this passage from Mao II on my bedroom wall by now:
Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there. On one level this truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it’s the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language. I’ve always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognise myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence. The language of my books has shaped me as a man. There’s a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer’s will to live.
