not prayer or chant or slaughterednrams. Our offering is langu^e.nMany readers will puzzle over such anseemingly portentous thought. It mustnmean something deep, they will say tonthemselves. It is provocative. How provocative?nAnd then one wonders. Is it asnwinsome as all that? And then there’s this:nWhat ambiguity there is in exaltednthings. We despise them a little.nWe can barely get through the secondnsentence without knowing with certaintynthat the sentences taken togethernare meant to be pregnant with meaning.nJust what it is we pass over quickly sincenpause would be fetal. Legend has it thatnTallulah Bankhead said to AlexandernWoolcott after the opening of a Tagorenplay, “Dahling, there’s much less herenthan meets the eye.” That may be thenchief problem with DeLillo’s work. Frequently,nthe reader is led down the gardennpath, apparently to a climax of somensort—an idea, insight, emotion—butnnothing happens. Closure is lacking. I donnot mean symmetry, false or true, thatncharacterizes a certain kind of narrative.nI mean instead a felse dehiscence, the expectedndevelopment not issuing. Thenproblem is not technical but epistemological.nThe truncated, the ambiguous, isnthe most we can know. We guess. Notngetting anywhere is precisely what isnwanted. For such a writer the peripherynis of more significance than the center.nBeing interested in the center is gauche.nDeliUo has not acquired the audiencensome critics think he deserves because henhas not earned it. He has misunderstoodnthe intelligent reader; the feilure is rhetorical.nHe Iws, for instance, praised WilliamnGaddis for extending the possibilities ofnthe novel “by taking huge risks and makingngreat demands on his reader.” I wondernif the two go together. Great writersnhave always made great demands on theirnreaders. Tliere is nothing new about thatnWhat I infer DeLillo might mean is thatnthe demands he speaks of are special innsome way. Further, from Cervantes tonBellow great writers have taken hugenIS^MH^BM^nChronicles of Cttlturenrisks, fer greater than the surface experimentationnof Pynchon, Gaddis, or JohnnBarth. Intelligent readers have alwaysnresponded to such risk-taking with commendablensympathy and understanding.nDo I gather from DeLillo’s comment thatnhe would switch the responsibility fornthe making of art from the writer to thenreader? Is the reader somehow to blamenfor not being “serious” enough? Therenseems something seriously amiss in thenvery notion of the writer giving lecmresnto the reader about his seriousness, especiallynthe 20th-century reader, who hasnreally been astonishingly patient towardnthe expressive temperaments of writers.nTo misread one’s audience is to display anpoor rhetorical sense. The audiencenshould be given more credit for its seriousnessnand its patience. Perhaps a renewednsense of the audience’s worthnmight bring the writer back from the edgenmost essential selves as readers.nD eLillo refers to his novel as a “Text.”nI do not know if he intends by this to linknhis work with the now-diminishing fed ofnpoststructuralism and deconstruction.nBut, in feet, he does create this relationshipnand, further, he does hint that languagenis his subject. The subject of hisn”text” must now be considered. “How donyou connect things? Learn thefr names.”nIt is my specufetion that modem nominalismnis at the base of his “text”—^whatnexists exists in name only.nThe word in India has enormous power.nNot what people mean but whatnthey say. Intended meaning is besidenthe point. The word itself is all thatnmatters.nAxton’s “second life” (true life?) is thisnbook he writes about himself, the lifen’• ”IlK- Names’… is a dense, brilliant, ultimatelv rather elusive meditation.'”n—Seu- York Times lUjok Reviewn”I DeLillo I outdoes himself . . . with considerable wit ;uid style. ^Vt we’ve barelyn.•icraiehed the .surtiiee of this fine novel some of tlie be.st writing Deljllo has everndone.”n—Tbeationnto the center. For instance, in The Namesnit certainly appears as if we are to makensomething significant of the feet that annanthropologist and a filmmaker leadnAxton to the cult of murderers. And, nondoubt, many readers could arbitrarilynascribe specific meanings to the two meanBut there is littie in the text to tell us anythingnmore than “characters simply donwhat they do.” There appears to be nonway to validate an interpretation. If thisnis true, then fiction becomes performancenrather than object, and in that shift annenormous change has been made. Fewnreaders, and rightly so, are w^illing tonmake such a shift. Consciously or not,nthey want coherence or at least stability.n”Show us their faces, tell us what theynsaid.” Lncluding this criticism of himselfnfor his feilure to do this in the novel doesnnot modify the urgency of its claim on ournnnwhich language creates (not reflects).n”Do whatever your tongue finds to do.”nMisspellings are exhilarating becausenthey make us see words anew, “vvhat theynreally were”: ancient, secret but reshapable.nThis notion clearly goes along withnthe idea of fiction as performance. Whatnthere is to be performed (the performancenitself) changes with the performer,nvshose ^hole eflfort is to be interesting, tonbe of interest at any cost. Self-expression:n”a final distillation of the self” It is of consequence,nI think, that one of the charactersnsays:nIn this century the writer has carriednon a conversation with madness. Wenmight also say of the twentieth-centurynwriter that he aspires to madness. Somenhave made it, of course, and they holdnspecial places in our regard. To a writer,nmadness is a final distillation of the selfn