Wall Street Journal interviews the American writer about his new novel
The Wall Street Journal has published a rare interview with American writer Don DeLillo, where he discusses his forthcoming novel, Point Omega, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and the idiosyncracies of his writing methods (via 3:AM Magazine):
"Writers, some of us, may tend to see things before other people do, things that are right there but aren't noticed," Mr. DeLillo, age 73, says during a rare interview at his publisher Scribner's office in midtown Manhattan.
His latest work, Point Omega, which Scribner will release next week, touches on the Iraq war and dwells on the power of film and art to transform human perception. Mostly, though, the slender, 117-page novel is a meditation on time, extinction, aging and death, subjects that Mr. DeLillo seldom explored in much depth as a younger writer.
In recent years, Mr. DeLillo has shifted away from sweeping, era-defining novels such as White Noise, Libra and Underworld. His last few novels—most notably The Body Artist, his 2001 novel about a woman whose husband committed suicide—have been more spare and oblique.
Mr. DeLillo has spurned the spotlight in the 39 years since he published his first novel, Americana. He seldom discusses his work publicly, and has opted out of the reading/lecture/teaching circuit that keeps so many authors afloat financially. He says he has no interest in writing a memoir. He lives in Bronxville, N.Y., a suburb of New York City, with his wife of more than 30 years, a landscape architect. His longtime editor at Scribner, Nan Graham, says that Mr. DeLillo used to carry a business card that said "I don't want to talk about it."
Sitting in a book-filled room at Scribner, Mr. DeLillo speaks softly with a faint New York accent. His new book, he says, was inspired by a film he saw at the Museum of Modern Art. [Read the article]
