Product Description

Takes place in the time of the Iranian revolution in Greece, the Middle East and India. An American risk analyst becomes obsessed by news of a ritual murder and is drawn to search for clues--a journey that takes over everything else in his life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109961 in Books
• Published on: 1989-07-17
• Released on: 1989-07-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780679722953
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
James Axton is an American free-lance writer working out of Athens as a part-time "risk analyst" for a shadowy conglomerate selling political-risk insurance, mostly to large companies fearful of having a foreign base of operations collapse on them (just as Iran is doing right then, in the novel). His wife Kathryn lives separated from him, with their precocious son Tap, in primitive conditions on a Greek island; and James' Athens social life consists mostly of the cafe-society of sharp and jaded Americans like himself, not bohemians but business-people schooled in the multinational machinations of large banks, in airline etiquette, in "the humor of personal humiliation." In the book's best scene, for instance, James seduces (by means of urgently lewd and pressuring talk) a young corporate wife who has just performed a salaciously innocent belly-dance exhibition at a party. And as long as DeLillo stays within this class of the edgy and expatriate, bis novel is fine - gritty and adhesive. But then, as he has done in other fiction, DeLillo introduces a cloudy, false-seeming thriller element, one with obvious metaphorical intent, but little inherent (or even coherent) suspense: James, along with a gratuitous film-director-friend character, winds up trailing a murder cult from Greece to Jordan to India, a cult which kills individuals whose names line up, in initials, to those words inscribed on a holy stone. And, as before, one senses DeLillo's lack of genuine interest in his plot, his far greater commitment to philosophical digressions: "A freedom, an escape from the condition of ideal balance. Normal understanding is surpassed, the self and its machinery obliterated. Is this what innocence is? Is it the language of innocence these people spoke, words flying out of them like spat stones? The deep past of men, the transparent word." The central motif here, then, is the essentially semantic nature of reality; and the larger theme is, as usual with DeLillo, the foulness of modern life - its sullying, cheapening progress. But while other DeLillo books (even the weaker ones) have presented that theme with an insistent, disturbing blade of glittering scorn, this time there's more somber meditation . . . while only a few scenes flare. And so, though a great talent remains on display in those glimpses of plastic/expatriate lifestyle, this ambitious essay-novel is characteristically uneven - and un-characteristically dullish as well. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Inside Flap
Set against the backdrop of a lush and exotic Greece, The Names is considered the book which began to drive "sharply upward the size of his readership" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Among the cast of DeLillo's bizarre yet fully realized characters in The Names are Kathryn, the narrator's estranged wife; their son, the six-year-old novelist; Owen, the scientist; and the neurotic narrator obsessed with his own neuroses. A thriller, a mystery, and still a moving examination of family, loss, and the amorphous and magical potential of language itself, The Names stands with any of DeLillo's more recent and highly acclaimed works.

"The Names not only accurately reflects a portion of our contemporary world but, more importantly, creates an original world of its own."--Chicago Sun-Times

"DeLillo sifts experience through simultaneous grids of science and poetry, analysis and clear sight, to make a high-wire prose that is voluptuously stark."--Village Voice Literary Supplement

"DeLillo verbally examines every state of consciousness from eroticism to tourism, from the idea of America as conceived by the rest of the world to the idea of the rest of the world as conceived by America, from mysticism to fanaticism."--New York Times

Customer Reviews

Are They Killing Americans There?
First, let me ask you...how many languages do you speak? That question will take on a whole new meaning once you've read this book. The story (and there *is* one) centers around a group of American and British expatriates living and working in Greece (where DeLillo lived for a while before writing this novel). It was the last of his early novels...meaning the next one was WHITE NOISE, at which point DeLillo started to become famous. Yet, THE NAMES still remains one of my favorites. Yes, it was followed by three truly *excellent* novels (WHITE NOISE, LIBRA, and MAO II), and (after several years) by an undisputedly GREAT novel (UNDERWORLD). But, here we have DeLillo still paying his dues...and paying them remarkably well, too. In this one, he finally brought together the various disparate themes of his earlier works, and he solidified his "outsider in society" motif. It was the first of DeLillo's novels I read, and it made me an instant devotee.

So...how many languages do you speak? These expatriates I mentioned come in contact with a bizarre language cult which is responsible for a series of ritual murders in the area. Our "hero" is James Axton, a "risk analyst" who isn't exactly sure himself just who he's working for (i.e., business insurance...or CIA?). In fact, he's pretty much detached from most things in his life...his ex-marriage, his friends, Greece itself, the cult (when he finally meets them)...you name it. The Outsider. Wishing he could be part of something...never able to get past the *analysis* of risk. His inaction leads to serious consequences.

As always, DeLillo's intense use of language ultimately leads to something nonverbal. It's interesting to me that he seems to have most successfully achieved this in THE NAMES, which so persistently circles around issues related to language. DeLillo has said that he writes his works one sentence at a time, paying as much attention to the nonverbal elements as to the verbal. He hears the rhythm of the words, the prosody of sound, and he studies the shapes of the words on the page. If something's not right, he says, he'll change a word...even if it means changing the meaning of the sentence. Thus, language becomes the driving force of the story. Thus, DeLillo says, writing becomes a religious experience. If you don't know what he means by this, maybe THE NAMES will give you a clue. It's contemporary American writing at its best!

And, by the way...how many languages do you speak? And where are you from? Are they killing Americans there?

Acquaint Yourself
I had never read DeLillo before and a friend suggested that if I never read anyone else again, I should read something that Don DeLillo had written. Although The Names was not his first suggestion, the title intrigued me (yes, I judged the book by its cover) and off I went.

The Names is a book with little plot, but what it lacks in any consistant action it more than makes up in DeLillo's absolutely superb prose and insight. There are many books that I have read where the author offers a thought or an idea that rings quite familiar in my life. But this book continually presents perspectives that I had never before considered or pondered. DeLillo's ideas are fresh and his expression is invigorating. I eagerly await the experience of reading his other work.

Acquaint yourself with this author. You'll make no mistake in doing so.

fascination from a distance
There are, I suppose, two reasons we keep turning the pages: the plot and the prose. The most commercially popular authors tend to focus on the former, the critically acclaimed on the latter. It's a joy to find a book in which the two are successfully combined. In my view, The Names - my first Delillo book - comes close but never quite makes it. Certainly the prose is magnificent, and Delillo is a master of creating an atmosphere. And certainly the milieu is intriguing: here is the Middle East in one of its more tumultuous periods, Greece both old and new, a world of risk and uncertainty. The characters are less interesting, having that quality of being something off which ideas are bounced rather than living beings round whom the story twists. And the plot? Well, the plot, in as much as you can say there is a single plot, is intriguing too, but the reader is always at one remove. We are not involved in the deciphering of the cult of The Names; we are involved in James Axton's experience of that deciphering. The distinction is crucial and will dictate your enjoyment of the book: do you prefer the journey or the arrival? Those who read for love of language will be in heaven. But I ultimately found myself reading from curiosity rather than absorption. I couldn't help wondering what Umberto Eco, say, would have done with the same ideas.