The Names [Paperback]

Don Delillo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 1983

"Compelling ...strange and wonderful and frightening". ("New Yorker"). DeLillo's seventh novel is an exotic thriller. Set mostly in Greece, it concerns a mysterious 'language cult' seemingly behind a number of unexplained murders. Obsessed by news of this ritualistic violence, an American risk analyst is drawn to search for an explanation. We follow his progress on an obsessive journey that begins to take over his life and the lives of those closest to him. In addition to offering a series of precise character studies, "The Names" explores the intersection of language and culture, the perception of America from both inside and outside its borders, and the impact that narration has on the facts of a story. Meditative and probing, DeLillo wonders: how does one cope with the fact that the act of articulation is simultaneously capable of defining and circumscriptively restricting access to the self? "A serious and complicated novel which deserves praise ...an outstandingly well-written and constructed book". ("Guardian").

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial 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 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Don DeLillo is the acclaimed author of fifteen novels and three plays. He has won the National Book Award, the Jerusalem Prize and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 339 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st edition (September 12, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394715640
• ISBN-13: 978-0394715643
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,349,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Don DeLillo is the author of fourteen novels, including Falling Man, Libra and White Noise, and three plays. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Jerusalem Prize. In 2006, Underworld was named one of the three best novels of the last twenty-five years by The New York Times Book Review, and in 2000 it won the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the most distinguished work of fiction of the past five years.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Are They Killing Americans There?, July 22, 2001

By 

Jon G. Jackson "j_dog_jackson" (Santa Rosa, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Names (Paperback)

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?

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DeLillo's best, December 11, 1999

By 

W. Christeson (Tennessee) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Names (Paperback)

Thinking back over all the DeLillo I have read since the 1970s, I think THE NAMES is his best. I don't recall a meditation on language being enacted so deeply and compactly anywhere else. The book is one of those rare works which bears reading over and over and over again. It becomes incantatory after a while, which I think might please DeLillo.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Acquaint Yourself, October 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Names (Paperback)

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.