From Don DeLillo’s Paris Review interview:
INTERVIEWER
How do you begin? What are the raw materials of a story?
DeLILLO
I think the scene comes first, an idea of a character in a place. It’s visual, it’s Technicolor—something I see in a vague way. Then sentence by sentence into the breach. No outlines— maybe a short list of items, chronological, that may represent the next twenty pages. But the basic work is built around the sentence. This is what I mean when I call myself a writer. I construct sentences. There’s a rhythm I hear that drives me through a sentence. And the words typed on the white page have a sculptural quality. They form odd correspondences. They match up not just through meaning but through sound and look. The rhythm of a sentence will accommodate a certain number of syllables. One syllable too many, I look for another word. There’s always another word that means nearly the same thing, and if it doesn’t then I’ll consider altering the meaning of a sentence to keep the rhythm, the syllable beat. I’m completely willing to let language press meaning upon me. Watching the way in which words match up, keeping the balance in a sentence—these are sensuous pleasures. I might want very and only in the same sentence, spaced a particular way, exactly so far apart. I might want rapture matched with danger—I like to match word endings. I type rather than write longhand because I like the way the words and letters look when they come off the hammers onto the page—finished, printed, beautifully formed.
One thought on “Don DeLillo”
The somewhat reflexive nature of “The Movie” is a little bit puzzling – in it, characters from the main body of the novel – a novel that is partially about a terrorist group – watch a movie that depicts that same terrorist group committing a murderous attack on some golfers. The narrative logic of this is a little unclear to me, but be that as it may, I would still maintain that the chapter – preface, prologue – is not really meant to contribute to the narrative at all.