"Men and Women in Space" : Notes on a Reading by Don Delillo

We are waiting for Don Delillo to appear.

As usual for events of this sort, there are multiple introductions. Someone from the 92^nd St Y introduces the writer, Dana Spiota, whose job it is to introduce Delillo himself. The earnest reverence in Spiota's speech is both familiar and embarrassing. She praises his books as "the secret antidote to the depressing consumerist hum we all live with," but it's unclear whether she's suggesting that they stop the hum of consumerism or merely cure us of our depression, and, in either case, the claim sounds false. It might be true if you took out the word, "antidote." And what does she mean by "that particular American longing"? Is that an American quality? Is longing - longing itself, not the object of that longing – specific to a culture? No one asks these questions. There will be a time later for "select" questions, but the questions will be reserved for Delillo. In the ritual of the high literary reading, the introductions are only symbolic gestures; each is an incantation to transport the reader from the profane world at large into the sacred space of literature. The more introductions, one supposes, the deeper we go into the world of the book and the less we actually listen to the meta-language of praise.

The applause begins when she says his name.

Don Delillo is bigger in person, leggier, than what one expects. He's almost athletic as he walks to the podium. In his green buttoned-down shirt and brown pants, the author looks like a middle-aged man who has dressed himself. Maybe his wife tried to stop him – doesn't that look too earthy? – or maybe she's given up on trying to change his mind.

"There's a novel, and there is a reading," he says into the microphone. We are quiet. The audience has been awed by his books into a silence some of us believe is holy.

You think of the opening to Underworld: "He speaks in your voice American and there's a …" but he doesn't speak in your voice. His actual voice is not the voice that you heard in your head – why should it have been, when even your own voice doesn't match that sound? Don Delillo speaks in the voice of an old woman who's been smoking for so long that the years of ash and fumes have ravaged her vocal chords to something mannish, but underneath the velvet and gravel, there remains a fundamental womanliness. At times, you wonder if he has a lisp; there's a cottony thickness around some of his consonants, the word "troop" seems to have more letters, an extra 'h.' You hear it again in the end of the first chapter, which sounds stickier than when you read it by yourself: "Call or fold. Felt or baize."

He sniffles.

There is a novel, and there is a reading. The sentence sounds odd; it would be easier to hear if he'd used plurals. He tells the audience that he has reordered the novel for the reading, choosing two characters, Keith and Lianne, and following their stories chronologically, alternating back and forth.

It's surprising to hear people laughing. You never laugh reading his work. Nothing escapes that dire tone or your awareness of his work as the performance of a writer.

He pauses to drink. The microphone picks up and amplifies the fleshy, gurgling sound of a man swallowing. Smacking his lips. The way he might say "Pafko at the Wall."

He says "police" instead of "priest." He is the high priest of American letters, but he looks like the guy sitting across from you on the subway. He shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet as he fields questions from the moderator, questions written by the people in the audience on blank, white index cards that had been tucked into their pamphlets.

In response to one question, he says that he was not happy about the idea of including a terrorist in the novel. He says, "I felt I had to. I felt it would not be a fully responsible novel if I did not include a terrorist." He doesn't elaborate on what he means by the novel's responsibility, except to say that he had to try to understand the individual inside the structure, the individual "bonding with a group of more or less like-minded men…this blood connection that becomes more important than politics or religion finally." He doesn't elaborate on what he means by "finally."

When the moderator, that same boyish, bearded man from the 92^nd St Y who gave the first introduction, asks him a question about architecture, Delillo says that he thinks that his novels are more three-dimensional than others' are. It's hard to know how to take this, except in a literal sense as a joke, and he isn't joking. "I don't tend to feel as comfortable," he says, "with abstract thoughts as I am with men and women in space." This answer catches some people by surprise because it goes against the mainstream criticism of Delillo as a brilliant, heady writer more interested in cerebral dialogue and aphorism than in the way real people interact with real objects in the real world. A friend turns to you and arches his eyebrow. Of course, what makes Delillo feel comfortable is not necessarily what ends up in his books, and what ends up in his books rarely makes us feel comfortable. His books do not stop "the depressing … hum" of the present, but they make the white noise seem meaningful, and that is all the comfort we can hope for.

The moderator, who has been sitting all this time at the edge of the stage in a little chair at a respectful remove from the "talent," thanks the author, and the crowd claps. Some stand in ovation, others gather their things to reach the book signing line first or to catch a cab home. Delillo disappears to the sound of applause, and the holy temple of literature falls apart, but those who leave believe they bear with them its sacred aura like a stone from the ruins.