From One to Another

caille:

Don DeLillo, in a rare interview in the Wall Street Journal today:

Mr. DeLillo, who grew up in the Bronx as the son of Italian immigrants, says his Catholic upbringing inevitably creeps into his work: “It has an effect in ways I can’t be specific about—the sense of ceremony, the sense of last things, and the sense of religion as almost at times an art.”

From one to another, sir: that Catholic upbringing is no joke when it comes to writing. (Protestants deal with other things entirely. They may as well be speaking a different language.)

Also, can I just point out that DeLillo will be the last American writer who’s able to give only “rare” interviews? The publishing world has changed so much since he started that now writers have to show up at any county fair to which they’re invited, no matter how much we hate it. DeLillo is lucky in many ways, but none so much as the fact that he’s the last with privacy, the last who’s able to work through his imagination in seclusion.