and I don’t know quite what it will lead to but I’m not extremely optimistic about the American future. ’ ‘There seems to be a kind of fractured culture, speaking about America and its involvement in other countries. There’s something missing, and I don’t know quite what it will lead to but I’m not extremely optimistic about the American future. There’s something inconsistent about it, something that doesn’t satisfy the set of puzzles on the board. What about the times we live in? There seems to be a kind of fractured culture, speaking about America and its involvement in other countries. I think the novel is still strong and I think there are many good, young writers practising that form. Young writers still have that same urge to write fiction of a certain length, to write stories of a certain length. Kae Tempest: Do you feel that you’re still tuned in at that frequency in terms of what you could say about where we are now, the times we are in and maybe what that means for literature?ĭon DeLillo: I can speak only about the novel, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I was just observing as usual – and I’ve certainly never felt prophetic. And I wrote about it and I think to many readers in other countries this seemed to be prophetic but it wasn’t. And there was a kind of boiling excitement in that part of the world. Revolutions, refugees from other countries in Athens. This was more evident to me when I was writing The Names because I was living in Greece and there was turmoil everywhere in the area and within Greece: terrorism and other aspects.

Kae Tempest: A lot has been said about how prescient your books are, but I’d say it’s less that you’re telling a future and more that you’re so rooted in noticing the present that it seems prescient but it’s just present.ĭon DeLillo: That’s actually true. Which was an enormous kind of gratification for me because I hadn’t known this. ’ It took thirty years I think, and when it was done I felt I was a writer. ‘ novel taught me how to write and it took forever. Which was an enormous kind of gratification for me because I hadn’t known this. The novel taught me how to write and it took forever. And eventually, the focus expanded and it really happened in the course of writing my first novel. They were geographically limited – I came from a certain area in the Bronx and that’s what I wrote about. And my short stories were quite limited in scope. I wasn’t even remotely ready to write anything longer. Why does it take this particular form? I guess it goes back to ancient storytelling, which can be poetry and can be fiction of a kind.

Kae Tempest: What is the purpose of a novel?ĭon DeLillo: The immediate purpose is to satisfy the writer’s need to express themselves.

If i should speak a novel