"If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely"
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Being declared obsolete is DeLillo's idea of professional freedom. The line toys with the long-running cultural sport of pronouncing the novel dead, a verdict that always arrives with the smug confidence of someone who has confused their own boredom with a historical turning point. DeLillo flips the insult into a grant of permission: if the center can no longer see you, you get to work unpoliced, unmarketed, uncoerced by whatever the “central perception” is at the moment (the prestige feed, the dominant genre, the algorithmic now).
The delicious sting is in the imagery. “Ghoul” is not the romantic ghost of literature but a scavenger at the edge of the feast, feeding on remains. That’s DeLillo’s sly thesis about the contemporary novelist: you’re not the official chronicler of society; you’re the one prowling its aftermath, rummaging through discarded language, dead metaphors, leftover headlines, corporate euphemisms, conspiracy static. It’s an aesthetic of salvage, which is practically a mission statement for his work, where American life is experienced as mediated, replayed, and overheard.
“Lovely” lands like a raised eyebrow. It’s gratitude weaponized: a polite word that makes the pronouncement sound childish, even needy. The subtext is competitive, too. If the novel is “dead,” why do its executioners keep talking about it? Because the form still haunts them. DeLillo accepts the role of literary undead not as a defeat, but as leverage: the margins are where the weird truths survive.
The delicious sting is in the imagery. “Ghoul” is not the romantic ghost of literature but a scavenger at the edge of the feast, feeding on remains. That’s DeLillo’s sly thesis about the contemporary novelist: you’re not the official chronicler of society; you’re the one prowling its aftermath, rummaging through discarded language, dead metaphors, leftover headlines, corporate euphemisms, conspiracy static. It’s an aesthetic of salvage, which is practically a mission statement for his work, where American life is experienced as mediated, replayed, and overheard.
“Lovely” lands like a raised eyebrow. It’s gratitude weaponized: a polite word that makes the pronouncement sound childish, even needy. The subtext is competitive, too. If the novel is “dead,” why do its executioners keep talking about it? Because the form still haunts them. DeLillo accepts the role of literary undead not as a defeat, but as leverage: the margins are where the weird truths survive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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