The result is his fourth play, Love-Lies-Bleeding (Picador, £8.99), a three-act drama about a dying man and his family's struggle to decide whether to keep him on life support, which opens in Chicago next week. "That's what in theory differentiates a writer from everyone else. You see and hear more clearly."DeLillo has had his ear to the ground of late. The position ensures that he remains partially obscured by a computer, his voice a disembodied whisper.
"What do you really see? What do you really hear?" DeLillo ruminates, when I ask how he stays tuned in to the dream waves of American life. Moments after passing the security gauntlet, DeLillo is ensconced in an empty office, in a chair pressed up against the wall. While some writers cosy to the medal stand, he would rather lurk on society's margins, noticing without being noticed This doesn't make for easy interviewing. As DeLillo passed, she looked over his shoulder at me, with eyebrows raised, as if to say: "See the grief I get from yahoos like this?" As it turns out, DeLillo prefers things this way. After much huffing and rolling of her eyes, the security guard waved the 69-year-old novelist through the gate toward the elevator bank. Apparently, DeLillo didn't produce proper ID, or wasn't assertive enough about his right to be there.
It's not that his author photo is decades old, but rather that it doesn't capture how small he is, how slight. Perhaps this is why on a recent afternoon, the author of Underworld, White Noise and other future classics of American literature was temporarily barred entry from the offices of his New York publisher. Don DeLillo is not an easy author to spot on the streets of New York. Collated by Jane Roberts, the Windsor librarian, it will feature 240 previously unseen photos and documents, including childhood letters to Queen Mary and (somewhat implausibly) HRH's ration book.. Perhaps HRH, in a gesture of solidarity, may one day transfer her royal warrant from Hatchards to Foyles.* Speaking of royals and Foyles, Royal Collection Publications will mark the Queen's 80th birthday with the publication of Queen Elizabeth II: A Birthday Souvenir Album.