The story of Bill Gray, an author in hiding, terrorists, and crowds. Here's the original dust jacket copy . In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act. People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power. People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.
True terror is a language and a vision.
There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to. In several interviews DeLillo mentions two photographs which in some way made this book happen. In the summer of 1988, I looked on the front page of the New York Post . There was a startling picture of an elderly man - he looked frightened and angry. It was J D Salinger.