24 - DeLillo Across Page and Stage

Summary

[T]he theatre's greatest failing is also its most triumphant quality – its vulnerability to Time. Like all living flesh, it yields, but also like flesh, it is pulsing and alive. (Brustein 312)

Ephemera, ephemera. (Clurman 504)

It is 1987. Two men chat about a play opening that night. One admits that ‘theatre is really mysterious and alluring for someone who has written a novel’ (Rothstein 5). He elaborates: ‘For one thing, when you’re finished with a play, you don't have an object you hold in your hand and say, “This is what I’ve done.” You’re not quite sure what you’ve done’ (Rothstein 5). As DeLillo explains the difference between writing a play and writing a novel to Mervyn Rothstein of the New York Times, we notice the varied ‘writer’ roles he inhabits. When he chooses his literary form – novel, novella, short story, play, screenplay – so he chooses from the accompanying tradition, elements and styles, donning the relevant authorial costume. The results have had mixed receptions. What DeLillo has indeed done, when he has finished with a play, is contribute to an ephemeral art form, one that relies on actor and audience energy, and one that can never be exactly repeated.

Taking a literary form-based angle on Sarah Wasserman's discussions on ephemera, this chapter seeks to explore the effects of the dramatic form's ephemerality. Wasserman asks, ‘What happens if we recognize that even our most enduring objects and values are liable to vanish – and continue vanishing without ever fully disappearing? […] If even material forms are mutable, what is left to hold onto?’ (201). Having been taken through the lens of an ephemeral production of a play, we may wonder what is left to hold on to after travelling home from the theatre. What memories, possibilities, movements, impulsions? This chapter will move through DeLillo's various literary roles, and tease out the threads of form: how does the private blanket of a novel differ from the public curtain of a play, and what does that mean for this writer and his audiences?

Continuing the interview with Rothstein, DeLillo prudently acknowledges the intangibility of theatre: ‘[It]'s very elusive to try to determine a definitive performance, even a definitive moment, because they change all the time’ (Rothstein 5). While DeLillo's novels have been dissected in myriad ways by literary critics, cultural theorists and students, his plays have been sidelined, consciously or otherwise.