Contrasting Communication Styles in Don DeLillo’s The Names

American novelist Don DeLillo’s sojourn in Greece in the late 1970s gave rise to his seventh novel, The Names (1982), a work that, according to the novelist, marked a new beginning, in part because of the renewed attention to language and modes of communication (Harris, 1982: 18). The American narrator, initially an aloof observer, notices the people of Athens as they connect with each other and their environment. This mode of communication is rooted in orality, an organic, natural style of communication, one concerned with whatever is necessary to health and well-being. DeLillo’s novel contrasts this organic mode of communication with the distant, technocratic, literary mode as practiced by various expatriates and a mysterious murderous cult. This study examines the ways this novel contrasts these two orientations toward language, suggesting that DeLillo’s work, stemming from the writer’s own experiences in Greece, privileges the organic, nourishing mode rooted in orality.