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Alex Hauser left New York and gave up easel painting to live and create land art in the southwestern desert. Now seventy, he has had his second massive stroke. His young third wife Lia believes that somewhere deep inside his mind is still alive, but Alex's ex-wife and son, Toinette and Sean, have come to this remote place to help him die. Scarlet four o'clock, terminal sedation, night blooming cereus, respiratory depression, sacred datura, persistent vegetative state, love-lies-bleeding, life long devotion: the names of desert flowers and the language of death are equally potent and mysterious in this haunting and urgent play. Like "Wit" and "Whose Life Is It Anyway?", "Love-Lies-Bleeding" explores the perilous question of when life ends or should. It is also a play about a son looking for the father who abandoned him, and it is about the odd emotional tenacity of relationships long-ended, about shared language as the antidote to loss. Praise for Don DeLillo's previous play, "Valparaiso": 'May be the novelist's most satisfying work since "White Noise"..."Valparaiso" is art at its finest.' - "Boston Globe." 'Indisputably electric...fresh and pertinent' - "New York Times". ... Read more

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This title suggests that although the treatment and evasion of the Holocaust in certain postmodern texts often seems irresponsible, the texts have a deep affinity with ethical theories anchored in notions of obsession, persecution and trauma. ... Read more

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Love-Lies-Bleeding, Don DeLillo's third play, is a daring, profoundly compassionate story about life, death, art and human connection.

Three people gather to determine the fate of the man who sits in a straight-backed chair saying nothing. He is Alex Macklin, who gave up easel painting to do land art in the southwestern desert, and he is seventy now, helpless in the wake of a second stroke. The people around him are the bearers of a complicated love, his son, his young wife, the older woman -- his wife of years past -- who feels the emotional tenacity of a love long-ended.

It is their question to answer. When does life end, and when should it end? In this remote setting, without seeking medical or legal guidance, they move unsteadily toward last things.

Luminous, spare, unnervingly comic and always deeply moving, Love-Lies-Bleeding explores a number of perilous questions about the value of life and how we measure it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A few deep, moving lines, not much else
Love-Lies-Bleeding seems like a continuation, or alternate telling of the novel The Body Artist. A (much) younger woman marries an older man who has had a long, eventful life before her, and now he's dying (or in The Body Artist, he's dead) and she sits and thinks and talks and nothing much happens.

While DeLillo is clearly a talented writer, I think that his talents don't transfer to novels, and definitely not to plays, as well as other reviewers seem to think they do. Maybe he should write some poems, or some philosophical ponderings. This is the third work of DeLillo's that I've read, and what I've noticed is that there is always a point in the story when you get to a monologue by one character that really captures the meaning of the whole story. I just wish DeLillo would write a bunch of those and put them out together, instead of writing an extra 100 pages to wrap around these little gems.

In Love-Lies-Bleeding, an old man (70s) is in a vegetative state after a stroke. His present wife (30s), ex-wife (50s), and son (30s) are all gathered to take care of him and contemplate euthanasia. I simply can't imagine this show actually being performed on a stage and not boring audiences to... well, death. Besides the lack of a real driving force in the plot, there are three acts, and probably around 15 total scenes, maybe more. Each scene is short and stilted, and while reading you can see that time has passed and maybe gather the meaning of the scene... on stage this seems like it would be far too distracting. And I know I wouldn't want to sit there through wooden deliveries of these stylistic lines.

Sometimes artistic creative work is really moving. And sometimes it's just self-indulgent and bland. I feel like this play is closer to the latter. There's a line in here where one of the stroke-victim's ex-wives remarks "I'm not sure how it works but men who don't know themselves have a power over others, those who try miserably to understand." I think Don DeLillo has a power over others for the same reason.

much talking without saying anything
Love-Lies-Bleeding is the third play written by novelist Don DeLillo. This drama has Alex, an old man who after several strokes is in a persistent vegetative state, being cared for by his current wife Lia, a previous wife Toinette and his son Sean. Except in flashbacks Alex is silent throughout the play, but the wives and the son discussing his life and arguing about him and themselves. This is a play about the end of a life and the decisions family has to make regarding it.

The blurb on the back cover of the book concludes with this description:

"Luminous, spare, unnervingly comic and always deeply moving, Love-Lies Bleeding explores a number of perilous questions about the value of life and how we measure it."

This is a very fine description that gets to the heart of what this play is about, but the key word here is "spare". Spare writing is a trademark of Don DeLillo and he leaves a lot unsaid in the gaps between words. Another trademark of DeLillo's spare writing is this bit of dialogue: "The memory ends here. I draw a total blank. This is the subway. He's reading the sports pages." So many times in DeLillo's writing he will give the reader lines of dialogue which no person would say in life but the dialogue fits in the context of the story he is telling. In Love-Lies-Bleeding the characters are speaking, but they are saying less than usual. The format of a play does not allow DeLillo to truly focus his writing because all of the motion is from the words of the characters rather than description and described action and here DeLillo is less successful. There are questions about the value of life, but I am not sure Don DeLillo addresses those questions.

-Joe Sherry

Mystery play for a secular age
Having limned "the force of history," DeLillo has since turned around and gone in the other direction, into "the small anonymous corners of human experience," as he phrased it, with works like The Body Artist and, to some extent, Valparaiso and Cosmopolis.

Lies-Lies-Bleeding continues this trend. Consisting of brief, spare scenes, clipped sentences, and unnerving silences, the play focuses on three characters as they deliberate over and eventually carry out the mercy killing of a stroke victim trapped in a persistent vegitative state. Though the characters debate the decision extensively and even fiercely, DeLillo doesn't make the mistake having them just reiterate the arguments of pundits and philosophers.It is the play's genius to push through the cheap, politicized controversy towards the immediacy of the dilemma faced by these characters and the death-haunted atmosphere that pervades their lives.

The individual who is the subject of the decision, Alex, appears in three flashbacks, once in robust health and twice while his body is failing, just before the stroke. These appearances, though brief, flare poignantly like the last glimpse of a setting sun.

There is also one scene where Alex's widow, Lia, speaks at his memorial service. Her words summarize the themes, mood, and style of the play quite well, and are worth quoting at length:

"I know people tell stories at these gatherings. I don't want to do that. People tell stories, exchange stories. I don't know any stories. You know things about him that I never knew. This means nothing to me. There are no stories. You're here for the wrong reason. If you're here to honor his memory, it's not his memory, it's your memory, and it's false. There are no stories. There are other things, hard to express, so deep and true that I can't share them, and don't want to. In the end it's not what kind of man he was but simply that he's gone. The stark fact. The thing that turns us into children, alone under the sky. When it stops being unbearable, it becomes something worse. It becomes that air we breathe."

... Read more

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This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Novels by Don Delillo, Plays by Don Delillo, Screenplays by Don Delillo, Point Omega, Underworld, Cosmopolis, Mao Ii, Falling Man, Libra, Game 6, White Noise, the Names, the Body Artist, Players, Love-Lies-Bleeding, the Day Room, Amazons, Valparaiso, Pafko at the Wall, Great Jones Street, End Zone, Americana, Running Dog, Ratner's Star. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt:Amazons Amazons is a novel co-written by Don DeLillo , published under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell in 1980. The subtitle is An Intimate Memoir By the First Woman to Play in the National Hockey League . The book was a collaboration with a former co-worker of DeLillo's, Sue Buck, and represents a commercial, light-hearted effort between his novels Running Dog and The Names . While the book is widely known to have been written by DeLillo, and is technically his seventh novel, it has never been reprinted and he has never officially acknowledged writing it. Additionally, when Viking was compiling an official bibliography for the Viking Critical Library edition of White Noise , DeLillo asked the publishers that the book be expunged from the list.Plot summary The novel is a fictitious autobiography narrated by Birdwell centering on her experiences as the first woman to play professional hockey in the NHL . It is in some ways similar to DeLillo's second novel, the football-themed End Zone , though more humorous and smaller in scale, replete with social satire and comedy. The story follows Birdwell and her teammates on the New York Rangers , as they travel around North American cities playing games and engaging in sexual adventures.The prose is distinctly and obviously DeLillo's, but as further proof of his authorship, readers cite the appearance of the character Murray Jay Siskind, a sportswrit... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"Point Omega:" Utterly Strange, Yet Hard to Put Down
Don DeLillo's "Point Omega" is a work that invites the reader to ask the question, "Why?" Why do his characters behave in these ways? What is Jim Finley's motivation for trying to make a film about Richard Elster, a former scholar turned outsider who has secluded himself to the desert? Why does Elster behave the way he does? And, without giving away the ending, what is the cause of Elster's daughter, Jessica, surprise twist of fate? What is the theme of this novel and what is point omega?
"Point Omega" opens with Jim Finley watching a taping of "Psycho" in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The film is played slowed down so that it encompasses a full 24 hours, described in very accurate details in the narrative. Finley seems to inhabit his own world in this dark room, commenting on how he views all of his surroundings and how he thinks people should feel about what they are witnessing, as if it is a truly remarkable experience about life, as it is for him. "It takes close attention to see what is happening in front of you. It takes work, pious effort, to see what you are looking at. He was mesmerized by this, the depths that were possible in the slowing of motion, the things to see, the depths of things so easy to miss in the shallow habit of seeing," (DeLillo 13). This passage is interesting to begin with as the novel also closes with this strange world of "Psycho." The theme of time slowing down and extended consciousness reverberates throughout the story.
The narrative then moves to the deserts as Finley leaves to study and film the confounding Richard Elster, formerly hired by the government to apply principles to military operations. He plans to only stay a short while, but as he speaks with this old man and they interpret experiences in their lives, Finley finds himself immersed in a world of wondering about life's purpose and the value of everything that life entails. He overstays his visit at the desert for months, wondering and questioning his life, Elster's life and the worth of what they do in their lives from day to day, ranging from jobs to marriage. "Every lost moment is the life. It's unknowable except to us, each of us inexpressibly, this man, that woman. Childhood is lost life reclaimed every second, he said," (63). The interactions between these two characters and the intricacies of life are written so that the reader is captivated into what may happen as these two reveal themselves to each other. The writing flows and the presence of time is slowed down as if during the Psycho screening. The situation becomes even more complicated when Elster's daughter, Jessica, arrives. The three of them become almost a sort of "family" in the wilderness until a plot twist finally occurs and the characters are seemingly changed forever by what transpires between them. But are they really changed at novel's end?
At the center of the novel is the referenced point omega. "Conciousness accumulates. It begins to reflect upon itself. Something about this feels almost mathematical to me. There's almost some law of mathematics or physics that we haven't quite hit upon, where the mind transcends all direction inward. The omega point. Whatever the intended meaning of this term, it if has a meaning, if it's not a case of language that's struggling toward some idea outside our experience," (72) Elster states. Near the end of the novel, Finely relates the omega point as something that seems a million miles away and has narrowed to the point where a knife enters the body.
This overall theme of an omega point that accumulates consciousness and human experience encompasses the tutelage of the novel. The motivations of the characters, the plot twists present and the overall themes of companionship, loneliness and value all cultivate towards this omega point, still mysterious at novel's end. "Point Omega" is a novel that asks the reader to engage in these characters while under the knowledge that what they achieve in their lives is boiled down to this one existential point. It is hard to understand for the common reader, but the novel pulls us in by the writing and the unraveling of the characters. For those who enjoy a novel whose point is hard to grasp and whose resolution does not truly satisfy, "Point Omega" is truly enjoyable. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on June 22, 2003. The length of the article is 335 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Joseph Dewey, Steven G. Kellman, and Irving Malin, eds. UnderWords: Perspectives on Don DeLillo's "Underworld.".(Book Review)
Author: Richard J. Murphy
Publication: The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2003
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: 23Issue: 2Page: 157(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on March 22, 2001. The length of the article is 1601 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo's Dialogue with Culture.(Review)(Brief Article)
Author: Irving Malin
Publication: The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2001
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: 21Issue: 1Page: 212

Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Chapters: Vince Lombardi, Bob Keeshan, Don Delillo, Denzel Washington, Paul Morrissey, Donald Trump, Joseph Cao, Tom Leykis, Vito Fossella, Mary Higgins Clark, Mark Koltko-Rivera, Francis Spellman, Vin Scully, Andrew Cuomo, Amanda Seyfried, John A. Degnan, Alan Alda, Francis J. Beckwith, List of Fordham University People, John Sexton, George Coyne, Mario Gabelli, Jonathan Harris, Graham Clarke, Rob Astorino, Pedro Espada Jr., Joe Ferriero, G. Gordon Liddy, Hage Geingob, Stephen Yagman, Karina Smirnoff, Patricia Clarkson, Paddy Chayefsky, Bill Pascrell, Bud Collyer, Dylan Mcdermott, Ray Mcgovern, Robert A. Agresta, Wayne Teasdale, Frankie Frisch, Ivo Banac, Kevin Devine, John Lafarge, John Wolyniec, Robert J. Morris, Étienne-Théodore Pâquet, Angelo Mozilo, P. J. Carlesimo, Mike Breen, William J. Casey, Raymond Siller, Robert Munsch, Ralph S. Pfau, Robert C. Morlino, Michael Kay, Wellington Mara, Malcolm Wilson, Steve Bellán, Robert Sean Leonard, Adrian A. Basora, James Oddo, Lorenzo Borghese, Ray Rayner, Earle I. Mack, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, E. Gerald Corrigan, Brien Mcmahon, Tim Jones, Albert Nofi, Tony Reali, John Granville, Martin T. Mcmahon, Donald Spoto, Dana Telsey, Justinian Rweyemamu, Thomas P. O'malley, Adam Smith, Johnny Murphy, Hunter Tylo, Jack Keane, Hank Borowy, Marcel Danis, John T. Georgopoulos, Annie Parisse, Kenneth C. Davis, Pat Harrington, Jr., Julie White, Jack Ford, Chu Ching-Wu, Andrew Lanza, Martin H. Glynn, John Feerick, Kevin Duffy, Thomas Cahill, Sam Zoldak, William L. Reilly, Ed Franco, Peter Kreeft, Carmine Desapio, Bill Chadwick, E. Reese Hopkins, Charles Osgood, Alex Wojciechowicz, Barry Hess, Joan Voss, John E. Potter, Martin Dobelle, Vincent Deveau, Harry Mattison, Jim Dwyer, James Joseph Walsh, Bill Wendell, Greg Kelly, Bernard J. Dunn, Tim Murray, Bob Papa, Robert Mulligan, Edwin Broderick, John Hoving, Anne M. Mulcahy, Jesus Estanislao, Hugh Joseph Addonizio, Ellen Alemany, Peter Vallon...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=4848272 ... Read more

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Chapters: Jenna Jameson, Don Delillo, Mario Puzo, Camille Paglia, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alan Alda, Marilyn Vos Savant, Lee Iacocca, Paul Gallico, Gregory Corso, John Ciardi, Roland Merullo, Raymond Lotta, Karen Tintori, Charlie Gasparino, John Fante, Evan Hunter, John Giorno, Victor Di Suvero, Neil Cavuto, Anna Quindlen, Kate Dicamillo, Arthur F. Carmazzi, Alan Pizzarelli, Albert Innaurato, Mary Doria Russell, Vito Russo, Tiziano Thomas Dossena, Frank Judge, Leo Buscaglia, Richard Russo, Joseph Petracca, Frank Messina, Helen Barolini, Pietro Di Donato, Frank Bruni, Nicholas Pileggi, Gerald Di Pego, Jerre Mangione, Lisa Scottoline, Michele Pane, Charlie Viracola, Anthony Piccione, Steve Martini, Joseph Rocchietti, Anna Monardo, Mike "The Godfather" Clemente. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 265. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Jenna Jameson (born Jenna Marie Massoli on April 9, 1974) is an American entrepreneur and former pornographic actress, who has been called the world's most famous porn performer and "The Queen of Porn." She started acting in erotic films in 1993 after having worked as a stripper and glamor model. By 1996, she had won the "top newcomer" award from each of the three major pornographic film-industry organizations. She has since won more than 20 adult film awards, and has been inducted into both the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) and Adult Video News (AVN) Halls of Fame. Jameson founded the pornographic entertainment company ClubJenna in 2000 with Jay Grdina, whom she later married and divorced. Initially a single website, this business expanded into managing similar websites of other stars and began producing pornographic videos in 2001. The first such movie, Briana Loves Jenna (with Briana Banks), was named at the 2003 AVN Awards as the best-selling and be...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=74573 ... Read more