Don DeLillo by Great Jones Street Read Free Book Online Page A

there, full of lights and bright colors and crazy sounds.”
    “Right, the market.”
    “Fame,” he said. “It won’t happen. But if it does happen. But it won’t happen. But if it does. But it won’t.”
    “You never know.”
    “It won’t happen. But if it does.”
    “What if it does? What then?”
    “I’ll handle it gracefully. Ill be judicious. Ill adjust to it with caution. I won’t let it destroy me. Fame. The perfect word for the phenomenon it describes. Amef. Efam. Mefa.”
    “When do you sleep?” I said.
    “I sleep when sleep is feasible. When it’s no longer productive to write. I’m working in a whole new area. I guess that’s why it’s coming so slow. Pornographic children’s literature. But serious. Not some kind of soft-core material in a comic vein. Serious stuff. Filthy, obscene and brutal sex among little kids.”
    “Is there a market?”
    “I think this may be the only untapped field in all of literature. Although you never know for sure. Maybe there’s somebody working away right now, trying to pre-empt a corner of the market. Once you pre-empt, you’re good for years. Send them bird shit wrapped in cellophane, they’ll buy it. So I may be too late. There are people typing away all over the place, trying to wedge themselves into little corners of the market. But to get to your question, the answer is yes. Everything is marketable. If no present market exists for certain material, then a new market automatically develops around the material itself. My own brand of porno kid fiction is pretty specific. It has no adults. It is sexy-brutal in a new kind of way. It panders to the lowest instincts. It is full of cheap thrills. It has elements of primeval fear and terror. It has titless little girls saying bad words. It has an Aristotelian substratum.”
    “If you know this much about it, why can’t you get started?”
    “I know too much about it,” he said.
    “No room for discovery.”
    “No room for discovery and I spent too much time making and taking notes. My energy is pretty much sapped. But the theme lives in my mind. The central motivating force is there. The thrust is a genuine thrust. Little kids sucking and being sucked, fucking and being fucked. No grownups anywhere in sight. Kids obsessed by their magical abilities and appetites. Kids and only kids. Without grownups there’s a purity, I feel. The thing is kept pure. Tremendous sadism in evidence. Really vicious stuff. All rendered in terms of the classical forms of reversal, recognition and the tragic experience. But I’ll tell you what the clincher is.”
    “Okay.”
    “Their organs are extremely sensitive. Small maybe but developed way beyond our own spigots and drains. I plan to hint that this sensitivity is present in all children. A freshness. An innocence. Kaleidoscopic sex organs. Capable of wild fiery pleasure. What we’d all be capable of if we were as pure and sex-obsessed as these children of mine. They’re obsessed beyond belief. I can’t wait to start writing. But that’s not the real clincher. The real clincher lies in another direction.”
    “Which direction?”
    “I’m trying to remember,” he said. “All this coffee I’ve been drinking is beginning to affect my concentration. We’re all junkie dope fiends one way or another. I’m firmly convinced of that. With me it’s caffeine. But I don’t use instant. I never use instant. I wouldn’t drink that stuff for anything. I’d drink tea first and I hate tea. But the clincher is the writing style itself. That’s it, that’s it. I’m doing it like I’d do a second-grade reader. Simplest style imaginable. Easily understood by any seven-year-old kid. In other words I’m not just writing pornography about kids. I’m writing pornography for kids. A fantastic concept in my opinion. I have no doubt there’s enough marginally weird people who’ll buy books like this for their own kids. Most people will get the books for themselves, for