Running Dog

by Don DeLillo

Book Overview

DeLillo's Running Dog , originally published in 1978, follows Moll Robbins, a New York city journalist trailing the activities of an influential senator. In the process she is dragged into the black... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679722947
• ISBN13: 9780679722946
• Release Date: July 1989
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The plot could be the counterplot

I'm not a big reader of crime fiction, although I do have a stack of Raymond Chandler books that I swear I'll get to one day. It does seem to me though that a lot of writers want to write Chandler style crime stories but because they're supposed to be post-modern they have to put some kind of odd existential spin on it, as if modern audiences can't handle something straightforward, relatively speaking. Of course, the other theory is that the author is just shoehorning their typical style into a genre they don't normally write in, which may be more the case here. What you have are all the usual elements of a Deillo story but adapted into a gritty noiresque tale so that everything gets kind of tweaked, the dialogue taking being a bit sharper and tougher but still definitely his semi-ironic style where people talk past each other and treat conversations more as a game to be won. His descriptions become a bit more honed, a bit leaner while still maintaining an eye for detail, but you get the idea that if this wasn't supposed to be a detective story then it would take twice as long to get to the end. The plot revolves around people trying to secure a film of what may be an amateur adult video made in the final days of WWII in Hitler's bunker, so you have people of power manuevering for it as well as folks involved in the erotic black market (as in "selling illegal adults products", not a sexy underground) and a spunky yet hardbitten reporter trying to piece it all together. Maybe. The central plot itself doesn't really seem that important as much as an excuse for a lot of entertaining scenes of people attempting to manipulate the crap out of each other and talk tough and try to decipher what the heck else everyone is planning. You have double agents and questionable motives and twists and it actually is a lot of fun in a weary and doom-laden fashion, the book reads a lot faster than I thought it would, but once you figure out that the plot is more or less window dressing for the stylistic hijinks, it gets easier. Thus the characters are more like caricatures and no one really develops but that doesn't seem to be the point. Tellingly the most effective part of the novel is when they finally screen the film and that feels the most like a true Delillo novel in its starkness. But while it's fun and everything, there's not much in the novel to really stick with you. I'm sure Delillo was taking it all quite seriously but it basically amounts to a extremely well written genre exercise. Worth the time but don't expect your life to be altered.

Excellent

Everything I like in a novel is here - humor, darkness, and strange and lusty wounded characters with noir capabilities. DeLillo has a knack for holding your hand down into some black tunnels and just when you are beginning to wonder how solid the ground you are standing on is he lets go. A terrific piece of fiction.

Gritty, Precise, Enigmatic

For me, the great pleasures of DeLillo are his absolute narrative control and his precise descriptiveness. Here's a quick example, with the character Selvy on the southwestern desert: "That day was like this one. A morning of startling brightness. Clarity without distracting glare. The sky was saturated with light. Everything was color." At the same time, DeLillo's narratives are sometimes about characters on meaningless quests-think "Mao II" or "Players". Read this book. But don't expect any edifying or enlightening commentary on life as it is lived, unless you are paranoid.

DeLillo 101

For anyone who is looking to get involved in the paranoiac, conspiracy-riddled world of Don DeLillo, Running Dog is a perfect jumping-off point. Replete with all the DeLillo standards-ambiguous, dangerous characters, postmodern disenchantment, the spectre of violence and war, voyeurism, as well as humor, compassion and loss-Running Dog serves as DeLillo 101. Before engaging in the complexities of White Noise, Underworld, Mao II or Libra (for which Running Dog is a kind of template), try this shorter, lighter version of DeLillo's later work. The subject, at least initially, is simple: in the mad dash for material conquests (in this case, an antiquated porno film supposedly depicting members of the Third Reich engaged in lewd sexual acts) the combatants lose sight of their motives, their souls, and most alarmingly the item itself. Commentary on war, sex, greed and our modern version of self-realization.