You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt.

Today, my guest is Don DeLillo,

the author most recently of Underworld.

It's published by Scribner's.

His books are, oh, should I name them in order,

Americana, End Zone, Great Trone Street, Ratner Star,

Players, Running Dog, the Names, White Noise, Libra, and Mal 2.

Now, this book is full of symmetries, and I wanted to begin by noting that it opens and closes with miracles, a baseball miracle,

and then a kind of saint miracle. And the book seems concerned in a way that people have the opportunity

to believe in a kind of sanctity.

Many of them are doing penance.

The hero seems to be like a saint on a pillar in the desert.

He is exiled himself.

And I wondered, first of all, this kind of saintliness seems new to a dula novel.

At some point, in the early stages of this book,

I realized I would be heading back into my own background to some extent.

And that means to my own Catholic background.

...