I cannot help but think of Bill Gray as the ideal or romanticized representation of the writer. As in Mark Z. Danielewski’s interview (where he told some story about beginning his magnificent first novel on a Greyhound bus in the dark with a flashlight on the way to visit his dying father), there are echoes of the stereotype (or perhaps recurring theme in history) of the author shaped by painful experiences. Gray is reclusive (a trait associated with many famous authors: Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, Salinger) and this sense of remoteness contributes to an aura of loneliness and exhaustion. During his photo session with Brita he talks about the exhaustion of keeping up this writely seclusion.
“Maybe I don’t want to feel the things other people feel. I have my own cosmology of pain. Leave me alone with it. Don’t stare at me, don’t ask me to sign copies of my books, don’t point me out on the street, don’t creep up on me with a tape recorder clipped to your belt. Most of all don’t take my picture. I’ve paid a terrible price for this wretched hiding. And I’m finally sick of it” (45).
The quotation shows how he is fed up with the certain aspects of the writer life he has designed for himself. He makes a clear distinction between himself and the rest of the world, wanting to remain apart. There are people who get their pictures taken and then there are other who don’t want to be photographed. The interesting thing is that he gives in, he has his picture taken, in a sense killing the writerly image he has made for himself. Image actually isn’t the right word for it because I don’t think he’s very concerned with image. I think he genuinely wants to have his depressing solitude, but he sees himself and his lifestyle as a writer as outmoded; photographers and terrorists can do his job better.
In a sense I read his decision to do the photo shoot as a suicide or perhaps the prelude to one (I have heard that less civilized people believe that cameras can steal your soul). Afterwards he leaves the country and tries to help the Swiss writer escape from his kidnappers. He talks with George about a possible exchange that would endanger his life, which indicates a desire to die (George tells him to get a computer to replace his typewriter, further proof of how Gray is outdated). Gray travels to Lebanon a place of conflict (more wanting to die) and steps off a curb to be hit by a car (still more wanting to die). Then he actually talks to a group of veterinarians about his “accident,” I think, in part so he better understand his wounds and he ends up dying more because he thinks he has/wants mortal injuries rather than actually being seriously hurt.
That being said, sadly, I’m not sure what to make of this suicidal writer other than he may represent the every-writer lost in a post-modern world.
I think you’re right that Bill Gray has some sort of death wish, and that his literal death is prefigured by a number of symbolic deaths. My question is this: why does DeLillo use what he most certainly knows is a tired cliche (the world weary novelist)? To what use does he put this stereotype?
I wonder if there is another stereotype or convention in play here as well: the heroic journey. Gray travels half-way around the world to save a fellow writer, turning away from the comfort of his artistic life. I think that the first cliche, a writer who is an exhausted, sad romantic is somehow more believable than a writer who leaves isolation to do an incredibly noble act, which ends up getting him killed. At first I thought that perhaps DeLillo was showing us that the writer who takes him or herself so seriously is an outdated relic in the po-mo world. Now I wonder if one can read it as Gray dies because he leaves the safety of his natural writerly environment and that there is in fact no reason for a writer to feel out of place or antiquated. This interpretation is easier to swallow considering that DeLillo is a writer and he probably doesn’t believe his craft is hopeless if he is still writing. Still, the image of the writer seems over the top and I wonder if it might not be something else…