August 04 2025, 19:48

Players

Author: Don DeLillo

First published: 1977

210 pages, two acts, 10 chapters, ~60,000 words.

I disliked this book at first. Two voices, Lyle and Pammy, intertwine in the opening chapters, where he is a trader on Wall Street and she works in marketing for a grief counselling service run from the World Trade Center. They’ve become friends with Ethan, an older man Pammy works with, and his much younger partner, Jake. My initial take was that these were people who didn’t talk about anything meaningful, hiding behind banalities, especially Lyle and Sammy who have their own relationship speaking style that quickly grated on me.

The first half of the story sees Lyle begin to investigate a minor terrorist attack on his trading floor, leaving Pammy to spend more time with Ethan and Jake. Lyle is a sucker for patterns and, we start to realise, doesn’t feel like other people, or particularly empathise with them. He hooks up with a new secretary on the trading floor to find out how the attack happened, who did it, and how he can thwart them next time, although that veneer of respectability becomes doubtful as the story unfolds.

Pammy, on the other hand, looks for a connection with Jake when he reveals to her he’s not really gay, but that gambit backfires spectacularly. Jake is the character with the clearest sense of his feelings, but his vulnerability is his downfall, and Pammy retreats to her apartment and relationship with Lyle for safety. But Lyle doesn't seem to have Pammy’s sense of the limits of what she will do. Lyle and Pammy are reliant on each other, but in going so strongly in different directions, it’s implied they break apart. Lyle seems to be truly lost in the web of conspiracy theories and lies he finds so fascinating. At least Pammy is looking for life in the right places.

Players reminds me of a book I read earlier this year, Martin Amis’s Success, with its two half brothers alternating chapters and gradually growing catastrophically (for one of them) apart. That was a hard book to like on first reading, but it grew on me as I gave it more attention. It’s the same with Players. DeLillo’s sentences are exquisite, but he makes you work for the meaning behind them.

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