In an interview with The Paris Review, novelist Don DeLillo said, “I’m completely willing to let language press meaning upon me”. That’s not to say the sound of a sentence should be given priority over its meaning, but that meaning finds its full expression – is discovered – in the aesthetically elegant or stylistically forceful sentence.
This is the feeling one gets reading Robert Dessaix, the 81-year-old Australian novelist, essayist, journalist and memoirist. In his latest book Chameleon, a memoir, Dessaix’s dexterous use of language moves him to insight, self-reflection and remembering.
