But more often, Mr. DeLillo makes Elster's speechifying about the war willfully — and absurdly — cerebral: we're told that he's written an essay about the word "rendition," with "references to Middle English, Old French, Vulgar Latin and other sources and origins," and we hear him talk about wanting a "haiku war," which would mean "nothing beyond what it is".
In the original, an editing change saw the word rendition added to the list in this sentence: "Conservation cannot exist in a vacuum … especially in Chagos, where issues of human rights, sovereignty, defence, security and rendition have dominated for 45 years … ".
And for a while Elster does come on a bit like one of Bellow's brilliant, unpleasant thinkers, spinning out skeins of philosophy from, say, the sensation of biting the dead skin off his thumb, or talking cleverly about such things as the many meanings of the word "rendition".
Numan made them wait for Cars and Are "Friends" Electric?, breaking up the latter's classic synth melody with spoken-word renditions of the verses.
Maybe spoken-word renditions of folk music classics aren't your thing – though, then, you probably don't appreciate William Shatner's work, either – but there's at least some sort of market for it.
This spins, somehow, into a spoken-word rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone".
Its only hit was Tom Clay's terrible spoken-word rendition of What the World Needs Now, the portentous oration intercut with socially provocative media reports.
The sound, amplified through miniature speakers, is a spoken-word rendition of Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." One senses, here, some clever metaphors for the death of print and the slippery quality of its replacement.
In the Sacagawea chapters, Hall makes an honorable attempt to express her thoughts using what look like crude word-for-word English renditions of her Shoshone language.
AT THE weekend a friend delivered a bizarrely word-perfect rendition of this song by Fascinating Aida, a cabaret group.
If he was a magician, a conjurer with words, his rendition of them could be incantatory, almost shamanistic, especially when delivering those mesmerising sound poems.
