Listening to Ratner’s Star

Having recently reread the most recent Don DeLillo novel, Zero K (2016), I’ve gone back and begun to reread a much earlier one, Ratner’s Star (1976). No doubt as to why I was under the spell of those books for so many years.

For context, the main character is a precocious young mathematician getting to know the soundproof, windowless room at a think tank that is now to be considered home.