the last book I ever read (Don DeLillo's Zero K, excerpt five)

from Zero K by Don DeLillo:

I wanted to read Gombrowicz in Polish. I didn’t know a word of Polish. I only knew the writer’s name and kept repeating it silently and otherwise. Witold Gombrowicz. I wanted to read him in the original. The phrase appealed to me. Read him in the original. Madeline and I at dinner, there we are, some kind of muggy stew in cereal bowls, I’m fourteen or fifteen and keep repeating the name softly, Gombrowicz, Witold Gombrowicz, seeing it spelled out in my head and saying it, first name and last—how could you not love it—until my mother elevates her gaze from the bowl and delivers a steely whisper, Enough.