Price-check on Don DeLillo conceit...

Somewhere in Hawaii, awash in the good vibe of finishing up CIRCUS MONEY, his second solo album, Walter Becker pitches a marketing idea to his publicists:

A campaign which kicks off with a "promotional stunt" -- in this case, it would be me faking or simulating my own disappearance, abduction, or possible death. Such a stunt would be concocted so as to evoke thematic and stylistic affinities with the Odyssey of Homer, with Joyce's sandwich-chomping, soap-purchasing perambulator of Dublin proper, with Samuel Beckett's unforgettable "Murphy", with the eponymous hero of "Bunny My Honey" by Anita Jeram, and with the Amelia Earhart, Judge Crater, and Billy Eckstine affairs. Such a stunt would be roughed out to begin with and then adjusted on the fly to make opportunistic use of current events, real and imagined -- bogus sightings, false hopes, denunciation by skeptics, etc. I would have to be willing to stay missing, abducted or dead for as long as it took to obtain the desired attention and sympathy. This last bit is the biggest flaw in this proposal, by the way, as it is exceedingly likely that no one or almost no one will give a tinker's damn if I go missing (me included). Should this be the case, I would have to be prepared to re-emerge in some new persona, some new identity, some new guise -- or else move back to Polynesia and/or go fuck myself...