Don DeLillo...a disappointment?

Sorry, I somewhat belatedly realized that my commments above probably come across as more negative about DeLillo's prose than I actually feel. I was just trying to flesh out the connotation of "flat" that I had in mind. By listing all those negative words, I think I greatly exaggerated my distaste for DeLillo's writing. I still think he's a good writer - I'm just trying to imagine how he could be better - to me at least.

I don't think of him who writes about characters that stuff happens to, ie., in terms of using that kind of a structural layout. For me, his books are important for the sense in which they hold together like paintings, or something, in that the characters exist alongside descriptions of the environment, and the dialogue, ie., all of these things have a kind of equivalent status in his books. And all of these equal things' existence, and the structured whole, stand in some special relationship to D's sensibility.

i also ended up engrossed in the body artist despite the probably purposefully elicited misgivings i had at the beginning (this is so slight, etc.). so far i've decided to suppose that white noise is the odd one out.

it occurs to me now, having recently been reading two books ('berlin alexanderplatz' and natsuo kirino's 'out') that one might describe as in some way 'social novels', or, better, as having elements of the social novel to them - despite my not really having any actual acquaintance with the books properly called 'social novels' like, i don't know, 'germinal' or 'an american tragedy' or 'cannery row' or whatever they really are - that while i am often more bored by this kind of book, 'the social novel', partly because of its narrative or psychological or etc. focus on things that i personally am bored by, partly because of its tendency to a programmatic interest in 'realistic' prose - while i'm often more bored by it, perhaps one could say that one of the interesting things about delillo's novels is that they have a broader scope for what counts as 'social' while still maintaining some of that old interest in 'the social' of 'the social novel'. this is all basically baseless speculation, though. an idea to throw out.

'broader' is a poor way of putting it.

blogging for the onion

woah

surely not real right

why not? i guess the arguments here are that it-sounds-so-much-like-him that it can only be a parody, versus it can only be him. but it's like chunks of the campus establishment writingin white noise. it's certainly him.

well that bit 'he speaks in your voice, american' is the first line of underworld so i would have thought it's a parody

That's great. It's a pretty obscure thing to joke about, though

Libra is pretty great, though it starts slow. Americana also OK. Rest of it I can do without.

americana's amazing! white noise is a better novel, but americana's just so lyrical, such a distinct voice, so many offhand lines. i remember reading the joshua ferris novel and being amazed at how derivative it was. this is more likely my ignorance, but i can't really trace back the topical writing style of short declarative sentences, of that mild deadpan typified by eggers, july &c, any further than americana. it's like he created the current american narrative voice.

libra starts slow? ach, i guess, compared to how riveting it becomes

Read Running Dog, based on being interested in a 2 sentence precis somewhere (something about Hitler and pornography); actually found this to be about his dullest book, which is really a special achievement.

Apart from the The Names, which a few have recommended here (& which I haven't read), has anyone read End Zone?

yah a long time ago--it was pretty awes

I just read a summary of 'End Zone', talking about how the main character is obsessed with what he sees as imminent nuclear armageddon, which has rather swayed me towards reading it (I've liked about 2/3 of the eLillo I've read before, but was previously put off this by it being about football).

James: let me know how you go. I'm unlikely to go with End Zone next, considering I don't yet own a copy, and so am instead faced with the familiar and let's face it unpleasant task of working out which owned-but-as-yet-unread-book to choose from... Oh, I think I said recently it'd be The Assistant, so had better not make a liar of me...

i really liked endzone. i'd like to read it again someday. same with americana. i read all those books so long ago, they would seem new to me again.

A voice from the subconscious: Toyota Corola.

This is also a White Noise reference.

yeah it must be a pardoy even tho someone up above said 'it's certainly him'

Yeah, I mean, their other bloggers include "Pip Dawkins, 19th Century Street Urchin" and "Gary Brunson, 5-Week-Old Fetus."

it's certainly a 5 week old fetus

i was the one CERTAINLY HIMing all over the place. i've still only read the first entry. i think my conviction is more rooted in wondering why people make convincing hoaxes, like really authentic and not particularlt satirical april fools jokes, with author's photo etc.

i am quite keen to deflect attention back on to general don delillo affairs to distract from my potential faux pas.

just got the 9/11 book - only one i haven read

i rep for mao 2 and the names fwiw

I'd been looking for the 9/11 book in secondhand shops. I saw a reviewers' pre-copy, but didn't buy it because I wanted the nice cover with the vertical subway train (I think). I finally found a copy the other day and was very pleased with myself - until Mrs K pointed out that the cover is just a picture of clouds, and not the one I wanted at all :o(

Ones I really, really did dig by him: Mao II, Running Dog, Libra, Ratner's Star (with reservations)

rad covers for the new book:

http://www.perival.com/delillo/pointomega_graphic.jpg

http://www.perival.com/delillo/pointomega_small.jpg

hrhmmm

DON DELILLO HAS BEEN "WEIRDLY PROPHETIC about twenty-first-century America" (The New York Times Book Review). In his earlier novels, he has written about conspiracy theory, the Cold War and global terrorism. Now, in Point Omega, he looks into the mind and heart of a "defense intellectual," one of the men involved in the management of the country's war machine.

Richard Elster was a scholar -- an outsider -- when he was called to a meeting with government war planners, asked to apply "ideas and principles to such matters as troop deployment and counterinsurgency."

We see Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, "somewhere south of nowhere," in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker, Jim Finley, intent on documenting his experience. Finley wants to persuade Elster to make a one-take film, Elster its single character -- "Just a man and a wall."

Weeks later, Elster's daughter Jessica visits -- an "otherworldly" woman from New York, who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. The three of them talk, train their binoculars on the landscape and build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event throws everything into question.

In this compact and powerful novel, it is finally a lingering human mystery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.

surprising that there's no love for great jones street on this thread - haven't read it in years but it cracked me up circa '96

I've been avoiding it, actually, for fear it'd be dreadful.

Though when I reread Cosmopolis I was surprised how the rave and hip-hop stuff manages to not be dreadful — like sure it's kind of lol old but that's the perspective the narrative's aiming for anyway

I don't know, I wasn't in many loops when I read it so maybe now I'd be all "you dumbass the rock world is nothing like that" but I loved the fake album descriptions, something which as a young (13/14 years old mind so the story was doubtless awful) aspiring writer years ago I had also tried to do: a story that had a bunch of vividly described imagined albums, and their critical responses, at its center

i'll have to get around to it. it's kind of a bugbear of mine, i have a thread about it somewhere — narratives which turn around particular cultural artifacts, records or books or paintings or something, and how incredibly rare it is that anyone's bothered to make a believable context in which they can function

great jones street was the only one i didn't like when i was reading his books in the 80's. probably because of the rock stuff in it. i don't remember now. but it didn't hit me nearly as hard as the names. i'm thinking the names might be an underrated book cuz i never hear anyone say good stuff about it, but i thought it was great back then.

i loved the day room too. his play. i wonder what i'd think now. i just sold a copy at my store. i really tired of sll the shadowy conspiracy stuff, i gotta say. i have no desire to read his new stuff. which is sad, i guess. i thought he was the coolest way back when. mao 2 was the end of the line for me.

this book sort of sounds like a mash-up of "ratner's star" and "mao 2"

$24.00 ($16.20 w/ amazon discount) for a 128 page book? NO THANKS!

libraries!

reading this thread makes me realise i've read/love all the wrong delillos. seems like the names might be OOP but it's top of my list

i don't think any of his books are out of print except for the Cleo Birdwell one

The only novel I love with only a few reservations is Libra, but in essence he's an essayist stuck as a novelist (White Noise). I don't know what he was trying to do in Mao. Never finished Underworld. A friend to whom I said this also recommended The Names, so I'll give it a go.

i breezed through a lot of his books ten years ago, and not a lot of them stuck with me except Libra and maybe parts of Underworld, White Noise, and Mao II. I don't get the whole essayist stuck as a novelist--he doesn't seem like an essayist at all!

An essentially discursive talent creating characters, and scenarios for them.

i don't know many essayists who create characters and scenarios

u should talk to my 10th grade history teacher

i feel like mb that joke doesnt work the way i want it to

Que's misreading me.

borges never supported peron, but he was p happy with regular old military dictatorship.

neruda never voiced support, or criticism, of peron.

exactly, which is why i said "he played his cards right"

as they say in spanish, "se hizo el tonto"

Neruda was Chilean.

lol they speak spanish there buddy

and jim is referring to borges's meeting with pinochet, but that's a separate argument, and borges said that he had no idea what pinochet was involved in

neruda wasn't political opportunist, he was generally very true to his stalinism. criticizing peron wouldn't have been controversial, and in fact the communists in argentina weren't huge fans.

borges is no angel, as most latin american conservatives of his time he was quite happy for liberal democracy to be overturned if it helped keep the status quo - which in latin america was massive inequality and quasi-feudalism.

he was a bit squeamish when the bodies started to pile up, which makes him more empathetic than many, but hardly unblemished.

gotta take off from work, but ya, i don't wholly agree with you

will try to reply later

we really took our eye off the ball in THIS thread

took yr 'troll PR one last vast time' line and ran wild

ya i'd love to discuss this further with jim but this is not the thread (it involves a lot of political understanding of latin american "left" and "right" and how they're not equal to left and rigth concepts as say americans or canadians think of them)

sorry

we really took our eye off the ball in THIS thread

― mark s, Thursday, 13 October 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A beat writer won it. My theory holds.

What do I win?

dylan not cohen

Sorry I just read James Morrison on the other thread. He wins.

ginsberg is considered dylan's life long mentor though and has pretty openly said he is influenced by him

xp

cohen more of a traditional beat poet, though, you're right

ok to bring this back to don delillo: really liked underworld but do you not feel he maybe goes too far with tying everything together with the idea of underworld. like there's some mafia dudes - UNDERWORLD - there's a guy doing graffiti in subway tunnels - UNDERWORLD - there's some nuclear waste being buried in Kazakhstan - UNDERWORLD, etc.

xp I was just riffing on xyzzz's "beckett not joyce" &c

philip roth on his agent's sofa, sadly watching the liver going cold for the last time

― mark s, Thursday, October 13, 2016 12:23 PM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(unsure why i said "for the last time" -- CLEARLY NOT FOR THE LAST TIME)

Trying to picture Martin Amis right now.

picture an entire body made of tin ear

- UNDERWORLD

Underworld was awful. The zapruder bit was awful. The bit about Edgar Hoover was awful. Some of the writing was amazingly skillful but AMERICA in all caps is such a banal subject.

jaoo-dae!

I think it was at least half a great book.

Probably never got more electrifying than the Pafko at the Wall opening unfortunately. Amazing piece of writing, that.

Any recommendations from the last decade or so of DeLillo novels?

I thought Zero K was just ok, but I read it pretty soon after Underworld so I might have just been a little overDeLilloed at that point. He has a new one out now, doesnt he?

it was disappointing imo

last decade? nah

im gonna read the new one anyway. i liked point omega (maybe his most straightforwardly pretentious novel) but zero k not so much, felt very conventional and really just a rehash of earlier stuff that he's rehashed enough at this point (without the elliptical refinement of his more severely minimal stuff post underworld). looking down through his list of novels im less convinced he had a 'classic' period and the ones that really stand out for me ('the names,' 'libra' and 'falling man') are not come before and after much less interesting ones. (i do tend to find his most ambitious stuff fairly tedious. Ratners star is not as clever as it thinks it is and Underworld is infuriating.)

Also there's a review in the most recent LRB of the new one that i haven't read in case spoilers and also bc its by andrew o hagan but it might helpful?

I've only read Great Jones Street. I had two problems with it:

- the main character was a cipher, and since he's also the narrator it left the book bloodless. He has elements of Dylan/Jagger/Lennon as convenient from moment to moment, but I never felt DeLillo actually got into the character.
- like J. G. Ballard, the story was more a scenario being explained than a plot that we see working out. That's perhaps an obvious pitfall when the whole book takes place (as I recall) in one apartment.

I did walk past the actual Great Jones Street in New York, it's about as wide as it is long and only has a handful of buildings on it.

“Your wife’s hair is a living wonder,” Murray said, looking closely into my face as if to communicate a deepening respect for me based on this new information.
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“She has important hair.”
“I think I know what you mean.”
“I hope you appreciate that woman.”
“Absolutely.”
“Because a woman like that doesn’t just happen.”
“I know it.”
“She must be good with children. More than that, I’ll bet she’s great to have around in a family tragedy. She’d be the type to take control, show strength and affirmation.”
“Actually she falls apart. She fell apart when her mother died.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“She fell apart when Steffie called from camp with a broken bone in her hand. We had to drive all night. I found myself on a lumber company road. Babette weeping.”
“Her daughter, far away, among strangers, in pain. Who wouldn’t?”
“Not her daughter. My daughter.”
“Not even her own daughter.”
“No.”
“Extraordinary. I have to love it.”