Don DeLillo...a disappointment?

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.