I was near a Barnes & Noble and had time to kill so I stopped in and ended up buying The Silence. The cashier said, well, this should be a quick read. I said, well, faster than Underworld. I asked if he'd read Dellilo. He hadn't. I told him he had to. He promised he would,
Reread Libra recovering from Covid last January, and its authority and heaping revelations got me thinking all over again about how JFK as a subject nestles deep inside America’s psyche somehow. Ever have a look at Garry Wills’s book on Jack Ruby? I’m betting Dellilo did.
I have not, but it's all but certain DeLillo did. I gotta say, for all the DeLillo re-reading I did last year, Libra was the blinding revelation. I'd always been a The-Names-is-the-REAL-masterpiece guy, but I think at this point it's pretty inarguably Libra.
I'd have to revisit! I read AT thirty years ago, under duress (it was when I was working in development, and this gargantuan stack of manuscript pages landed on my desk at 9 AM, with the understanding that I had to finish it that day). It was my first Ellroy, and I certainly dug it, but I hardly remember the book itself at all
Don’t mind me while I catch up on my Substack reading … First off congrats on wrapping up your ms and I look forward to possibly more frequent posts and a future paid tier! I don’t know if you saw my review of Mao II but the TL;DR version is his “quaintness,” to borrow your word (and it is a good word for it) wasn't my cup of tea. Thankfully it wasn’t my first DeLillo (I think White Noise was a perfect introduction, which I can say with great confidence having never read any of his other books). My biggest complaint, and I have this problem with Franzen as well, is the looming hubris of the Author, who seems to radiate a belief in the indisputable centrality of the novelist — interestingly, right before (or right as?) the novel was making its way into the sidelines. In the novel's heyday a hundred years before that, there's no such offputting presumption or forced quality. The quote you shared from after the publication of Underworld is really interesting because you can still hear the denial in his voice — does he honestly believe that somehow the marginality of the novelist would help his cause? Poor guy. But it made me think perhaps Underworld and his later works may be more palatable because he was losing this distracting quality. Given my response to Mao II, is there any hope for me in appreciating DeLillo? Both Underworld and Libra have been recommended highly to me. What would you recommend?
One thing I'll say about DD: he became a lot less funny as he went on. Until (and including) White Noise, his work frequently has a comic element that pretty much disappears thereafter. That's not entirely bad (Underworld is amazing, and Libra is--maybe--his best book), but it is less . . . charming somehow. I don't know if "hubris" is the right word quite, but there's definitely a kind of grandiosity that I can certainly understand might be off putting. (I seem to recall I didn't love it, when I first read him twenty years ago.) But if you liked White Noise maybe try one of the earlier, funnier ones? Great Jones Street is kind of a mess as a novel, but parts of it are really, really fucking funny. Same with Running Dog, Americana, End Zone. There's a book he published under the pseudonym "Cleo Birdwell" that pretends to be a memoir written by the first female player in the NHL that's outright hilarious, and in fact is one of my favorites (though unsurprisingly he's disowned it). Amazons, that book is called. Anyway, I'd look to one of those
I was near a Barnes & Noble and had time to kill so I stopped in and ended up buying The Silence. The cashier said, well, this should be a quick read. I said, well, faster than Underworld. I asked if he'd read Dellilo. He hadn't. I told him he had to. He promised he would,
Reread Libra recovering from Covid last January, and its authority and heaping revelations got me thinking all over again about how JFK as a subject nestles deep inside America’s psyche somehow. Ever have a look at Garry Wills’s book on Jack Ruby? I’m betting Dellilo did.
I have not, but it's all but certain DeLillo did. I gotta say, for all the DeLillo re-reading I did last year, Libra was the blinding revelation. I'd always been a The-Names-is-the-REAL-masterpiece guy, but I think at this point it's pretty inarguably Libra.
how much do you like the James Elleoy treatment in Am Tabloid?
ELLROY
I'd have to revisit! I read AT thirty years ago, under duress (it was when I was working in development, and this gargantuan stack of manuscript pages landed on my desk at 9 AM, with the understanding that I had to finish it that day). It was my first Ellroy, and I certainly dug it, but I hardly remember the book itself at all
Don’t mind me while I catch up on my Substack reading … First off congrats on wrapping up your ms and I look forward to possibly more frequent posts and a future paid tier! I don’t know if you saw my review of Mao II but the TL;DR version is his “quaintness,” to borrow your word (and it is a good word for it) wasn't my cup of tea. Thankfully it wasn’t my first DeLillo (I think White Noise was a perfect introduction, which I can say with great confidence having never read any of his other books). My biggest complaint, and I have this problem with Franzen as well, is the looming hubris of the Author, who seems to radiate a belief in the indisputable centrality of the novelist — interestingly, right before (or right as?) the novel was making its way into the sidelines. In the novel's heyday a hundred years before that, there's no such offputting presumption or forced quality. The quote you shared from after the publication of Underworld is really interesting because you can still hear the denial in his voice — does he honestly believe that somehow the marginality of the novelist would help his cause? Poor guy. But it made me think perhaps Underworld and his later works may be more palatable because he was losing this distracting quality. Given my response to Mao II, is there any hope for me in appreciating DeLillo? Both Underworld and Libra have been recommended highly to me. What would you recommend?
One thing I'll say about DD: he became a lot less funny as he went on. Until (and including) White Noise, his work frequently has a comic element that pretty much disappears thereafter. That's not entirely bad (Underworld is amazing, and Libra is--maybe--his best book), but it is less . . . charming somehow. I don't know if "hubris" is the right word quite, but there's definitely a kind of grandiosity that I can certainly understand might be off putting. (I seem to recall I didn't love it, when I first read him twenty years ago.) But if you liked White Noise maybe try one of the earlier, funnier ones? Great Jones Street is kind of a mess as a novel, but parts of it are really, really fucking funny. Same with Running Dog, Americana, End Zone. There's a book he published under the pseudonym "Cleo Birdwell" that pretends to be a memoir written by the first female player in the NHL that's outright hilarious, and in fact is one of my favorites (though unsurprisingly he's disowned it). Amazons, that book is called. Anyway, I'd look to one of those
So good. Thank you! Can't wait for the paid tier.