New DeLillo coming out next year
>Zero K' follows billionaire Ross Lockhart whose younger wife, Artis Martineau, has a terminal illness. Ross is a significant investor in a secretive, remote compound where death is controlled and bodies are preserved until medical advances can restore individuals to improved lives. Lockhart hopes Artis can benefit from this pioneering science. 'We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?' Told from the perspective of Ross’s son Jeffrey Lockhart, 'Zero K' weighs the devastations of our time against 'the mingled astonishments of our lives, here, on earth.'
>"Zero K" will be published in May 2016.
>>7362852
Sounds trite
Will read. baka if you don't eagerly anticipate every new novel from Delillo and Pynchon, even when they're not masterpieces they're still very good.
>>7362859
so do you
What's the over/under, 120-125 pages? Getting away with murder in his old age.
>>7363281
288 according to amazon
This sounds .. hm
DeLillo writing a Philip K Dick book or something.
Could be good though. I absolutely loved 'Point Omega'
>>7362852
White Noise was such an offense to the time I sacrificed to read it that for me to read anything of this man, I would need ardent, passionate recommendations.
> 'We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?'
Is this the general theme? I would expect something like this from a budding writer, maybe a user here, but not from a withered, aged man whose output speaks for his mediocrity. That at 78 a man writes a science fiction novel as opposed to some magnus opus that will help literature as a whole to progress forward is pitiable to my mind. Of course I am still offended by White Noise and so my opinion is biased; please read his work when it is out and come back with your views on it as only then will I consider Don DeLillo again.
>>7363427
It's like a shitty essay without any insight into nihilism and death.
Like a bad version of Zapffe or Unedrground man.
>>7363427
What, in particular, did you find so offensive about WN?
>>7363427
DeLillo is borderline a SF writer already, are you familiar with Ratner's Star? WN has some SF elements too.
He's incredibly blunt with theme, if you don't like that about him you probably won't like any of his work. But White Noise has a much different tone than most of his stuff, so it's very possible you might like his other books.
>>7363436
The simplicity of it came as astonishing after reading of the recommendations by a number of individuals here. The protagonist was bland and there were parts--I read it some months ago so I cannot recall, unfortunately, specific instances-- that induced cringe for how 'edgy' they came off. Edgy is fine when from an adolescent, I suppose, but from a grown man at the age when authors before him produced some of the greatest pieces available to us now? Actually, I remember the scene with the nurse and the protagonist towards the end conversing of God and the simple, childlike exchange that amounted to, 'of course God doesn't exist, but someone has to pretend that he does' was laughable when considered with the fact that it came with a man in his fifties. Surely it was only because I went into it with hopes of something that can, if not affect, at least entertain, and that is why I was disappointed; but were it not with that expectation I would not have turned to it in the first place. Maybe it is appropriate for those who are still enamored by death as DeLillo seemed to be then, but for me it was a chore for the boredom it maintained.
I didn't like white noise too much either, how is Underworld?
>>7363459
Him at the top of his game. If this doesn't do it he's not for you.
>>7363541
if i dont like white noise, or underworld?
apparently bloom said UW was a modern masterpiece
>>7362852
Delillo is thinking ahead in a realistic manner. Plebs dont understand that.
>>7363558
the names is his best
>>7363448
I didn't as much have a problem with the edge itself, it was the fact that there were no people in the novel. I was constantly wondering, why is this a novel at all? Anything interesting in it are random quotes about death, but even there it's just so basic and unfulfiling. Just looking back to Dostoevsky who was a christian has a better perspective on atheistic existentialism. Unlike say Niezche Dellilo doesn't utilize the narrative at all, or does so to the barest minimum, there being death looming over us all, but that's no excuse for 300 pages of dreary dialoge that has already been written by 19 year old aspiering redditor writers. It's juvenile, but without the human element to give the whole thing a soul. Sure, I dislike pomo (unless it has more elements to it and at least semi coherent narrative like Wolfe, Dick or Bolano), Vonnegut, Pynchon, him, even hate their works, but Dellilo is the worst of the bunch.
>>7363650
>delillo isn't dostoyevsky
>>7363645
I found that to be a very perplexing book...the parallels between the CIA and the cult seemed to be the central point, but they were so badly drawn...it felt more like a tangent than parallel lines.
Are there people on this board who bash on Delillo but praise DFW? Seeing all the hate for Don and love for the spergymememan makes me wonder if people here read novels the same way they take in information off of a webpage
>>7363427
White Noise is shit, the millenial memesters are the only ones who perpetuate the reading of it
even Delillo thought it was a lesser work
Every single page of White Noise has something funny on it. If you at least weren't constantly chuckling, you didn't get it at all. Doesn't mean you're an idiot - I didn't get it the first time I read it either. Thought it was all supposed to be stone-serious. Second time, years later: very enjoyable, very smart, and very funny.
delillo is better than pynchon
Reading his short stories collection "the angel Esmeralda" , not really impressed, I like DFW better, he seems more to the point.
This sounds great. I'll definitely be ordering a copy.
What I don't get is all this White Noise hate. The book was a critique against consumerism and a depiction of the tedium of a time of skepticism and a perpetual, inescapable post-Cold War detente, from which none of us can seem to escape.
>>7364938
>more to the point
>infinite jest
>>7364964
Yes, I know. I think Delilos writing is more meandering and less captivating than Broom or IJ, might just be taste.
>>7363448
I still don't get what you found edgy.
I thought the relationships and dialogue between the family was strange and funny.
I also thought that the blandness or banality built an important atmosphere that was completely relevant to the theme. The interstices of their lives were filled with pollution and lingering doom which manages to permeate into their beings.
Running Dog is an example of how he can be awful. Pointless book.
What did you think of Americana? I read White Noise after it was assigned for an intro to philosophy, then picked up Body Artist and Point Omega, which I enjoyed as much as WN--enough to reread them a few
times each. But I dropped Americana months ago and still haven't picked it back up.
>>7363645
ta onomata
SPOOKY!
>>7364938
FYI "The Angel Esmeralda" is the ending to Underworld, which is the best part of the book, not the beginning.
