Delillo is so fucking based.
>>7907898
He looks like he'd still kick the shit out of you in a fight any day of the week too
DeLillo is a pretty cool guy. Not sure why he always gets labeled 'postmodern'. He's like the anti-Barth. I guess it's because of White Noise though.
>>7907898
Based on what?
I've read Cosmopolis and the Body Artist. What next?
>>7908013
Mao II or The Names
>>7908021
I can recommend Mao II
>>7907953
Ratner's Star and White Noise.
Also, he was the intelectual author of 9/11.
>>7908087
>Also, he was the intelectual author of 9/11.
I've heard about this before. There sure were a lot of people involved. I wonder why he did it. To be a part of history or for money, maybe.
>>7908100
Why he did it? Why not? At the time of an offer, that's all it is.
Point Omega is his admission of guilt. Elster the ex-military theorist? Who do you think he was? Why do you think the book ends without conclusion, without salvation? DeLillo is still searching.
>>7908132
Haven't read point omega but Mao II is "I'm going to wreck the WTC with my arab terrorist friends" the book.
Also there is another reference to the forecoming events in WN.
Don't know why this dude is still free.
>>7907898
I read White Noise and liked it a lot, but there are plenty of other authors I'd prioritize reading before him and haven't read yet.
Maybe I'll get a few more of his books after I've read Gaddis's entire oeuvre.
>>7907907
Literary postmodernism isn't just Barth. It's a whole series of authors with varied styles from Hawkes to Gaddis to Pynchon, and arguably DFW as well (even though he tried to deny it) just to name a few. Delilo counts too, he's just not what you've come to associate with postmodernism.
>>7908361
DeLillo uses none of the formal techniques that those other authors do and his themes are all pretty conventional looks at American social/political landscapes. He himself says he writes for a non-literary middlebrow audience and sees himself in the modernist tradition.
200 pages into Underworld right now and I'm really enjoying it. Wasn't much of a fan of White Noise though.
>>7907907
>>7908361
Post-modernist works also deal cultural awareness, a kind of fuck you to older literary critics who think your fiction shouldn't be reflexive on things like TV shows and progressive technology, and who also tend to think it's not artistic if it isn't "timeless."
I mean, I never use cellphones in my stories, but I create a situation where it's not overtly obvious/important anyone should say "Where the fuck are the cell phones and the internets?" But the style, being meta-fic is post-modern, I guess. Anyway.
>>7907902
Is he trying to look like the devil in this pic?
I wonder what DeLillo would say if he knew we were calling him "based." I wish we could all go to his house and hoist him up on a sofa like a king and chant "Based DeLillo!" while he smiled sheepishly like, "What can I do? They want to celebrate me, I can't stop them." Then at night the atmosphere would shift from a celebratory revel to a something more serious and subdued as the joints come out and we urge DeLillo to partake and after a little cajoling he finally does and says, "I haven't done this in a long time." And somebody would say, "It's a good a time to start back up as any," and DeLillo would nod and then cough and try to say "True that" through the coughing. "C'mon Don, you can't take those big '70s hits anymore, you're an old man, and plus this shit is more powerful!" Then we'd ask him if he's feeling it yet, and he'd say "Oh yeah, you guys weren't kidding, this is powerful stuff, not like when I was young." And we'd start asking him what he meant in this book, what he was trying to say when he said that, and so on, and he'd smile and shake his head and say, "It was so long ago, and now you've got me high, I can't remember, I'm sorry!" OK, OK, then, we'd say, we'll give you a break. Sorry. We know you're high. Maybe when you come down a bit. Then somebody would shout, "DeLillo did 9/11!" and people would get annoyed and shout at him to shut up and somebody would say, "Who is that? Who brought that asshole?" And when it got late, and we began to feel like we were overstaying our welcome, I would corner DeLillo and say, "Hey, listen, I feel like I'm having a panic attack, or something, and I can't go outdoors, something's wrong with me. Is it cool if I crash here? I won't tell anybody." And he'd say Fine, fine (still high as hell), and I'd say, "Thank you, based DeLillo," and as I lay awake in the guest room in the dark I would try to think of really smart and insightful questions to ask him over breakfast, which I would have ready for him when he awoke.
>>7909374
That may be the gayest thing I've ever read.
I went into Underworld thinking it was going to be awesome.
First couple chapters were alright. The rest was dribble.
>>7909217
this is the worst post I've ever read
>>7907898
How's Americana? Read White Noise and Underworld and liked them. I've been considering reading his entire bibliography in publishing order. But he's said himself that his earlier work was produced fast and of lower quality. Anybody who's familiar with Delillo, I'd love to know if it's worth it.
>>7909482
Americana's great. Full of gems. A few parts were hard for me to understand, seemed like he was seeing how high he could fly, as a writer, and he lost me as he ascended. But mostly great.
>>7909374
I predict this being the hottest pasta of the year
>>7909412
Care to elaborate instead of being a nigger?
>>7909374
this is fucking stupid
have you even read delillo?
Is the ending of Omega Point supposed to imply that the guy who watched the Psycho exhibition murdered Elster's daughter or am I misreading something?
>>7910035
ehmmmmm it's been a while but i'm pretty sure the guy watching psycho is with the girl ... or he sees her in the crowd
anyways what happens to her is kinda besides the point, the bookending of point omega is supposed to fit the 'haiku' and circularity motifs and hammer down the abstraction of violence theme like how elster is abstracting war and violence with his intellectualism and semi ascetic life but then when he's actually confronted with possible danger ie his daughter going missing the facade falls apart and he's plunged into a state of helplessness
but yeah i think she's in the crowd at the end .... not killed... though that's actually an interesting reading now i think about it, cause the guy who watches becomes so absorbed in the abstracted murders of psycho and is literally watching a film about an autistic murderer
>>7910042
>but i'm pretty sure the guy watching psycho is with the girl ... or he sees her in the crowd
Yup, near the end (or shortly after, I'm not sure) of the exhibition he's with a girl who's strongly implied to be Elster's daughter and they even talk and exchange phone numbers. Shortly before this, he reveals (to the reader, not to her) that his own mother died not so long ago and that their relationship reminds him of the one between Norman and his mother, thus he's probably an autistic psycho with mother issues as well and thus he probably murdered Elster's daughter.
>>7910077
i'm not sure how i feel about that... i'll have to give the book another read now... but that seems a little out of joint, a little too hysterical for the rest of the book
>>7910085
I'm not exactly sure neither (that's why I asked in the firste place, if it was coherent with the rest of the book, I would be sure that my interpretation is correct) but it would make sense.
Additionally, somewhere in the middle of the book, Elster mentions that his daughter has a creepy boyfriends neither he nor his wife and not even her friends know personally, who does all kind of crazy stuff like calling Elster's daughter's mother without saying anything.
If this boyfriend is the Psycho guy (and I think he is) that would also suit with my interpretation.
>>7908361
>>7909217
Neither of you understand what you are talking about. Let one thing be clear: postmodernism, when you consider all the writers people call postmodern, is a meaningless term; unlike romanticism and, to a lesser extent, I think, modernism, it has no characterizing ideas or ideals.
>>7908378
This is correct.
Delillo is the GOAT author at describing films in literature.
Texas highway killer scenes in Underworld...whew, lad. I see the sketchy footage being replayed on CNN in my mind perfectly.
>>7907907
He deals with a lot of themes you find in post-modern writers, but uses none of their techniques.
>>7908100
>>7908331
Read "Players" for fuck's sake.
It's literally about a guy who works in WTC and is planning to bomb it, for the lulz, basically, cause he's bored.
There's a section in the book where a woman describes being trapped inside the WTC as it crushes down. Another scene where a guy thinks a plane is about to hit a building.
>>7910179
YES
also the names, also point omega, also the eisenstein films in underworld, also the photography in mao ii, also his commentary of the lee harvey oswald arrest footage
what the fuck, he should have just been a film critic/theorist
>>7910217
film critics have nothing to say and are lazy though
>>7910237
so delillo would clean up
>>7910284
allegedly, pynchon was seriously considering a job as film critic for esquire (i think this was after GR but before vineland)
>>7910177
If you think postmodernism is a meaningless term, you're about as clueless as it gets.
Postmodernism and postmodernity are very real things that are distinct from what came before them. Anyone who shows an understanding of postmodernity's effects on society in their writing can be considered postmodern even if they don't use the a lot of the techniques associated with postmodernism.
>>7910182
He does use some. Like there are parts of white noise where Jack makes quips about how "literary" certain things are, which is meta.
>>7909374
>>7910571
Alright, prove it. Explain to me--the clueless one--what postmodernism is; tell me what ideas define it; give me examples of it.
>>7909374
I read Mao II recently and was kond of disappointed. There were flashes of great prose and thought ("He wanted to fuck her on a hard bed with rain beating on the windows", that passage on why terrorism is the only language the West understands), but I found the rest of the book to be insufferable.
--The dialogue was disjointed and not human whatsoever. I wanted to kill myself during the dinner scene at Bill's house.
--Bill's a fucking self-insert, down to the hobby of calling out baseball announcers as a kid.
--What the fuck is the point of Karen? All she does is trot around New York looking at poor people and "authentic culture." It made me recall that meme of normie women "discovering themselves" by voluntourism in Africa and Latin America.
Outside of the expository passages the book just seemed like a masturbatory, bourgeois, jaded "le postmodern xD" hulking mass. It seemed far too formal and contrived in some parts, as if Delillo were following some kind of hard formula to writing.
Wew, that's my rant. Hope some anon can sway me the other way. Also: is Bill chopping wood in the yard with Brita naked and watching from the second-story window some kind of sexual metaphor? What is its literary purpose?
>>7907907
He's postmodern in the sense that he writes about/parodies/satirises/critiques postmodern society; not that he necessarily uses postmodern literary devices.
Has anyone read Zero K yet? I got a pre-release digital copy from net galley but haven't had time to read it.
>>7910851
I read it some time ago but liked it quite a lot. I esp liked the first scene in the stadium, the scene with Karen watching muted TV, the funeral of Khomeini and the ending with the wedding in Beirut (obviously some kind of reflection to the first chapter).
>The dialogue was disjointed and not human whatsoever. I wanted to kill myself during the dinner scene at Bill's house.
It didn't feel weird to me iirc. I think that the dinner situation was a bit uncomfortable for all characters maybe? I mean Brita and Bill had just done the shoot and he told her lots of weird stuff, Scott and Karen are incredibly weird characters on their own so a normal human dialogue would appear out of place maybe? I don't remember too well though
>Bill's a fucking self-insert, down to the hobby of calling out baseball announcers as a kid.
I never understoof this, who cares whether there are similarities between the author and a character. It has nothing to do with the quality of the book.
>What the fuck is the point of Karen? All she does is trot around New York looking at poor people and "authentic culture." It made me recall that meme of normie women "discovering themselves" by voluntourism in Africa and Latin America.
I think Karen is a person that is incredibly emotional but yet detached from the world (i.e. the sex scene with Bill, her whole relation with Scott). I think even thought she left this Moon cult she doesn't seem to condemn it and the cause of her admiration for this 'authentic culture' in the park is similar to her addection for the Moon cult earlier. I think she is a person who just wants to be a part of something bigger, a part of the masses (and the indivualism vs. masses thing is probably the focal point of the story, with Bill, the terrorists, the hostage representing individualism and Karen, the mass wedding, Mao etc. representing the masses).
> is Bill chopping wood in the yard with Brita naked and watching from the second-story window some kind of sexual metaphor?
chopping wood shows a kind of archaic masculinity and is also the first sign of Bill trying to break out of his isolation (that's why Scott is so surprised about it)
Personally I thought that Scott is a very strange character and I could never really make sense of him. His love for Bill's novels, his obsession with ordering things, the weird relationship with Karen.
yeah whatever these are my thoughts. nothing wrong with not liking a novel obviously and I don't claim to be correct with the stuff I said, it's been a while and these are the impressions that the novel left in me. As with most DeLillo novels, I mostly like single sentences, or a paragraph or a chapter, he really is great at concentrating a lot into relatively few lines in a very original way.
>>7910674
The postmodern condition can best be described in terms of the societal impact of late capitalism, mid to late 20th Century industrialism (a shift to never before seen levels of mass-production, consumerism, and rampant advertising) and the explosive collapse of pre-20th Century ideals as exemplified by the World Wars and the subsequent Cold War culture.
In very, very simple terms, Postmodernism is the awareness of the unprecedented levels of systemic decay and collapse in institutions that have lasted for centuries or millennia.
>>7910940
Good post
>>7910674
here's my try.. intellectually it is a skepticism of absolute narratives, and a self reflexivity, formally it is metafictional elements and intertextuality (whether that be indirect reaction, pastiche, collage, or just a reference)
>>7909381
Really? Usually when I write a journal entry I read it back to myself.
>>7909374
>Then somebody would shout, "DeLillo did 9/11!" and people would get annoyed and shout at him to shut up and somebody would say, "Who is that? Who brought that asshole?"
Lost it here
This was a pretty funny post anon
>>7913015
stop patting yourself on the back it wasn't funny at all
That's a pretty fucking impressive scowl, I'll grant him that.
>>7907902
Such a fucking asshole.
>>7909374
>>7907898
>based.
egh
>>7914894
thank you, based DeLillo.
>>7908087
>Also, he was the intelectual author of 9/11.
Where can I find more about this?
>>7916516
Ask Kubrick, he directed the visuals
>>7909374
my favorite thing delillo did in white noise was give each paragraph its own page so as to make each one stand out when they're put together. If Faulkner was master of the sentence, then Delillo mastered the paragraph
>>7909374
>>7916516
Players, Mao II, Underworld.
>>7907898
Did based loop around to mean trash yet?
Bumpo
