You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
It's not often that I have no idea what I think about a book. This is one of those times. I love the prose but the book itself, the story, is impenetrable at first read. This shouldn't be anybody's first Delillo, that's for sure. I would give the author of Underworld $25 bucks a year just for that book but if I had paid full price for this and wasn't already a fan I can see feeling like I didn't get my moneys worth.
Having trouble figuring out a star rating for this one. It has some absolutely gorgeous prose from DeLillo, in the clipped, almost zen, style that he tends to work in now. It is also actually possible to follow, and people talk like people even when they are getting philosophical, unlike Cosmopolis. I feel its short length is actually to its detriment. I had trouble getting emotionally invested and it all felt like it was in the ether so quickly. Though maybe that was the point.
I'm really looking forward to reading Mao II, Libra and Underworld soon. Really want to see if something else of his even ever comes close to hitting me on the level White Noise does.
I'm really looking forward to reading Mao II, Libra and Underworld soon. Really want to see if something else of his even ever comes close to hitting me on the level White Noise does.
time, curious ass time
also.....hmmm...curious ass novella
also.....hmmm...curious ass novella
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
DNF I hated the writing. This book was tediously artsy & pretentious. I could barely finish the first chapter. The whole premise was absurd.
This book is a poetic narrative about war, film, death, lust, and grief. You have to separate the unrealistic narrative and monologuing from the reality surrounding the characters to truly appreciate the story, or accept that these are just three people that happen to speak in lyrical language. Either way, it is a beautifully written book, one that leaves you longing and feeling empty at the end, just as the characters would be.
Full review here: http://www.thelastchancetosee.com/2015/09/pointomega/
Full review here: http://www.thelastchancetosee.com/2015/09/pointomega/
The real point omega is- damn the Iraq war was fucked up and america needs to not exist
At face value, this is a short 117 page novella about a filmmaker and his hopeful subject (a retired professor and military/government thinker) at the professor's Southern California desert home. This main story arc is nestled between an opening and ending narrative (titled "Anonymity" and "Anonymity 2") that take place in a gallery showing '24 Hour Psycho' at MoMA- which was a real life art instillation at MoMA in 2006 showcasing the Hitchcock film in slowed frames, expanding the short Hollywood movie to a 24-hour length art projection.
These bookended anonymous pieces, to me, focused a lot on interpretation and authority in art. What is it? -- it being anything. What did the author/artist/director mean? What did the audience think? Art is open to interpretation both by the reader and the author, yet critics and academics put pressure to find the authority of meaning, some point that the artist is expressing that you need to know in order to get it. In these opening/closing scenes, the anonymous man is obsessed with wondering how other audience members are interpreting the art-movie installation. He wonders, on pg. 8, if two men standing in the gallery "were seeing what he was seeing. Even if they were, they would draw different conclusions, find different references across a range of filmographies and disciplines." This is mirrored in the closing section (Anonymity 2, taking place the next day from Anonymity "1") when he is speaking to a stranger who asks if what they are watching ("Psycho") is a comedy. On pg. 111: "He wanted to dismiss the idea that the film might be a comedy. Was she seeing something he had missed? Did the slow pulse of projection reveal something to one person and conceal it from another?"
The element of repetition, performance, and construction was present in several minor moments through the novella. One of my two favorites: pg 48, describing how when Jessica was little she would look at her father's lips to anticipate his words so that she could construct and synchronize their speech together, and would always be "looking, thinking, repeating, interpreting" like a performance. The other: pg. 69, Jessica talks about helping an elderly couple she volunteers for, and how they often lose stuff around the house, and they would all look for items together, "all three of them moving through the apartment talking, looking, trying to reconstruct," as if it were a performance that they were all watching.
This short and quick read has many other elements to dissect, including some theories of space, time, grief, loss, and of course the theory of the Onega Point, from which the title is derived. Overall I liked this little mystery think-piece and can't wait to read more of his meatier novels.
These bookended anonymous pieces, to me, focused a lot on interpretation and authority in art. What is it? -- it being anything. What did the author/artist/director mean? What did the audience think? Art is open to interpretation both by the reader and the author, yet critics and academics put pressure to find the authority of meaning, some point that the artist is expressing that you need to know in order to get it. In these opening/closing scenes, the anonymous man is obsessed with wondering how other audience members are interpreting the art-movie installation. He wonders, on pg. 8, if two men standing in the gallery "were seeing what he was seeing. Even if they were, they would draw different conclusions, find different references across a range of filmographies and disciplines." This is mirrored in the closing section (Anonymity 2, taking place the next day from Anonymity "1") when he is speaking to a stranger who asks if what they are watching ("Psycho") is a comedy. On pg. 111: "He wanted to dismiss the idea that the film might be a comedy. Was she seeing something he had missed? Did the slow pulse of projection reveal something to one person and conceal it from another?"
The element of repetition, performance, and construction was present in several minor moments through the novella. One of my two favorites: pg 48, describing how when Jessica was little she would look at her father's lips to anticipate his words so that she could construct and synchronize their speech together, and would always be "looking, thinking, repeating, interpreting" like a performance. The other: pg. 69, Jessica talks about helping an elderly couple she volunteers for, and how they often lose stuff around the house, and they would all look for items together, "all three of them moving through the apartment talking, looking, trying to reconstruct," as if it were a performance that they were all watching.
This short and quick read has many other elements to dissect, including some theories of space, time, grief, loss, and of course the theory of the Onega Point, from which the title is derived. Overall I liked this little mystery think-piece and can't wait to read more of his meatier novels.
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Read this through quickly when it first came out -- thank you, Amazon pre-order -- and then again this past month, as I was fiddling with a short essay about an earlier book, Cosmopolis.
Point Omega can be read as the fourth book in a series of which Cosmopolis was the second: the four slender novellas that have followed DeLillo's sizable Underworld.
When I reread Point Omega, I did so slowly, though not quite at the pace suggested by the book, which opens and, in as near as one could get to a "spoiler" in a DeLillo novel, closes with a detailed consideration of Douglas Gordon's art work 24 Hour Psycho. In 24 Hour Psycho, the Hitchock film is slowed so that it takes 24 hours to watch in its entirety. Every moment, every eye opening, every sliver of light crawling across the floor, happens at a speed that is virtually nill.
The book tells two stories, three if you include those opening and closing sections. At first, it's the tale of a man who visits a reclusive thinker who'd played a strategic role in the second Iraq War, in the hopes of making a film of the man speaking. Then the thinker's daughter shows up, and when she suddenly disappears, the book becomes a consideration of her absence -- like a thriller shorn of any thrills, just the emptiness and fear, and the deeper emptiness that subsumes them when the girl and her disappearance become memories.
This isn't DeLillo at his best, though it is the first of the four novellas to end better than it begins (not including the framing 24 Hour Psycho sections).
Point Omega can be read as the fourth book in a series of which Cosmopolis was the second: the four slender novellas that have followed DeLillo's sizable Underworld.
When I reread Point Omega, I did so slowly, though not quite at the pace suggested by the book, which opens and, in as near as one could get to a "spoiler" in a DeLillo novel, closes with a detailed consideration of Douglas Gordon's art work 24 Hour Psycho. In 24 Hour Psycho, the Hitchock film is slowed so that it takes 24 hours to watch in its entirety. Every moment, every eye opening, every sliver of light crawling across the floor, happens at a speed that is virtually nill.
The book tells two stories, three if you include those opening and closing sections. At first, it's the tale of a man who visits a reclusive thinker who'd played a strategic role in the second Iraq War, in the hopes of making a film of the man speaking. Then the thinker's daughter shows up, and when she suddenly disappears, the book becomes a consideration of her absence -- like a thriller shorn of any thrills, just the emptiness and fear, and the deeper emptiness that subsumes them when the girl and her disappearance become memories.
This isn't DeLillo at his best, though it is the first of the four novellas to end better than it begins (not including the framing 24 Hour Psycho sections).