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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
This book is an interesting piece of experimental fiction. It's about race relations, baseball, fame, pop culture, art, and two families through time. Alas, however, it goes on for too long and meanders a lot, and I just wasn't attached enough to complete it.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Very ambitious in scope but I think it went on for too long and the meandering wasn't interesting enough to me so it felt monotonous in many places. There was nothing particularly bad that I disliked but also nothing that made me have an aha! moment. A lot of it felt like slightly dated newspaper reports. The writing was quite good but I didn't connect enough to enjoy a book of this length. The characters all felt flat and in the end, I came away feeling tired and disconnected.
A decent one-time read. I preferred White Noise by the same author. Much more readable than the other American postmodern authors (Pynchon, Gaddis, Gass) I have read.
A decent one-time read. I preferred White Noise by the same author. Much more readable than the other American postmodern authors (Pynchon, Gaddis, Gass) I have read.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
"You have a history," she said, "that you are responsible to."
"What do you mean by responsible to?"
"You're responsible to it. You're answerable. You're required to try to make sense of it. You owe it your complete attention." (512)
A remarkable novel and a breathtaking experience. DeLillo is a master wordsmith who always seems to have exactly the right word, the right phrasing, the right...je ne sais quois, but the way he captures the granular density of everyday experience, his thoughtful reflection that calls to attention the real but hard to pin down thoughts and feelings which surround us daily... It's uncanny. DeLillo shifts fluidly between scenes, and like oil and water things briefly intermingle before separating into distinct, unmixed wholes. Lingering on the small scraps of everyday experience, DeLillo exhorts us see them for more than what they are. To breathe purpose into them, to fan an ember of life here and there, to build a stronger flame with limited fuel.
"We took junk and saved it for art. Which sounds nobler than it was. It was just a way of looking at something more carefully. And I'm still doing it, only deeper maybe." (393)
The thing that strains credibility is that everyone is extremely clever, or wise, or profound. The book exalts common things by making them anew, reimagined, exaggerated in gracious caricaciture, stylized. It gives things meaning, and DeLillo is so sure and so sage-seeming that I want to believe him. Imagine walking around just knowing, knowing in your very soul, that things have meaning. That things have significance, importance, and purpose. DeLillo seems confident, but I've got my doubts.
"Reality doesn't happen until you analyze the dots." (182)
This is the story of America, the story of hidden histories, the story of the lives we lead and the parallels we don't, the story of the stories we tell ourselves. It's about growing up, growing old, looking back, wondering what it's all been about in the end.
"You feel sorry for yourself. You think you're missing something and you don't know what it is. You're lonely inside your life." (170)
This is the story of a nation in sudden shocking freefall, a land of myths now turning historyless, where every tale we tell crackles with new significance because it is we who tell it.
"That particular life. Under the surface of ordinary things. And organized so that it makes more sense in a way, if you understand what I mean. It makes more sense than the horseshit life the rest of us live." (761)
This is the story of absent fathers, the greedy and selfish who set wheels in motion then depart, and the story of those left behind and the ways they try to make some meaning of it all.
This goddamn country has garbage you can eat, garbage that's better to eat than the food on the table in other countries. (767)
This is the story of things we do, and the trash we leave behind.
A strew of lost and found and miscellaneous things that were stored here not for future use but because they had to go somewhere. (769)
5 stars. A book of haunting melancholy, pregnant with meaning and full of emotion.