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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
At times brilliant but for me, too many characters presented in a confusing chronology. I jotted character names inside the back cover through 3/5s of the tome in an attempt to connect the dots but gave up when my patience ran out. I wanted to love it but found it more tedious than amazing in the end.
Not quite Pynchon level as some people say. Felt less of a compelling overall theme/set of strong ideas. But still really fun read, some amazing standout bits that have stuck with me, great set of characters too.
Read alongside playing God Of War 2 (PS3)
Read alongside playing God Of War 2 (PS3)
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
5 stars because this really is 5 books - and it could be 5 times longer. You live entire lives as you read it.
challenging
dark
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book called out to me. It’s one of the first things I remember buying in New York. At a sceney used book and record (what other kind of record is there) store in Dimes square. I stared at it, hardcover, above the shelf while I eavesdropped on two girls from Berlin talking to the cashier. The blue-grey, the Towers, the cross. The way dellillos full name bounces off the front of your palette. I bought it, and at a bar an older (40’s) man in a leather jacket said it was a quintessential American novel and that it gets lost at the end. I bought this book two more times and sold it once. My beat up paperback has hurt my spine, but I have to take it with me. The sorting and vibrations and hum and waves. I’ll take them with me.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have no doubt that DeLillo is a good writer, and that he has a lot of big ideas he wants to dive into. But most of these images only turn out to be flashes and pale imitations of great ideas other people have put before him, especially poetic ones like Pynchon with the bomb, or DFW with televised entertainment. I don't think there's anything original here, it never dives deep enough to fish for something that hasn't been caught before. And whilst I can enjoy the texture, feel the words breathing, or pulsing, or rotating so it catches the light, a gruffled voice reading a phonetically pleasing paragraph, spin and grit, tacturn, palpable; quite a lot of it are just word choices which make absolutely no sense when you really pick them apart. A lot of it is like that sentence, bascially. I'm sure it's all soothing when read aloud by an old man with a hoarse voice, but there's really a lot of waffle in the descriptions. For a systems novel (which I feel alright in calling it that), its sentimental heart – if it has one – is few and far between; maybe you see it once every hundred pages, because it's too obsessed with the exteriority of its aesthetic pull (especially poetically), than the interiority of what these characters want or are willing to express about themselves – and I definitely don't think it offers enough subtext to ask the reader to root for it themselves. A literary colossus? I think what you see is what you get. Good ideas, but rather shapeless.
Dropped it after about 345 pages. I don't know, if someone asked me what this book was about, I'd say a baseball, a ship full of shit (maybe?), and it's moving in reverse chronological order which isn't the least bit fun.
On a sentence level, the writing is stellar. It's. the only reason I really made it this far, but life's too short to dabble in the philosophical nature of waste. Too many POV shifts. Too many exchanges where two people aren't really talking to one another. Too much time spent on baseball in the beginning only to abandon it for the most part later.
Also, there's a new Karen Russell book sitting in my bag that I can't stop thinking about. Maybe it's not DeLillo's fault entirely.
On a sentence level, the writing is stellar. It's. the only reason I really made it this far, but life's too short to dabble in the philosophical nature of waste. Too many POV shifts. Too many exchanges where two people aren't really talking to one another. Too much time spent on baseball in the beginning only to abandon it for the most part later.
Also, there's a new Karen Russell book sitting in my bag that I can't stop thinking about. Maybe it's not DeLillo's fault entirely.
This 827-page BRICK of a book goes nowhere fast. Chracaters are piled-up, loosely connected, contradictory (=creative), scenes of garbage mixed-up with atomic threats (=sophisticated), their stories mostly uninteresting and pointless. I finished out of a sense of duty. And the last chapter is mildly redemptive (hence the 2 stars instead of one). Maybe it is time for me to move from highbrow endless boring to just easy-to-digest trash that doesn't pose as high literature...