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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
I have read recipes that have more excitement than this book. I'm would rather stuff used socks up my nose and show up to interview for the job of my dreams than read this book again. The authors computer should undergo an exorcism for taking part in this garbage. When I win the lottery I am buying goodreads for the sole purpose of allowing ratings of zero stars due to this book.
This book is so engaging I've read it twice. I describe it as a history of the United States from 1950 to present. Beautiful, crystal-clear language, so much so that sentences stick out in my mind, ("you have to cut the bread thick"; when you see something beautiful, don't linger, but "love it, trust it, and leave.").DeLillo's finest.
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Sono stato combattuto tra il dargli una sufficienza e il bocciarlo, questo libro.
Gli aspetti positivi del libro sono sicuramente la prosa (e non scopro niente, qui) e certe sue parti, quando una rapida alternanza dei punti di vista comunque in qualche modo collegati tra loro dà l'idea di una trama che si annidi nel testo, e dona un bel caleidoscopio di istantanee di vite.
Il problema a mio avviso è tutto il resto.
La trama che a essere generosi è labile e impalpabile, più bella nella quarta di copertina che non nella sua esecuzione; l'altra trama, quella del protagonista, che perde presto interesse.
Tante storie e tante scene che alla fine durano troppo e risultano pesanti, noiose.
Una mescolanza di cose interessanti e cose noiose, ma alla fine il sentimento che ha prevalso per quanto mi riguarda durante la lettura è stata la noia, la stanchezza, l'attesa spasmodica di arrivare alla fine di un libro che solo a tratti mi ha catturato e che non mi ha mai preso realmente.
Peccato.
Gli aspetti positivi del libro sono sicuramente la prosa (e non scopro niente, qui) e certe sue parti, quando una rapida alternanza dei punti di vista comunque in qualche modo collegati tra loro dà l'idea di una trama che si annidi nel testo, e dona un bel caleidoscopio di istantanee di vite.
Il problema a mio avviso è tutto il resto.
La trama che a essere generosi è labile e impalpabile, più bella nella quarta di copertina che non nella sua esecuzione; l'altra trama, quella del protagonista, che perde presto interesse.
Tante storie e tante scene che alla fine durano troppo e risultano pesanti, noiose.
Una mescolanza di cose interessanti e cose noiose, ma alla fine il sentimento che ha prevalso per quanto mi riguarda durante la lettura è stata la noia, la stanchezza, l'attesa spasmodica di arrivare alla fine di un libro che solo a tratti mi ha catturato e che non mi ha mai preso realmente.
Peccato.
I could imagine this monster being 200 pages shorter, and still having everything it needs to give. Give it a whirl, but only if you've got the time.
The start of this book is brilliant, and I enjoyed probably the first half it. It's main problem is that despite having interesting themes and ideas, it is much much too long.
I was relieved to finish it. It was thoroughly boring me by the end and it just peters out, there's no big payoff at the end that makes it worth slogging through.
I recommend reading this book, there's some good stuff in it, but once you get to the point where you're losing interest, just stop. You're not going to miss anything except being bored.
I was relieved to finish it. It was thoroughly boring me by the end and it just peters out, there's no big payoff at the end that makes it worth slogging through.
I recommend reading this book, there's some good stuff in it, but once you get to the point where you're losing interest, just stop. You're not going to miss anything except being bored.
I first started this book just before I arrived on campus for my freshman year of college. I had probably read 50-60 pages before I got to campus, but, as I'm sure is the case for a lot of people, once classes began and I began to actually be present on campus, I didn't read much for pleasure, and this book ended up taking me most of the school year to finish. The reason this is relevant is because I thought this was why I didn't like this book when I first read it. And I think it's solid reasoning. Taking forever to finish a book, especially a long one with lots of characters that takes place in different time periods, can make it difficult, if not impossible to engage with the greater story and its ideas. The experience of reading a book like this over the course of 8 months ends up being a protracted tour of disconnected chapters about characters you vaguely remember -- a very different experience of the book than if you read it in 2 weeks. So yeah, anyway, that's why I wanted to re-visit this. I had finished all the chapters in the past, but they were read as such distant snippets that I felt I hadn't really read the book at all.
Turns out this book is actually just really boring, and that even if I read this in 2 days I would still not like it. I made it about 350 pages this time, but I had to call it there, else I fell into a coma while reading. For a book with the kind of golden reputation as this one, with the blurbs on the front hailing it as "a wolf whistle of our half century" that "contains multitudes" (thanks for that, Mike Ondaatje), to be this dull...I just don't understand. There are good parts for sure, cause DeLillo can obviously write -- White Noise is a testament to that -- but yeah, on the whole, it's just boring, and DeLillo's prose, with a few exceptions, feels so lifeless. It's like he's trying really hard to be super meditative and deep all the time, and some of the time it does work, but on the whole, the writing-only-in-reverent-tones vibe becomes frustrating and ultimately so so boring. It's like every line ends in a deep, world-weary sigh. And it just gets so tiresome. Also DeLillo is hilariously obsessed with bringing sex into his prose in weird ways. Here's a great example that I marked: "I used to sit in the living room and listen fitfully through the urgent sexual throb of the dishwasher." He's talking about listening to his wife and mother talk about his father (who left when he was young) in the other room, by the way. What is sexual about that? Urgent sexual throb of the dishwasher. What the fuck does that even mean. I mean guess I can kind of see what he means, but why describe it that way? More than anything this line just made me laugh, and I really don't think that was Don's intention.
Anyway, this is a deeply boring book. Nick Shay is the most boring main character I've ever read. The dialogue is so annoying, so artificially realistic. So yeah. Not good. The Prologue is really good though. He should have just released it as a short story and called it there, moved on to something else. I should shoot him an e-mail.
Turns out this book is actually just really boring, and that even if I read this in 2 days I would still not like it. I made it about 350 pages this time, but I had to call it there, else I fell into a coma while reading. For a book with the kind of golden reputation as this one, with the blurbs on the front hailing it as "a wolf whistle of our half century" that "contains multitudes" (thanks for that, Mike Ondaatje), to be this dull...I just don't understand. There are good parts for sure, cause DeLillo can obviously write -- White Noise is a testament to that -- but yeah, on the whole, it's just boring, and DeLillo's prose, with a few exceptions, feels so lifeless. It's like he's trying really hard to be super meditative and deep all the time, and some of the time it does work, but on the whole, the writing-only-in-reverent-tones vibe becomes frustrating and ultimately so so boring. It's like every line ends in a deep, world-weary sigh. And it just gets so tiresome. Also DeLillo is hilariously obsessed with bringing sex into his prose in weird ways. Here's a great example that I marked: "I used to sit in the living room and listen fitfully through the urgent sexual throb of the dishwasher." He's talking about listening to his wife and mother talk about his father (who left when he was young) in the other room, by the way. What is sexual about that? Urgent sexual throb of the dishwasher. What the fuck does that even mean. I mean guess I can kind of see what he means, but why describe it that way? More than anything this line just made me laugh, and I really don't think that was Don's intention.
Anyway, this is a deeply boring book. Nick Shay is the most boring main character I've ever read. The dialogue is so annoying, so artificially realistic. So yeah. Not good. The Prologue is really good though. He should have just released it as a short story and called it there, moved on to something else. I should shoot him an e-mail.
“5-starness” drifts in and out of Underworld, mostly out for me.
The parts of the book that feel alive are the shorter scenes ( but they’re so short they feel underdeveloped and untapped) about betrayal and infidelity, actually lend to more to the motivations of the characters and the tracing of history that the structure’s set out to reveal, than the larger chunkier parts do.
It’s mostly the second half (excluding the epilogue) that’s just too baggy and just not tight and justified enough to be there. It’s also the second half of the book that’s characterized by a sense of sentimentality that’s kind of a new thing for me in his work. DeLillo usually avoids the sentimental, but here, he doesn’t seem to hold back, especially the parts about the Bronx. And of course he’s earned this, but do the pages do it justice? Not for me. Nope.
Now, you don’t go to DeLillo for the characters and he’s not a character-oriented writer and that’s OK and it doesn’t matter in his case because he’s usually getting at a bigger, macro picture: but when he’s trying too hard the meandering parts don’t come across as gorgeous descriptions or as revealing character portraits or as striking vignettes—it just all seems like a raw blend of digressions and dry character dossiers and descriptions that don’t have much gravity. It's just too fragmented.
And especially when the book is 800 pages long and when the tone (for a good chunk of the book) is loose and free and meandering and when it’s not doing much for the characters anyway or doing more-than-necessary for the themes, I can’t help but wonder whether the style, content, and length of the book complement each other at all. The book could be cut by 200 pages and still be Underworld.
But you don’t go to him for the characters: you go to him for his sentences and his eerie observations. And there are a lot of great ones here, he deals with themes he’s dabbled with in the past: technology, terror caught on video, media, garbage, and privacy.
And let’s not forget that mind-bendingly brilliant prologue. Those 60 pages are so cinematically vivid it makes you feel as if you’re in the stadium, seated, surrounded by the murmur of the crowd, having a bite of your sandwich and a little bit of chit-chat with your buddy during the not-so-eventful parts of the game, and are stuck in real time and what matters is the game and whatever the result turns out to be, you know you’ll walk away with something heavy.
I wish I could feel what I felt reading those first 60 pages for the rest of the book. Or at least for half of it.
The parts of the book that feel alive are the shorter scenes ( but they’re so short they feel underdeveloped and untapped) about betrayal and infidelity, actually lend to more to the motivations of the characters and the tracing of history that the structure’s set out to reveal, than the larger chunkier parts do.
It’s mostly the second half (excluding the epilogue) that’s just too baggy and just not tight and justified enough to be there. It’s also the second half of the book that’s characterized by a sense of sentimentality that’s kind of a new thing for me in his work. DeLillo usually avoids the sentimental, but here, he doesn’t seem to hold back, especially the parts about the Bronx. And of course he’s earned this, but do the pages do it justice? Not for me. Nope.
Now, you don’t go to DeLillo for the characters and he’s not a character-oriented writer and that’s OK and it doesn’t matter in his case because he’s usually getting at a bigger, macro picture: but when he’s trying too hard the meandering parts don’t come across as gorgeous descriptions or as revealing character portraits or as striking vignettes—it just all seems like a raw blend of digressions and dry character dossiers and descriptions that don’t have much gravity. It's just too fragmented.
And especially when the book is 800 pages long and when the tone (for a good chunk of the book) is loose and free and meandering and when it’s not doing much for the characters anyway or doing more-than-necessary for the themes, I can’t help but wonder whether the style, content, and length of the book complement each other at all. The book could be cut by 200 pages and still be Underworld.
But you don’t go to him for the characters: you go to him for his sentences and his eerie observations. And there are a lot of great ones here, he deals with themes he’s dabbled with in the past: technology, terror caught on video, media, garbage, and privacy.
And let’s not forget that mind-bendingly brilliant prologue. Those 60 pages are so cinematically vivid it makes you feel as if you’re in the stadium, seated, surrounded by the murmur of the crowd, having a bite of your sandwich and a little bit of chit-chat with your buddy during the not-so-eventful parts of the game, and are stuck in real time and what matters is the game and whatever the result turns out to be, you know you’ll walk away with something heavy.
I wish I could feel what I felt reading those first 60 pages for the rest of the book. Or at least for half of it.