Don DeLillo

william kent

Well-known member
Whoever said postmodernism in literature was just sticking lists in books could point to this as a prime example, reads like Don was up to his neck in what Ballard termed "invisible literatures,". One character's rattling off terms related to nuclear war, another's doing the same for finance, and I'm sure there's more to come.

Years ago I read David Foster Wallace saying the people accusing him of being too heavily influenced by Pynchon were missing that it was really DeLillo he was borrowing from. At the time, I thought he was just saying that because he had such a complex about the former, but reading this it's blatantly obvious where the tennis academy in Infinite Jest came from.
 

william kent

Well-known member
Some of this article's pretty good when the author's actually discussing DeLillo and not doing that irritating thing of trying to weave autobiography into their criticism, but the opening line's hilarious...

An image. I am nineteen and finishing Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel Underworld on Alden Library’s main floor and can barely see the last paragraphs through tears.

 

kid charlemagne

Well-known member
Half way thru The Falling Man... excellent work and staple on post 9/11 consciousness in new york. also an interesting look on the islam and muslim state and mindset in "opposition" to certain events, maybe not opposition but attitudes in their own circumstances, by a new yorker. a prescient text of uncertainty. i am glad i am reading his work again
 

kid charlemagne

Well-known member
Shots stroked anonymously, baskets rendered by footprints in the air. An almost predetermined outcome in their movements, the economic posturing, the deviated passing that took the orange rock from one life to another. Maybe the spectators see Greek symposium set in the violence of a colosseum. They see figures dashing, back, forth, line to line, with vigor in their stone faced eyes. Sleeves, wristbands, man in high socks, kid draining in sweat. He escapes his flooded context through the pursuit of the brazened nets. Those watching don’t know the players. They only know the faces. This is where they find hope and institution, in the nameless faces, pacing and peddling, from end to end. Such response and fervor is found in the suspecting eyes, words hailed in wrath, lust, desire, lost motion and immobile language.
 
Top