Don DeLillo
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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.
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.
other_life
bioconfused
shoulda gave this man a muppets show episode
version
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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.
www.clereviewofbooks.com
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.
Terminal Lucidity: Ways of Seeing and Thinking About Don DeLillo’s Late Style — Cleveland Review of Books
How different these internal resonances are from how DeLillo is regularly discussed.
www.clereviewofbooks.com
kid charlemagne
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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
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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.
kid charlemagne
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The work was all the more dangerous for not being new. There's no more danger in the new.
kid charlemagne
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Nothing existed around him. There was only noise in his head, the mind in time. When he died he would not end. The world would end.
kid charlemagne
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"why do we still have airports? why are they called airports"
"i know i cant answer these questions without losing your respect"
this book hilarious so far
"i know i cant answer these questions without losing your respect"
this book hilarious so far
kid charlemagne
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World is supposed to mean something that's self-contained. But nothing is self-contained. Everything enters something else. My small days spill into the light-years. This is why I can only pretend to be someone.And this is why I felt derived at first, working on these pages. I didn'tknow if it was me that was writing so much as someone i want to sound like.
kid charlemagne
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The bank towers loomed just beyond the avenue. They were covert structures for all their size, hard to see, so common and monotonic, tall sheer, abstract, with standard setbacks, and block-long, and interchangeable, and he had to concentrate to see them.
They looked empty from here. He liked that idea. They were made to be the last tall things, made empty, designed to hasten the future. They were the end of the outside world. They weren't here, exactly. They were in the future, a time beyond geography and touchable money and the people who stack and count it.
They looked empty from here. He liked that idea. They were made to be the last tall things, made empty, designed to hasten the future. They were the end of the outside world. They weren't here, exactly. They were in the future, a time beyond geography and touchable money and the people who stack and count it.
kid charlemagne
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kid used to think he was wise to the system
Prince of the street always do things his way
But he had a case of conventional wisdom
Never say nothing the others don't say
The young breakdancer who invites the peril of the street, his arrests and beatings, the panhandling dances of the subway platforms, his shame in verse, women shiny in tights, unaffordable, and then the moment of disclosure.
Thread of dawn that wakes the East
To the cry of souls unfolding
His embrace of Sufi tradition, the strugglee to become another kind of panhandler, a beggar for rhymes, singing his anti-matter rap (as he called it) and learning languages and customs that seemed natural to him, not sealed in mystery and forgiveness, a blessing embedded in the skin.
O God O Man living high at last
Sucking the titmilk of prayer and fast
Wealth, honor in a hundred countries, armored cars, and body guards, shiny women, yes, again, everywhere now, another blessing of the flesh, women veiled and blue jeaned, clutching the bedposts, painted women and plain, and he sang a little sorrowfully of this and of the voice in a visionary dream that spoke to him of a failing heart.
Man gave me the news in a slanted room
And it felt like a sliver of icy truth
Felt my sad-ass soul flying out of my mouth
My gold tooth splitting down to the root
There were twenty dervishes in the street and they were the archetype, perhaps, the early and sacred model, maybe of the posse of breakdancers, only rightside-up. And Fez's final words couldfind no beauty in dying young.
Let me be who I was
Unrhymed fool
That's lost but living
Prince of the street always do things his way
But he had a case of conventional wisdom
Never say nothing the others don't say
The young breakdancer who invites the peril of the street, his arrests and beatings, the panhandling dances of the subway platforms, his shame in verse, women shiny in tights, unaffordable, and then the moment of disclosure.
Thread of dawn that wakes the East
To the cry of souls unfolding
His embrace of Sufi tradition, the strugglee to become another kind of panhandler, a beggar for rhymes, singing his anti-matter rap (as he called it) and learning languages and customs that seemed natural to him, not sealed in mystery and forgiveness, a blessing embedded in the skin.
O God O Man living high at last
Sucking the titmilk of prayer and fast
Wealth, honor in a hundred countries, armored cars, and body guards, shiny women, yes, again, everywhere now, another blessing of the flesh, women veiled and blue jeaned, clutching the bedposts, painted women and plain, and he sang a little sorrowfully of this and of the voice in a visionary dream that spoke to him of a failing heart.
Man gave me the news in a slanted room
And it felt like a sliver of icy truth
Felt my sad-ass soul flying out of my mouth
My gold tooth splitting down to the root
There were twenty dervishes in the street and they were the archetype, perhaps, the early and sacred model, maybe of the posse of breakdancers, only rightside-up. And Fez's final words couldfind no beauty in dying young.
Let me be who I was
Unrhymed fool
That's lost but living
kid charlemagne
Well-known member
rip Brotha Fez, Delillo's rap alias
kid charlemagne
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How much was she worth?
The number surprised him. The total in U.S. dollars was seven hundred and thirty-five million. The number seemed puny, a lottery jackpot shared by seventeen postal workers. The words sounded puny and tinny and he tried to be ashamed on her behalf. But it was all air anyway. It was air that flows from the mouth when words are spoken. It was lines of code that interact in simulated space.
How do you get this information?
It comes to you, this stuff just flies through the air, they send this information "beamed" out over the fucking place, you just got to know how to grab it, see, I know how to grab it.
The number surprised him. The total in U.S. dollars was seven hundred and thirty-five million. The number seemed puny, a lottery jackpot shared by seventeen postal workers. The words sounded puny and tinny and he tried to be ashamed on her behalf. But it was all air anyway. It was air that flows from the mouth when words are spoken. It was lines of code that interact in simulated space.
How do you get this information?
It comes to you, this stuff just flies through the air, they send this information "beamed" out over the fucking place, you just got to know how to grab it, see, I know how to grab it.
luka
Well-known member
And hes made it all sound like Paul Simon
kid charlemagne
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I finished the book the other day…. Best delillo I’ve read besides Libra tbh…. Watched the film after and loved it, Pattinson is perfect for that empty faced high class Wall Street billionaire,
kid charlemagne
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version
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Here's a good essay on it now you've read the book.
Foes of God | The Point Magazine
It wouldn’t be absurd to describe Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis as the most prescient American novel of the last fifteen years.
thepointmag.com