Don DeLillo

The set piece that opens Mao II perfectly establishes the tone of the novel: a huge crowd of people has gathered in the stands at Yankee Stadium to witness the mass wedding ceremony of 13,000 followers of the Korean cult leader, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. The estranged parents of one young woman search despondently to find their daughter on the field, but she is anonymous in the midst of thousands of identically dressed brides who are standing next to the identically dressed grooms they show more barely know. The crowd, it seems, has swallowed the individual as the betrothed couples symbolically pledge their allegiance to both the movement and their Moonie master.

More intense scenes of crowds follow in this book that is as much about ideas and images as it is about plot and story. Several people are crushed to death at a soccer game as a horde of gate-crashers push the capacity of the stadium past its limits. A million people gather in a great square in China beneath a portrait of Mao Zedong. A woman wanders through a New York City park that is overrun by a nameless, faceless throng of homeless people, trying to help in what little ways she can. Two individuals sit in the seclusion of an apartment and watch on television as hundreds of thousands mourn at the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini. As the author himself puts it: “The future belongs to crowds.”

The plot of Mao II embeds another of its provocative themes: how terrorists have supplanted the role of novelists to shock and capture the public’s collective imagination. Bill Gray is in self-imposed exile after his early success as a novelist made him a celebrated figure. Protected by a young assistant and his girlfriend—a deprogrammed Moonie—Gray has spent the last 23 years working on a new book that he may never finish. Two events bring him out of isolation: the arrival of photographer obsessed with capturing the images of famous writers and a request from his former editor to aid in freeing a poet who is being held hostage by radical Maoist revolutionaries in the Middle East. The protagonist’s increasing involvement in the rescue attempt, along with the juxtaposition between the hostage and Gray himself, is the story line that drives the narrative.

This novel was written right after White Noise and Libra and immediately before Underworld, which places it squarely in the middle of the most productive part of Don DeLillo’s lengthy and remarkable career. Although Mao II lacks some of the depth and complexity (and even some of the dark humor) of those other works, it is still a compelling piece of fiction that challenges the reader throughout. DeLillo is masterful when it comes to embedding captivating thoughts into taut, well-crafted sentences. He is also frequently prophetic. The terror motif that defines this work anticipated both the Oklahoma City bombing and September 11th by several years; in fact, his occasional descriptions of the twin towers are simply haunting. More than a quarter-century after its publication, this remains relevant story-telling. show less

There is an important reason why Underworld is written from future to past. The artist in the desert, painting a deactivated aircraft from the cold war times, is trying to process the past from a nation that is lost to time. Such an understanding must arise from the creation of meaning to fill in the gaps, as she does with the pin-up girl left as a souvenir in the B-52. What she tries to process is as much the story of a nation in the uncertain limbo between the ending of an era and the show more start of a new one, where things just do not seem real, as she remarks, as it is about herself, and a past that cannot be recalled, even if it made her as she is today, as well as the man who comes searching for it in her in 1992.

History can only be understood by walking backwards in time. What explains each scar is a story that is not told upright, but hidden in between every line. Underworld follows DeLillo's usual tropes of dialogue, where everything that's important is everything that is not mentioned. It's just not possible to understand the paranoia of nuclear threat, you have to live under it. Yet this is what we try, to make sense of everything that's happening. This is why the story is told backwards: the reason behind every event lies in something happening just before that. Underworld is a story about a nation just how it is about each one of its inhabitants.

That's why I find this book so incredibly dense and hard to read. Every part has enough content to be a standalone book, but every line is meaningless if not attached to a before and after. Such complex relationships are multisided, revealing something that does not concern only those immediately involved. That's why Nick Shay is allowed to hold the ball from the shot heard round the world, and to claim it is a symbol of defeat. show less

A thoughtful, engaging, relevant book.

"Mao II" (1991), by Don DeLillo (b. 1936), is the story of Bill Gray, a reclusive novelist. He lives off royalties, supporting Scott, a live-in secretary, and Karen, a young woman with whom both men have a comfortable relationship.

Bill is a recluse, supposedly working on a new book, but never appears in public or contacts anyone. Scott is his household helper, but also cajoles him when he gets lazy. Karen is a credulous and sensitive person who was a show more Moonie in the past, and finds individual life difficult.

Bill's agent tells him he has been asked to meet a terrorist group in Beirut, which has taken a hostage. He is to read a statement of support, at a London press conference, and the hostage will be released. He goes to London, but after some difficulties, steals away to Cyprus, unbeknownst to his agent, or to Scott and Karen. He accompanies a sympathizer of the Maoist group, hoping to meet the leader himself, perhaps in Beirut.

Will he make it to Beirut? Will he return to America? Will he meet the terrorists? Will he free the hostage, or will he be taken hostage himself? The book will answer these questions eventually, but more interesting are the deeper challenges DeLillo poses.

The book makes much of Chairman Mao throughout. In London and Cyprus, Bill converses at length with the terror group's sympathizer, arguing over the nature of terrorism, socialism, totalitarianism, and other such matters. The book discusses such organizations as the Shining Path, such world leaders as Khomeini (who died in 1989), and such events as the Tiananmen Square massacres (which occured in 1989).

DeLillo seems to ask, what makes a leader? What makes a follower? Why is Karen so credulous? Will she get caught by another cult? Is Scott a leader, perhaps a frustrated one? Why is Bill interested in these matters? Why is a terrorist leader interested in him? Does Bill remain an outsider just so he won't get inadvertently influenced by society's inevitable groupings?

Like a contemporary artist, DeLillo doesn't provide a didactic guide, but a curious exploration. He studies crowd behavior and credulity, as well as those (always men?) who manipulate others, or perhaps only superficially attempt it. Most remarkable that he addressed an issue in 1989 which is so relevant today, post-9/11, and did so before Saddam Hussein, another manipulator, became such a household name. It reminds us that history progresses from one manipulative despot to another.

DeLillo remains artistically neutral, but seems to have more sympathy for freedom and individuality than for group behavior of any sort, even though he understands the reasons for it. Readers may decide for themselves.

The prose is lively. The dialog is interesting and idiomatic, if awkward at times, but most often clever. The tone is hustling and bustling, scrambled and chaotic, and contrasted with the literary seclusion of the countryside. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys contemporary American fiction, or wants to reflect on the nature of crowd behavior, manipulative leaders, or terrorism. It will engage curious readers, and provoke you to thought. show less

definitely too long but what else are you going to do with something that insanely ambitious? it takes stamina to even think about something like this, much less write it down. maybe cut the Lenny Bruce parts out because I cannot care about that guy ever. but holy moly. so much of it was so intense. Nick frightens me and I understand why this is Jughead's book. There is something also very known to me about this book? Or about Nick, that kind of drives me crazy. The writing was intense, as show more always, but it was such a different texture with Underworld than Libra, or White Noise. other people have described Underworld as being funny, but maybe because of what I'm living through right now, without the even pretend gloss of the end of the Cold War, America in the 90s, it's hard to find anything funny, and everything terrifying. I bet Jughead sees himself as Nick and thats scary because I see myself as Nick too. show less