Don DeLillo: American Author Challenge

"Don DeLillo an American dramatist, essayist and author was born on 20th November 1936 in an Italian American neighborhood at Bronx, New York. He had little contact with literature until he was 18, when he describes being carried away by the power and beauty of language. He is the author of 15 novels, including "Underworld," "Falling Man," "White Noise," and "Libra." His postmodernist works portray an America consumed by material excess and stupefied by empty mass culture and politics.
He currently lives in Bronxville, NY, with his wife."

**This is part of our American Author Challenge 2016. This author will be read in December. The general discussion thread can be found right here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/209611

Well folks, this is our last author of the year and he is another author, I have wanted to read more of but just never got around to. I thought I had read a couple of his but it looks like the only one I have read is Libra. Sad, I know.

I hope to read 2 of his, for this month, starting with Zero K. I also hope to bookhorn in White Noise. We will see.

What does everyone else have lined up?

I'll be giving Falling Man a try. This is not an author I have been excited to read, so we'll see how it goes...

I have never read DeLillo, and don't have a clue what to expect from him. When the 2016 challenge was set up, I owned a copy of Underworld, and nothing else. It is of intimidating size, especially as an introduction to a new author. Since then, I have picked up used copies of Libra and White Noise. I will try to work one of those in in December.

I think I'm going to pass on Dellilo simply because I have so many books in the reading pile I want to read soonish. He's well worth the time for those who haven't read him though.

I've read three of DeLillo's most notable books--White Noise, Underworld, and Libra--as well as End Zone. I'm going to read Falling Man and The Body Artist, both of which I've been saving for a year, to read on just this occasion.

I haven't been doing well this year with the AAC but I think I own a copy of Underworld. Hope springs eternal so maybe I'll get to it in December.

I haven't been doing too well with the AAC, either, and I am not sure that I will manage any DeLillo. But if I do manage to pick something up, what do you all think is the best to start with?

I've never read Don DeLillo but have long wanted to do so. I have White Noise on the TBR shelves (I might have another, as well, but I know I have that one). I have been pathetic as an AAC participant this year so I will try to go out on a positive note -- momentum for next year!

>9 banjo123: I am not familiar enough with him to make a suggestion, Rhonda. Hopefully someone else can answer that.

I found Mao II on 1001 Books (You Must Read Before You Die)--there actually are several, but this one grabbed my attention. So I plan to read it, hopefully in December. :)

Can't wait to see next year's list! I've enjoyed reading the AAC this year. Thank you so much, Mark, for hosting it!

Karen O.

>9 banjo123: 9> I suggest starting with Libra, which is about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of JFK. Or The Body Artist, which is 130 pages or so.

I am with Karen O next month - it will be Mao II for me too.

I'm going with The Body Artist because it's short. That's how December is looking for me. Lol

>14 PaulCranswick: Yay, Paul! We'll have to find a spot for Mao II on the Take It or Leave It list.

So far I'm quite enjoying White Noise. I also found a copy of Mao II on my TBR shelves this morning. I'm not sure I'll read both of them this month but it's nice to have options.

>13 weird_O: Oh, Libra sounds perfect, I am right now reading Caro's Passage of Power

I LOVE DON DELILLO
That is all
:)

>19 LovingLit: Megan, do you have to be so wishy washy in expressing yourself? :-)

With trepidation, I checked Zero K out of the library. I loved, loved, loved Libra and hated, hated, hated White Noise. We'll see what happens with this one.

I'm reading Zero K, my first DeLillo. It's well written, but I can't tell yet whether I'm going to like it.

Have started Libra...too soon to tell, really, but I think I'm going to enjoy it.

I finished White Noise. Finally. Here are my comments from my thread:

This novel is both brilliant and torturously dull. Postmodern and satiric (though lightly satiric compared with, say, Paul Beatty's The Sellout), it is an exploration of consumerism and the universal human fear of death. First, there is a somewhat nebulous toxic event, after which Jack Gladney, a college professor specializing in the study of Hitler (from what perspective? we never know), learns that he has experienced exposure likely to result in his death. How soon? Well, you know. He will die. That's really the point. Next, Jack determines to learn about a medication that his (fourth) wife appears to be taking, a medication that shows up in no medical index and about which no medical doctor admits to knowing anything. I'll stop there to avoid spoilers but I will say that the novel has some prophetic aspects that are almost scary 25+ years after its first publication. It also has some delightful moments. Its treatment of modern Americans' efforts to numb our fear of death is brilliant. And reading it, especially the last third or so, was almost as painful as having my fingernails removed slowly and without anesthetic.

>24 EBT1002: Ouch! I think I'm glad to have chosen Libra over White Noise. And just maybe I'll donate the latter back to the library sale without subjecting myself to that torture. It doesn't sound quite like the experience would be worth it to me. Thanks for taking that bullet, Ellen!

>24 EBT1002: both brilliant and torturously dull fits Zero K so far, too. I'm a third of the way through, and will stick with it.

>Well, I tell you what. I'm 100 pages into Libra and I'm not impressed. Do not care for his style at all, and am finding it hard to follow. A lot of the time I feel like I'm listening to people "talk shop" when I'm not part of the crew. I'll give it the rest of my reading time this evening, and if I don't feel differently about it by then, I'll move on to something else tomorrow.

>25 laytonwoman3rd: Happy to take one for the team, Linda. I am indeed glad to have read it if only because I have long wanted to read DeLillo. And I was glad to set it aside and move onto my next read!

I chose to read The Body Artist. Wow this was a weird book. I abandoned it about 75% of the way through, so I'm counting it, but I didn't like it at all. Maybe in another time or place I'd find something to it. Some of the interjections about birds were neat. So glad others are enjoying it, and also glad I'm not the only one who is feeling "out of the loop".

Zero K by Don DeLillo 3.2 stars

“We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?”

Jeffrey Lockhart is summoned by his billionaire father, to a compound, (somewhere in Russia),where his ailing mother is living her last days. This is a place where an individual can choose their moment of death and then they are preserved in a cryogenic state.
I really wanted to like this novel more. DeLillo is such a craftsman and the premise here is very interesting. His writing is smart and agile, but he also rambles into territory that left my eyes glazed and my mind cloudy. Maybe, my brain is unable to untangle his various forays and tangents, so I will have to leave it to bigger intellects. Hey, I heard James Patterson has a new book out...

Well, it looks like many of us are striking out with DeLillo. Of course, I always hope to pick an author, that we could all appreciate but you just never know, in our little bookish world...

I prefer not picking all "safe" authors, this is a Challenge after all. (still convincing myself...)

I am going to still give White Noise a try, later in the month, but it will be on a short leash.

The good news, Mark, is that if we all dislike DD, then we can cross him off our TBR lists. I have Libra cued to read soon, and at least, at this point, my expectations are low.

In all fairness, I must now allow that I have continued with Libra, and am enjoying it to a certain degree. I am still finding certain sections a bit difficult; the story is told from various perspectives, and when the CIA agents or contacts are the focus, it is (as I suppose one might expect) hard to know exactly what they are up to. DeLillo's imagining of Oswald, his mother and his wife strike me as quite brilliant, though. I find it best not to try to read this book when I'm tired, or when I can't devote full attention to it for an hour or so at a time. That certainly should not be viewed as a criticism of a literary work, so maybe if I had realized that earlier, I would have "taken to" the book sooner.

I've just started Mao II and I really like it. I am new to DeLillo, but I think he could be one of my go-tos (maybe I should wait for a few more chapters). He's ceratinly got a gift with the words.

Karen O.

>33 laytonwoman3rd: I found that if I kept reading that I could maintain momentum with Libra. And that ultimately it paid off, considering the length of that one!

The Body Artist I found perplexing too, Jen. (>29 nittnut:)

White Noise is one of my favourite all time books ☺ I kinda like it being boring, I think that was what I found funny about it. Call me crazy, as it looks like I am bucking the trend on this thread!

>35 LovingLit: Yes, the momentum was crucial. I've finished it now, and rated it 4 stars. But that doesn't mean I loved it! I do think it's a remarkable literary achievement. My full review is on my thread.

I finished The Body Artist several days ago, and found it mystifying, perplexing, kind of brain invasive. In brief, a married couple have retreated to an isolated house very near the coast, near NYC. Lauren and Rey have breakfast, punctuated by cryptic conversation. Rey leaves. Hours later, his body is found in his first wife's apartment. A suicide. Afterwards, Lauren remains at the house, alone and uncommunicative. She believes she hears sounds in the house, like rodents in the walls or attic, and after several days, she discovers a stranger boy-man in one of the house's unused bedrooms. The novel describes her interactions with the guy, who, though he's inarticulate in a child-like way, often seems to be channeling Rey and maybe even Lauren herself.

Is the boy-man real?

I called it brain invasive because the tale has kept me pondering it. It's a mind puzzle. To paraphase Tom Waits: "What's he writing in there?"

I'm calling it quits on Falling Man. I'm just not in the mood and given what others have said about his style and other works, I'm pretty sure I won't end up liking it anyway... Since I attempted the book, I do feel like I should get to maintain my purist status, though!

I wanted to finish the AAC but finding a DeLillo to round up the year's reading was hard. The subjects of his novels didn't speak to me. I found a novella, Pafko at the Wall, which is an extract from Underworld. This short work gave me a taste of DeLillo's writing, which is dense and descriptive, shifting from scene to scene without warning. It was good but I don't know if I could read a novel length book written in this style.

Mine was Zero K; rated it a 2.

>33 laytonwoman3rd: I just finished Libra and had similar thoughts. Here is my (very quick) review:

Libra by Don Delillo

I liked parts of this book, and the writing is top-notch. However, I seem to have trouble lately with alternate history. Sometimes, as in this case, I don't know history well enough to know where reality ends and alternate history begins. And that confuses me. So for this book, I liked the chapters about Lee Harvey Oswald, but the conspiracy theory chapters were hard to follow.

>41 banjo123: I think the conspiracy theory stuff was probably intentionally vague and hard to follow, just as it remains in the real world....vexing, perplexing and intriguing all at once. That's one of the reasons I rate the book highly, because I think DeLillo did a masterful job of preserving the mystery while seeming to let us in on some of the inside stuff.