Americana

A book about youthful angst. Once one moves on from youthful angst, it can be tiresome to read about it, but there is still an artfulness in the way that Don DeLillo talks about it that can be appreciated.
Some traces:
"Few things are more depressing than the sight of a drunken friend who happens to be twice your age; so many illusions are tested." 53
"His facts were often shaky but his convictions were deep and abiding." 51
"It was the perfect sleep but never quite descended. It filled the hall above us and waited at the frontier of every mind. We desired this sleep because we were twenty years old and already beginning to learn that there was no such thing as invincibility. We wished to take what was left of our courage and hope, and show more retire it to a dream. Beauty was too difficult and truth in the West had died with Crazy Horse; a lifetime of small defeats was waiting. We knew this, and we knew that sleep was the only industry in life that did not diminish one's possibilities." 175
"The Collier woman and I stood by the fireplace drinking. I assumed a clubby slouch...I had trouble picking up the words. Soon he started laughing and I knew the joke was over. We both stood there laughing. Henry looked right into my face, searching for genuine appreciation, wanting to be sure I understood the point of the story. I kept nodding and laughing. When he was satisfied he went away...There was a terrible silence then which mad me nervous and I found myself asking her if she knew by any chance how the Yankees had made out in the second game." 189
"I had expected to enjoy it greatly, her greed and tongue and the dredgings of her fantasy. But she had climbed into bed like an old shoemaker and I found myself overburdened with parts - hers, mine, the dream's - and she did not seem to distinguish between what was authentic and what was ugly and brutal." 261
"I couldn't help suspecting that I had manufactured the whole thing, my need for him, simply to avoid what I considered to be the alternatives. This is one of my very annoying traits. I can't sit back and let something grow of its own momentum and eventually reveal its truth or horror. I must probe from the outset...There must be a limit to the need to defeat boredom. In defeating it, I may have gone beyond the limit." 279 show less

Fa l'effetto di un lavoro preparatorio se letto con in mente Underworld, ma è comunque un'ottima prova per essere un'opera prima (e potrebbe essere un'opera matura per molti altri scrittori). È disomogeneo (la prima parte scorre compatta come una sorta di Easton Ellis sulla business life dieci anni prima di American Psycho, la seconda si dilata in rivoli narrativi provenienti dal passato) e a tratti inconcludente (l'indefinito profilo del protagonista), ma regala istantanee ("americane", per l'appunto) che restano impresse nella mente. La scrittura è già grande (e la traduzione Einaudi all'altezza).

Oh fuck yes. So so good. A few years back I tried to read White Noise but it just didn't take and I gave up a chapter in, thinking DeLillo was just going to be one of those authors that wasn't for jezzaboogie. Well, I was wrong. I freakin loved this book. I love the main character (forget his name, ha ha) and love his "ego" moments. Especially loved the scene where he is filming in the carpark and the actor guy drives by with his girlfriend, stops, comes and check out what's going on, and while sitting on the bench the main character (forget his name) has a very drawn out, beauitfully detailed and described "ego moment"; rubbing up softly, discretly and surely with the actor guy's girlfriend. It's brilliant.

I loved this the most:

One show more day I was trying to get around an old man who kept drifting toward the curb and blocking my path and suddenly I found myself shouting at him in my own head, shouting inwardly and silently: LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! I never actually spoke the words. I just shouted them mentally. I began to do that all the time. LOOK OUT, I would say to people. MOVE ! MOVE! And I could see the words in my head in big block letters like in a cartoon. Then one day a woman slowed down suddenly and I almost crashed into her. I found myself shouting a new new word in my head: DIE! If I had said it aloud she probably would have died. It was really a hideous inner scream and I could see the word in my head in red letters with a big exclamation point. I began to realize I was abnormal. I was person who walked alng the stree metally DIE at innocent people. After several months of this I tried to make a conscious effort to stop shouting the word. But it was too late. It just popped into my head automatically. DIE! DIE! I'll tell you the kind of person I was. I was the kind of person who's always falling in love with the wives of his best friends.

Fucking cracked me up big time.

One criticism would be that the main character(forget his name)'s character is (perhaps) a teeny weeny bit ill-defined and flismy. When I think of him, he is a different guy at the start of the book that he is at the end. Although, that might be the whole fucking point of the book, who knows (and due to travelling disruptions I did basically read this book over two disjoint weeks seperated by two conjoined weeks.) show less

Is like an alien world to me, can't tell how authentic the Americana in this is. Impressive in its ability to keep me reading despite being narrated by a pretentious jerk.

Don Delillo's first novel is less a novel than snippets of a long conversation. It sort of runs like a videotape that is put on fast forward ten minutes for every five minutes you're allowed to watch. This storytelling approach is appropriate since that is essentialy what the novel is.

David Bell is living the American dream. At twenty-eight, he is a highly influential television executive. He is handsome and popular. He is divorced, but he and his wife are still very close and probably better friends now than they were when married. But despite all tht is right, there is something in David's ideology that is very damaging to those around him. Ultimately, this ideology is damaging to himself as well.

An assignment to travel to Arizona show more and film interviews with Navaho natives turns into a nightmare that he cannot wake from when he decides instead to film an autobiographical piece in all of the small towns he passes through. The novel reads like it might be the segments he has chosen not to film: long conversations with friends and strangers, midnight ramblings from radio hacks, recollections that don't seem to have much depth until you compare how vastly normal they are to the craziness around us.

This is not Delillo's best, but neither I suspect is it his worst. Well-written, without an unoriginal line to be had anywhere, but this novel, in the end, really turns out to be nothing more than yet another existential angst piece. show less

I think I was hoping to discover in DeLillo a novelist new to me who wd make an enormous impression. I remember enjoying this - but that's about as far as it went. Still, it's better than any novel I'm ever likely to write.

ma che storie sono 'sta letteratura nord americana? Maledetti obbligati, intellettualismi fasulli on the road, infanzie disperate di nulla... forse sarà colpa del kindle che mi distrae nella lettura, ma 'sto libro che sembrava iniziato con slancio si è perso per le strade del mondo.