Don DeLilo: anybody read him?

[Hornius Emeritus]

Okay, I've read All the Pretty Horses, Suttree, Blood Meridian etc...

I have been thinking for the last few years that, in terms of the seriousness of his intent and his utterly perfect control, Cormac McCarthy is the greatest American novelist. Up there with Faulkner, I've been thinking.

However, I have to say that I am about 100 pages into Don Delilo's novel "Underworld" and I am about to revisit that opinion. This novel is kicking my *** six ways to Sunday. The prelude, about the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers-New York Giants playoff game in which Bobby Thomson hit "The Shot Heard 'Round the World," may be the single most evocative piece of writing about sports that I've ever read.

Every sentence is an immaculate jewel. You read a paragraph and then you reread it immediately again and you nod in agreement with each word. Yes, it is exactly like that, you think to yourself.

You BATHE in this novel.

 

[LHB_SOB]

one of the top American writers alive today, but I still like Cormac better.

 

[l00p]

I have not but from your post I sure want to and likely will. Thanks.

 

[Hornius Emeritus]

The New York Times did a survery of a couple hundred editors, authors etc... of what is the best fiction of the last 25 years.

The Link


1) Beloved by Toni Morrison

2) Underworld by Don Delillo

3) Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthey

4) The four Rabbit novels by John Updike

5) American Pastoral by Phillip Roth


Also receiving numerous votes: Confederacy of Dunces, McCarthy's Border Trilogy etc...

Also, I just read that the Harry Ransom Center purchased Delillo's letters, manuscripts etc... in 2004.

 

[CanaTigers]

Haven't read DeLilo. Cormac is my favorite all time author. The best sports book I have read in a long time is Jim Dent's "Twelve Mighty Orphans".

 

[59Raider]

I read White Noise for a contemporary American lit class that I took up at Tech and since then I have been a big fan of his. Haven't read Underworld yet though.

 

[BattleshipTexas]

The first 100 pages of Underworld are best. I know people who loved it at 100 pages and dropped the book between pages 300 and 500. There is virtually no editing, this 800 page book should be 400 pages. The guy slips back and forth between first and third person at will. One guy said it was 821 pages of character development and one page of plot. The author tries way too hard to be Faulkner. He isn't. Not in Cormac McCarthy's class. DeLillo's novels are overly stylized and intellectually shallow. Bruce Bawer said DeLillo's novels weren't really novels at all but "tracts, designed to batter us, again and again, with the single idea that life in America today is boring, benumbing, dehumanized". Sandbox existentialism is a good name for it.

 

[Hornius Emeritus]

Well I'm still engrossed at page 305, Battleship Texas.

I'll let you know if I fall off my Don Delillo soapbox.

 

[OweYou]

I agree with Battleship....I started Underworld probably 3 times and finally got through it, but each time my interest waned after the first third of the book. Granted I read it years ago but the only images I have from the book were of the beginning baseball game and that area with all the planes right after.

I did consider buying his 9/11 book at the airport the other day but that was mainly due to my hypothesis that he would be better off writing something more concise versus getting lost in a much broader story.

I don't think he compares to Cormac but that's just my opinion.

 

[texas_ex2000]

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