/lit/ - Literature

I was recently assigned this book in a twentieth century literature survey course.
DeLillo assigned alongside Faulkner, Hemingway, and Joyce.

>>11315804
Are you fucking kidding me m8 what the fuck

>>11315708
Thank you for saying it. I couldn't get past 1/3rd of this boring garbage. Easily one of the most overrated writers of his era. How he is mentioned in the same breath as McCarthy is beyond me.

>>11315848
>boring
sorry to hear your brain got fried by 4chan video games and porn

>>11315708
You're surprised "White Noise" isn't subtle?

>>11315854
Let me guess, it's supposed to be an artless slog with nothing insightful to say because it's a parody of our crazy evil consumerist decay, right?

>>11315848
I quite liked the first third. I just didn't like the rest of it.

>>11315880
>it’s the theme man! It’s supposed to be lazy!

>>11315708
I truly don't understand why this book triggers so many people here. Clearly it's not trying to be subtle but it's still a pretty funny take on consumer culture. Do people really not see the humor in it?

>/lit/ neckbeards can't get a grip of a book using irony.
its not the book, its just your autism. you absolute plebs.

>>11315931
>he's writing like shit ironically because our society is full of stupid-heads! he could write good if he wanted to! we live in a society

>>11315931
>this chef only serves turds but they’re supposed to taste like shit and that’s what makes it great

>>11315980
>>11315987
Except his prose is actually great.

>>11316018
Nah

>>11316018
There's more to writing than great prose that leads nowhere and says nothing new.

>>11316068
Except it did lead somewhere and did say something new.

You have to admit that part where Jack is chasing the other professor around campus was pretty funny. DeLillo is fantastic at writing dialog too.

>>11316212
man his dialogue is good as hell and i'm gonna defend this good book, not saying it's joyce tier, but it is good.

thinking it is a critique of consumer society and all that is someone saying i don't know what the i'm talking about. the setting is that, of course, but it isn't nearly as important of a theme in the book. it's all about death, in a funny way, sometimes insightful.

and his prose flows so very well, it is more comfy, than reading hectic pynchon or lyrical mccarthy. doesn't mena it's shit hough guys, cmon.

i don't understand the hate for this, especially since nobody here even finished it.
ib4 welcome to /lit

>>11315708
DeLillo is king of the midwits

>>11316018
t. 23 year old boomer

>>11316260
>especially since nobody here even finished it.
lmfao what in the world are you on about

>dude like, how can I say “it’s raining” if like, time is constantly moving and like, we are also moving so like I can’t describe the current moment since by the time I describe it we’ll be in the next moment lmao

>>11316260
>i don't understand the hate for this, especially since nobody here even finished it.

it's like 200 odd pages dude, get over yourself

>>11316289
i mean what's so bad about it? is too simple? seems like the people called ''midwits'' here, are people who can enjoy a different type of book than a quantum physics, insearchable historical refferences book, that can't be read without a guide.

>>11316303
>>11316289
so you finished it aight, what didn't you like?

>>11316328
Stomach-churning prose, smarmy, overbearing satire. Read like a rejected Simpsons episode. "Hurr durr it's supposed to be shitty man haven't you ever heard of S A T I R E man he can write good if he feels like it!" Pathetic. Nothing I hate more than didactic fiction.

lol at all the butthurts in this thread basically unwillingly identifying with the pseud and mama's boy oedipal protagonist in the book, projecting your hate on the author. you pathetic manbabys

>>11316260
>and his prose flows so very
It doesn't. You haven't even read Joyce if you think so.

>>11316356
so the big problem is the prose ... i didn't feel like it was shitty, certainly had a good rythm, kinda of monotone yeah, but it flowed well, and the since he was trying to avoid plots, why should anything be happening. is this the
>i read for the plot

>>11316373

>>11316380
that's all the response you? you basically just proved my point, you silly, spineless, lazy momma's boy.

>>11316377
"No!"

If you think DeLillo is a good prose stylist, clearly you aren't very well read.

>and the since he was trying to avoid plots, why should anything be happening. is this the
>i read for the plot

What the fuck are you even trying to say here? White Noise was so overbearing it might as well have been a lecture.

>>11316387

>>11316388
I felt like he was beating me over the head with his edgy postmodern philosophical pondering that he shamelessly dressed up as dialogue between characters. It was fucking cringe

>>11316394
he's SATIRIZING postmodernists and the college professor crowd in general. you completely missed the point, you dumb fuck.

>>11316412
>>11316356

>>11316388
i'm trying to say ... i feel like the problem you have, beside the fact that the prose is dry and didactical, which i'm not saying it's not, i'm it just doesn't seem like a problem to me, is the fact that the book is ''boring'', which might be the issue of the lack of plot.

>>11316412
What evidence is there that should lead me to believe this is the case?

>>11316394
well i'm not well read enough to find things in books, that probably aren't even there

>>11316412
i think, the goal of the book, is to depict a tired man afraid of death, fight me on this

>Why do so many people on 4chan misunderstand me even though I write about such common and everyday things?
>Is it because everyone here takes themselves to be an Enlightened scholar who can only appreciate the finest prose and have leather bound books (purchased from Amazon) pushed so far up their ass that they can't recognize a joke when they see one?

>>11316427
if you're going to respond to me...at least try to understand what i'm saying...I said the prose was "smarmy" and "overbearing", not "dry"...there's nothing dry about someone beating me over the head with words...I also don't seem to recall calling it "boring"...which it is, but not for lack of plot...

>>11315708
and please keep this civillized, i like discussing it ... i'd frankly rate high enough, even if it's a relaxing and easier book to digest.

and if the problem, that you point out, is in fact ''he was trying to satirize'', is underworld f.e. any better?

>>11316436
>What good is my truth? My truth means nothing. What if this guy with the gun comes from a planet in a whole different solar system? What we call rain he calls soap. What we call apples he calls rain. So what am I supposed to tell him?
Dude like lmao

>>11316448
Why should I have to suffer anything less than the best when it comes to the arts? I'm also getting real tired of writers using satire to mask their shortcomings.

>>11316454
it's smarmy here and there man ... overbearing okay i guess so, but why can't you just ignore that. but i'm trying to understand what makes you say, this book is just a small pile of shit.

>>11316472
so whaddaya read?

>>11316472
>Why should I have to suffer anything less than the best when it comes to the arts?

>>11316475
>why can't you just ignore that

If I'm going to ignore one of the defining characteristics of a work...I may as well just ignore everything...Why are you satisfied with mediocrity...Yeah man if you come across something you dislike...just ignore it dude...dont have a cow man...

>>11316433
>>11316441
read the chapter where the protagonist is supposed to hold a lecture about Hitler in front of a group of invited professors in the same ridiculous research field. the protagonist is a pseud and a cuck, a fraud, and is ultimately afraid of death, yes. its not didactic, and if it was, it would be read as a CRITIQUE of postmodernists and academia in general. read the book goddamnit

>>11316260

I agree with this anon - I figured the consumerism aspects were sort of an ornament to the theme of death, i.e. consumerism as a banal way of inoculating our fear of death.

So yeah, in defense of Delillo. I thought The Names and Mao II were his best, and Underworld too. White Noise is probably most widely read because of its lack of thematic subtlety, but Delillo isn't really ever one for subtlety.

I'm pretty surprised folks wouldn't think his prose isn't excellent though. I've always felt like he could write some incredible sentences.

>>11316515
okay i get your point ... i'm just a bit sad, it's so disliked, because i liked it very much. and i don't think it's beacuse of my brainlessness or lack of understanding art and incredible prose ... i just enjoyed it, particulairly the family stuff.

>>11316499

>>11315708
this is the greatest comedic novel of the 20th century, even confederacy of dunces doesn't come close

>>11316526
no need to feel sad man...it's okay to have your own opinions...just be ready to defend them...

>>11316518
thanks

>>11316472

>>11316533
i just tend to judge prose by how well it reads, not by how extremely artistic it can be

Can anyone post their favorite White Noise prose? I promise I won't just say it's shit. I just want to read a bit to contextualize and digest your opinions.

>>11315708

it's good, funny. murray was it? it's been so long

>>11316533
what would you then say, for example, about Bolano's translated english prose

just curious, not comparing the two

>>11316551
“The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.”

i guess this is what everybody's talking about

>>11316541
Not that anon, but thinking about Delillo, I think his prose is enjoyable and accessible compared to the other folks namechecked here (Joyce, Pynchon) because he doesn't put a lot of stress of knowledge on the reader. I mean, fuck Franzen's bullshit about Gaddis, but I need to do some in media res research to fully understand some of the other big guys' asides. Delillo doesn't require much to enjoy, and is still pretty darn beautiful, and I'd say artistic. He's just got a different palette.

I'm reading Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew right now, and it's pretty damn funny but the total opposite of what I'm describing. Some jokes beat you over the head, but others are more obscure than subtle.

>>11316566
agreed

>>11316566
>e is enjoyable and accessible compared to the other folks namechecked here (Joyce, Pynchon) because he doesn't put a lot of stress of knowledge on the reader. I mean, fuck Franzen's bullshit about Gaddis, but I need to do some in media res research to fully understand some of the other big guys' asides. Delillo doesn't require much to enjoy, and is still pretty darn beautiful, and I'd say artistic. He's just got a different palette.
autists at /lit/ need to namedrop their Finnigans Wake to feel intellectual superior, even though they understood 5% of it. any book containing irony (e.g White noise) goes completely over their head though, alas the hate.

>>11316566
I think it's best to attempt to synthesize the two. Of course, I think if you want to take the position that someone like Delilllo already has it would be readily defensible.
>>11316588
Why do you keep saying this? 4chan is essentially built on irony. Also, that's not what "alas" means, lad.

>>11316588
you sound bitter

>>11315708
thanks for the thread, gonna read Mao II probably, or Underworld

>>11316602
If by 'the two', you mean accessible prose and a healthy bout of references, then at risk of putting words in your and Delillo's mouths you want to read something explicitly different than what Delillo wants to write. Delillo gets mentioned with other 'postmodern' writers a lot but seems pretty different to me. Similar themes but very different toolbox to unearth them. Although your second sentence there seems like you think there is some of the, uh, referential aspects of postmodernism in his works? I've never seen it as a salient feature, what's your take on that? Any other folks, as opposed to Delillo, you think straddle that line well? If I've understood you, at least.

Perhaps he was just bemoaning the hate, haha.

>>11316551
>I sat up late thinking of Mr. Gray. Gray-bodied, staticky, unfinished. The picture wobbled and rolled, the edges of his body flared with random distortion. Lately I'd found myself thinking of him often. Sometimes as Mr. Gray the composite. Four or more grayish figures engaged in a pioneering work. Scientists, visionaries. Their wavy bodies passing through each other, mingling, blending, fusing. A little like extraterrestrials. Smarter than the rest of us, selfless, sexless, determined to engineer us out of our fear. But when the bodies fused I was left with a single figure, the project manager, a hazy gray seducer moving in ripples across a motel room. Bedward, plotward. I saw my wife reclining on her side, voluptuously rounded, the eternal waiting nude. I saw her as he did. Dependent, submissive, emotionally captive. I felt his mastery and control. The dominance of his position. He was taking over my mind, this man I'd never seen, this half image, the barest smidge of brainlight. His bleak hands enfolded a rose-white breast. How vivid and living it was, what a tactile delight, dusted with russet freckles about the tip. I experienced aural torment. Heard them in their purling foreplay, the love babble and buzzing flesh. Heard the sloppings and smackings, the swash of wet mouths, bedsprings sinking in. An interval of mumbled adjustments. Then gloom moved in around the gray-sheeted bed, a circle slowly closing. Panasonic.

>>11316565
I like this. Might have to check this book out actually. I've always avoided Delillo cuz I hate the names he's always lumped in with but this quote has me interested.

White Noise reads like what some midwit country doctor in love with his own voice would write if someone explained him what the big deal about this postmodernism thing is. I tried to pretend the "IT'S SATIRE BRAH" posters were right but Underworld reads exactly the fucking same. Delillo has the same problem as Larry David, he simply believe when people told him he is a very insightful man when most of the shit he comes up with are problems you're expected to deal with by the time you get to college, but since most of the (american) audience is completely retarded and laking self-awareness, any cunt with even a slight drop of self-awareness becomes the one-eyed king of the blind.

>>11316694
Uh oh. Think I spoke too soon: >>11316674

>>11316700

>>11316565
>>11316674

If these passages don't both nauseate you and make you laugh for all the wrong reasons, I'm sorry. You can tell he's really trying in these, and yet still failing in a spectacular way. Makes you feel bad for the guy more than anything. Sad.

David Foster Wallace LITERALLY said that DeLillo is better than Pynchon. In case we need any other excuse to put IJ in the trash.

>>11316869
He was just annoyed that people always compared him to the Pynch.

>>11316869
Both Delillo and DFW have the same problem. They're almost like perfect illustrations of looking at the trees and missing the forrest. They can detect and hyperanalyze any of the perceived ills of contemporary life, but their answers to these problems are just doing contemporary life but slightly more self aware. The same issue can be found on both kermit cultists and tumblr microidentitarian people. They think there's anything worth saving in what they also want to destroy, almost like decayed benjaminian revolutionaries, they want to save their own damnation.

>>11316987
So much this. Well said, anon.

Basically every Delillo book is just him making fun of his pseud characters. I can see that getting tiring but I think all the critiques in here are so off base. I mean somebody like >>11316700 is just so clearly criticizing the characters and mistaking that for critiquing the novel. I just don't get how people aren't seeing that.

>>11317002
Anon I think you made a mistake, you accidentally replied to yourself.

>>11317004
Merely pretending to be retarded barely qualifies as an excuse in 4chan my dude. As I've said, I tried to give you the benefit of doubt but in two of his books everyone sounds the same, even when he tries to write pure and earnest characters like the gay grafitty aids dudes in Underworld, it comes out as how Kyle's dad would sound in an episode in which he tries to write a postmodern doorstopper.

>>11316467
DeLillo is not the character. Only a pseud wouldn’t notice he’s satirizing this faux-profundity.

>>11317510
There is absolutely no context anywhere in the book to lead me or anyone else to believe that this was intended to be satirical

>>11317535
Almost every fucking character in the book is an idiot or weird in one way or another. I actually don’t like that either, but it’s obvious DeLillo is taking a satirical view towards his characters, not a particularly compassionate one.

>>11317543
>it’s obvious DeLillo is taking a satirical view towards his characters
It really isn't. Cruel, sure, but not satirical.

>>11317610
There's a professor who specializes in Elvis Studies you fucking dimwit.

>>11317617
That’s not that ridiculous Elvis had a major influence on American culture

Excellent dialogue, and very kafkaesque (in the real sense) type of humor.

>>11315804
He's their living equivalent. Worse, of course, but then again there's hardly a living Anglophone novelist who can be compared to those, only Pynchon perhaps, and probably all of your classmates have read their Lot 49 already.

>>11317617
>implying Elvis Studies wouldn't be by-and-large the most entertaining liberal arts degree.
Why?
Because it would be impossible to turn a class into talking about fagoos and self-hate

>>11317617
Not only this isn't something out of reality, I've seen Beatles courses for example, this is like watching Twin Peaks because everyone is lolsoweird x)
Once again, americans so in love with their own culture they don't realize it's shit.

>>11317667
True, kids nowadays have a lot to learn about Elvis. Even the Beatles, in the beginning at least, had a good moral sense.

I honestly think an Elvis class would be more important and intellectually stimulating than gender studies, and I'm among that 1% of the population that believes gender studies actually does have one or another important thing to teach.

>>11317617
Who also spends the whole day in the supermarket.

I really love the supermarket scenes. It's one of those things that are funny mostly because of how true they are. I've conquered smiles from lovely girls, full joy and deception, and I have come from being destroyed by the will of my father to turning myself into the king of my very own budgetary endeavors, all in the vast and imperishable realms of the SuperMarket, and yet almost no writer has ever dealt with such a rich and miscellaneous ecosystem.

>>11317689
Gender Studies is 99.9% common sense that you get from opening your eyes in public. Most of the people (women) who study it (ramble around the topic) do so because they expect to unveil some kind of superpower that they can use (spoiler: it's never their bodies, they're never attractive enough to use perhaps ironically the only superpower commonly afforded to their gender).

>>11317677
>watching Twin Peaks because everyone is lolsoweird x)

I pity people who actually do this. It's such a great show with many great nuances.

>>11315880
Bingo

bump for keks

>>11315708
Delillo? I knew that name, a long long time ago. I thought he was dead.