/lit/ - Literature

>>20193164
Ironically, the one I find his most enjoyable and fulfilling so far to read — “Ratner’s Star” — centers around digressions into mathematics and has a sci-fi plot, about a brilliant young mathematician recruited to help decipher the apparent communications of an extraterrestrial civilization. I think this is a great commentary on modern literature — authors can become more profound and enjoyable when they’re willing to step out of their attention to realism, and use new genres as a means of crafting philosophical fiction. In this sense, I get more out of works like Philip K. Dick’s VALIS, for instance, than I ever would out of maybe DeLillo’s entire oeuvre, even though PKD has something “unrespectable” about him for being a sci-fi author, while DeLillo is very “highbrow” and highly regarded by academics and critics.

Anyone have any thoughts on DeLillo? Did I get filtered?

>>20193176
>>20193164
Not to be too snide, but it sounds like you are overly impressed by surface level complexity in literature and have little ear for subtlety. Most great literature, like all of the names you mentioned, functions at multiple levels; much of Delillo's works stay in the depths and within the individual sentences, and they actively push against surface-level understanding. This is what puts him in an entirely different camp from Updike, Bellow, or Roth, and I find it simply inconceivable that you could read Delillo into their midst. Personally, I feel Delillo does have a lot of undefinable somethings and there are only a few Delillo novels I've read and put down without immediately wanting to re-read it someday.

>>20193164
I totally agree with you. I read DeLillo's White Noise, which is a pretty fun deconstruction of American social and political life near the turn of the millenia, but I have since had no urge to re-read it. His characters really don't reach the depths of any of the artists you mention, and while he's stylistically accomplished, and not too philosophically shabby, I really can't get into any of his other material. I had to put down Mao II. Honestly, you could read Pynchon and get everything out of it that DeLillo could get you, with both focusing on the "system" and "noise." Sure, consider me "filtered," but I don't see how he makes a contribution worthy of the pedestal that I see so many writers put him on.

Good post OP.

Mao II was good

For me what makes Delillo one of the best writers is because of this stuff. He foregone the simple stuff to get down to the essence of what fiction is about: to communicate ideas and understanding. Delillo is primarily concerned with systems/institutions, such as language, and the sort of complex webs they manifest. What seems like simple postmodern topics in his work is really a deconstruction of systems themselves, and the way things in the world tend to organize themselves, and the strange interconnectedness of it all, from football and warfare to history and the idea of being documented from birth. Delillo is by nature an observer and an analyst. When I read him, I could care less about the usual constraints of fiction because he sees th for what they are: a vehicle for information.

That being said Libra is his best character work imo

>>20193432
Also to elaborate on this, I think if you go to Delillo solely for the pleasure of reading a novel, you should quit. For him, the analysis is the pleasure.

>>20193164
>a pleasure to read
fuck, isn't that enough

>>20193300
This is actually a more-than-valid critique — when coming up with authors like Bellow, Roth, and Updike, I actually had a moment of hesitation and was trying to find other authors to compare him to that would be better. In fact, you’re right in that the comparison I give doesn’t match up perfectly (he’s a very unique author, and I did actually enjoy reading him much more than the authors I compared him to), because the criticism I give applies to an even greater extent to those authors, with the caveat that they don’t even often particularly TRY to tackle those great philosophical themes DeLillo grapples with.

My humble rebuttal to this would be to compare great novels, poems, epics with mosaics — in which both the total image presented by the mosaic is compelling, as well as the individual shards, fragments of the mosaic being beautiful, as if they were themselves finely polished pieces of jewelry (the pieces of the mosaic being the sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph beauty of the style, then the paragraph-by-paragraph, page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter (or whatever demarcation they may or may not decide on) flow of the story itself, the philosophical and psychological depth, the dialogue, and the characters of the piece). The ideal novel would be sort of fractally great, with both the mosaic creating a compelling image and itself being made out of these compelling images — I have high standards, I admit.

But, to continue this very snobbish metaphor, I think it’s as if the total image created by the mosaic was itself nothing extremely compelling, but that the little fragments and pieces they were made of had so much work and polish put into them and themselves made interesting statements when observed more closely. Or, to put it in an even less roundabout fashion, like a painting the very subject and appearance of which doesn’t appeal to you much or make you think, but the brushstrokes of which are very delicately crafted. So my almost undefinable antipathy towards DeLillo, is that I appreciate how finely crafted it is, but don’t like the image presented by the mosaic enough to find it worth studying in more detail — I feel I certainly WOULD catch things I missed the first time and find greater depth in it, but the issue is: “Do I even want to? Was it great enough on the first read to compel this rereading?”

However, as a relatively immature young reader, it’s entirely possible I would come back to his works years later with an entirely different appraisal. Or maybe not. In the end, de gustibus non est disputandum is a cliche applicable here — and it’s a cliche for a reason.

>>20193300
t. midwit

aesthetics is all that matters

For me DeLillo is always almost good. I've never read something of his I had a good time with.
It's like a party with a bunch of people you kinda know from work and as the night progresses you come to find that they're each disappointingly boring in distinct but unpleasant ways.

>>20193438
>>20193437
These are also valid points and bring up a meta-literary discussion — literature as enjoyable vs. literature as profound and life-altering (the greatest works ideally having both). I think there’s a difference between the inexhaustibility of some writers I mention, versus the really aesthetically crafted but shallow jewels DeLillo creates. However, this may be from my own inclination (not everyone shares) towards philosophy, theology, the classics, and great religious and mythological texts — one which almost causes me to easily despise a lot of fiction simply because I find even something as apparently out-there as the Koran as a more satisfying spiritual experience to read (and that’s without even being a Muslim), than a modern American author’s perspective, as a rootless postmodern outsider to these traditions, on, for instance, subjects like Islamic terrorism (also touched on in Mao II). The aesthete in me loves him, the philosopher/theologian/mystic finds it lacking that ineffable, timeless resonance that apparently diverse figures as Shakespeare, Faulkner and Old Testament prophets alike variously seem to share.

>>20193457
Entertaining, much briefer summary of the same sense I get from him.

>>20193164
https://podbay.fm/p/death-is-just-around-the-corner/e/1546236000

interesting podcast about Mao II and it's politics, as well as delillo in general

>>20193441
>aesthetics is all that matters
Post again when you're old enough to buy a beer

>>20193164
>Delilo
More like Dedildo.