/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12996499]

Underworld or Libra?

[Anonymous No.12996508]

>>12996499
much like woody allen, I prefer his earlier, funnier stuff

[Anonymous No.12996511]

delillo is reddit trash

[Anonymous No.12996524]

>>12996511
Pleb detected

[Anonymous No.12996533]

>>12996508
Like End Zone and Running Dog? That's some great stuff

[Anonymous No.12996665]

>>12996511
God you people ruin this board. You are on a Literary Board. Explain exactly why you don’t like him Pleb.

[Anonymous No.12996677]

>>12996533
Ratner's Star too

[Anonymous No.12996707]

>>12996499
Did anyone read his novella “The Body Artist”? It was a very unusual read.

The way Mr Toad speaks is very disorienting. And you don’t know how much of it’s real and how much is in the woman’s head (Can’t remember her name. Karen maybe?) . You don’t even know if the autistic the woman found living in the house is real or just a delusion.

It’s short but I really like the main character. I found her very relatable. Very Isolated and mentally disturbed but able to function normally in society.

[Anonymous No.12996779]

>>12996707
Yeah, I did. At first I did't like it but after finishing I thought it's quite good. Not among his best but good for a novella

[Anonymous No.12997134]

>>12996499
Underworld.

Libra was done better by James Ellroy in American Tabloid.

[Anonymous No.12997151]

>>12996779
Did you think the guy she found in her house was real or just in her head? It kind of through me when she was doing the performance and it was just her but she was talking like he talked. But I don’t know because it also said earlier that she found an uncle or whatever who said he was always running away.

[Anonymous No.12997154]

>>12996499
cosmopolis unironically

[Anonymous No.12997379]

>>12997154
Easily his second or third worst novel (still decent though)

[Anonymous No.12997394]

>>12997151
I thought he's just a part of her imagination, it's how she dealt with the loss for sure, despite this he definitely seemed pretty real while I was reading it

[Anonymous No.12997566]

>>12996499
I prefer Underworld over Libra.

[Anonymous No.12997935]

>>12997379
i think my passive understanding of forex, high frequency trading, capital, and strange sympathy for affluent people that engage in self destructive behavior in attempts to rid themselves of confines that come with extreme wealth is why I like cosmopolis the most. the character of benno levin is also one of the most tragic i've come across in modern lit. what didn't you like about it?

[Anonymous No.12997965]

>>12997935
It just seemed pretty simplistic compared to his other novels, also the movie kinda improved it in some ways

[Anonymous No.12998008]

>>12997965
i've also read mao, libra, underworld and white noise. i'm not the biggest delillo fan but cosmopolis appealed to me for the reasons in the previous post. i also enjoyed mao but that probably has more to do with my interest in the jfk conspiracy than his delillo's writing. which of his lesser known works do you recommend I try next? the synopsis to zero k sounds interesting.

[Anonymous No.12998045]

Great Jones Street was a terrific satire, The Names was totally out there, and Point Omega was a work of perfection.

White Noise and Mao II were tepid and boring. Libra and Underworld I picked up but didn't finish.

I wanna read Americana though.

[Anonymous No.12998054]

>>12998008
You should check out his early stuff, specifically End Zone, Running Dog, Players, Great Jones Street, Ratner's Star. It's pretty underrated I think.

[Anonymous No.12998284]

I finished Underworld but even right up to the end I kept expecting more from it
He would occasionally pick up interesting characters and I'd go wow what kinda cool shit is gonna happen with this guy, but I got all the way to the last page and realized the answer was absolutely nothing
It was so disheartening that I haven't picked up any other DeLillo since

[Anonymous No.12998310]

>>12998284
what didn't you like about the book? Did you expect something with the plot? Dat ending tho

[Anonymous No.12998477]

>>12998310
The ending didn't seem as wild as I was expecting it to get. I thought a lot more was going to happen with the graffiti artists and the nuns.
You go into the end knowing protag did something horrendously bad, and the reveal of what it is didn't have nearly as much punch as DeLillo seemed to intend for it. As a doorstopper, seeing the boring middleclass life go on for 800 pages before seeing why he had extra sadness on top of the usual boring middleclass life sadness didn't really move me.

[Anonymous No.12998722]

>>12997134
libra works as a nice companion piece to American Tabloid, Ellroy barely touches on Lee Harvey Oswald, American Tabloid is more about the American FBI events that lead to Kennedys death

[Anonymous No.12999548]

>>12997154
Based

[Anonymous No.12999604]

>>12996665
explain why you capitalize pleb quadslet

[Anonymous No.13000677]

>>12996499
DeLillo is basically a less talented version of DFW. The acclaim his books receive results from a combination of masochism, cowardice, and pathetic obscurantist gatekeeping.

There's literally no reason to read DeLillo until you have, at least, exhausted the catalogues of Pynchon, Gaddis, Gass, McCarthy, and DFW. Hell, throw in Auster -- when you realize you hate reading Auster, just imagine what he would be like if he were a lazier writer. That's DeLillo.

[Anonymous No.13000815]

>>13000677
Wait, I liked Auster, he was at least a fun read. If he dragged his novellas from The New York Trilogy out to doorstoppers like the other pomo lads it would probably be grating but he didn't.

[Anonymous No.13001035]

>>12996779
>good for a novella
Novellas are the greatest length for literature though

[Anonymous No.13001182]

>>13000677
Completely wrong. Also your criticism is kinda dumb
>read x, y, z and not a, b, c becsuse they are superior