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/lit/ - Literature

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14433962 No.14433962 [Reply] [Original]

I feel like it just goes in circles. The narrator is saying the same thing over and over again. Does something interesting happen? Or is it the same stuff for 800 pages? He said that he works in waste managment and their family separates thrash and that he has a device he puts in his hip when he goes running that tells him how many kilometers he has run and how many calories he has burned.
I read Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest, but man this juset feels boring. It's not funny or witty or emotional. It feels hollow...

>> No.14435071

The literal only thing I've ever heard about this book is that it's super boring for almost the whole thing, and then the ending is insanely good or something. So keep reading I guess. I like DeLillo's writing in general though, based on White Noise and Mao II.

>> No.14435092

>>14435071
I really liked White Noise, but wasn't sure about his other stuff, is it worth trying out, like Mao II?

>> No.14435093

>>14435071
Mao II and Libra are my favorites of his. White Noise is a fine campus novel, though it didn't particularly stand out to me within that subgenre. Underworld I started reading a few times but never finished.

>> No.14435118

>>14433962
>I feel like it just goes in circles. The narrator is saying the same thing over and over again. Does something interesting happen?
What DeLillo book is OP describing? No cheating by looking at the picture.

>> No.14435170

>>14433962
Keep reading, because there is no one consistent narrator. I mean did you even read the first part?
My other piece of advice would be to not expect anything driven strongly by characterization. There are memorable characters but with this book, and Delillo in general, the ensemble (and location) is most important. You might just dislike his style though. Did you start with something shorter like Americana or Mao II?

>> No.14435178

>>14435092
Mao II is a bit stylistically distinct from White Noise, but it's still very good. It's also pretty short so you don't really have much to lose if you read it and decide it's not great.

>> No.14435184

>>14435170
I read White Noise before. I liked it. The subtles hints of Paranoia here and there were quite nice.

>> No.14435203

>>14435118
m-my diary desu

>> No.14435242

Some brilliant and beautiful passages tacked onto an unbelievably boring and overlong novel where nothing happens. There were definitely pages that made me feel a whole range of emotions, but when I finished it I was just very disappointed in how everything had been left.
All of the other giant pomo memes are better. Even DFW.

>> No.14435535

>>14435178
Thanks.

>> No.14435579

>>14433962
Underworld was the first DeLillo I read that I actually liked, and in part for the reasons you described, but I discovered I like cold fiction with flat characters.

>> No.14435667

The first chapter about the baseball game and the kinetic energy where it’s just building and building and building was the closest to kino in literature I’ve ever experienced

>> No.14435693

It's my least favorite Delillo book, and I generally find Delillo to be a very inconsistent writer. Mao 2 is a masterpiece and Cosmopolis was also impressive. Underworld and White Noise have some thing going for them but as wholes they are cold and mechanical.

>> No.14436695

I never get why people call Underworld “cold.” Because it doesn’t have someone like an Ishmael or an Ahab at its center? It’s a very human novel