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19705885 No.19705885 [Reply] [Original]

Rank the novels you've read by Don DeLillo

>> No.19705894

Libra
White Noise
Mao II

>> No.19705903

>>19705885
1. Mao II
2. Underworld
3. Ratner's Star

He's my favorite Chicano writer.

>> No.19705968

>>19705903
He's italian

>> No.19705972

>>19705885
The problem with DeLillo is that he is not very good at thinking yet always aims for a novel of ideas. Compare him for example with Houellebecq who makes precise observations about the world. Meanwhile DeLillo in an interview about the Iraq war:
>I'm almost prepared to believe that the secret drive behind our eagerness to enter this war, is technology itself -- that it has a will to be realized.
>We're using our technological imperative in order to win a struggle that concerns the past and the future. This is not something that's at all overt, but I think the element exists at some level of our exertions against terrorists and the Iraq situation as well. We want to live in the future.
Excactly these kinds of statements without substance can be found in any of his novels.

>> No.19705979
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19705979

>>19705968
Nah, he's American and a Chicano at that. His cousin is James Olmos, another Chicano.

>> No.19705981

>White Noise - 1/10

>> No.19705984

>>19705972
It's quite telling that what you consider a good novelist of ideas to be some modern coomer pandering to his base, and not someone like Conrad or Melville.

>> No.19705985

Underworld
White Noise
Libra
Cosmopolis
Zero K
Falling Man
The Silence

>> No.19705991

>>19705984
Neither Conrad nor Melville are novelists of ideas.

>> No.19706001

>>19705991
See this is where you're retarded and clearly out of your depth.

How are Pierre and Under Western Eyes not novels of ideas, yet modern coomer nonsense like Houellebecq is. Lord Jim is entirely a monologue of a guy philosophizing, even The Secret Agent the characters are vessels for his ideas. Confidence Man is a Platonic dialogue on a boat.

>> No.19706006

Great tier:
The Names
Mao II
Underworld
Running Dog
Players
Libra
White Noise
>Good tier:
Great Jones Street
End Zone
Cosmopolis
Zero K
Body Artist

>> No.19706026

>>19705984
I didn't say that Houellebecq is good at it. I just said he makes observations and theories that you might disagree with, but they are generally preice and meaningful. With DeLillo it's mostly just empty rhetorics, like the example I posted. He can write great sentences, scenes, funny dialogue. But as an intellectual he is somewhat of a failure.

>> No.19706035

>>19706026
Yeah I just was being an asshole kek. Your post was good too, I agreed.

>> No.19706177
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19706177

Underworld
Libra
White Noise
Mao II
(The Angel Esmeralda)
Point Omega
The Names
End Zone
Running Dog
Zero K
Cosmopolis
The Silence
Great Jones Street
Ratner's Star
The Body Artist
Falling Man
Players
Americana

I think all of his novels are at least good.

>> No.19706186

>>19706035
Yeah, that's right, sit down and submit to your superior. You miserable little dog.

>> No.19706192

>>19706026
>but they are generally preice and meaningful.
Then how is he not good at it?

>> No.19706211

I've only read White Noise and Great Jones Street, I liked White Noise a good bit more. Looking to read Ratner's Star, Running Dog, and The Names before going for Libra, Mao II, and Underworld.

>> No.19706227

I only read The Silence and I stopped after a few chapters. IDK if it's a bad novel of him, but it felt entirely too modern. I don't want to read about iphones, the super bowl, and people speaking in modern normie dialogue.

>>19706192
Because they're about modern coomers probably. It's very directly related to a certain sense of issues with little abstraction.

>> No.19706277

>>19706227
>Delillo dialogue
>modern normie
have you ever interacted with a person?

>> No.19706311

>>19706277
What? Why would I want to read accurate conversations with people at work or in my life. The Silence felt like quips from a nagging wife or normies at a party, just dreadful stuff. I'll read Shakespeare instead.

>> No.19706359

>>19705984
>>19706001
Incorrect. Stop trying to act clever when you're not.

>> No.19706393

>>19706359
Why am I 'incorrect'?

>> No.19706457

>>19706393
Because you are dumb and fat. DeLillo is great compared to your Lovercraft shit.

>> No.19706467

>>19706457
What the fuck are you talking about.

>> No.19706473

>>19706467
Shut up fatso.

>> No.19706492

>>19706473
Musil is better than Conrad too. Do you even like Delilo or are you just bored.

>> No.19706615

>>19706311
No one on earth talks like Delillo dialogue. That has been one of the main gripes from critics his entire career: that his dialogue is highly artificial and intellectualized. This is patently obvious. So I think that if you're not shitposting and actually think Delillo's dialogue in The Silence accurately reflects normie conversation then you don't get out much or have a highly warped sense of observation and normality in speech. Sorry.

>> No.19706620

>>19706615
There was nothing intellectual about the dialogue in The Silence. Have you not read it?

>> No.19706621

Libra
Underworld
Mao II
White Noise
End Zone

>> No.19706640

>>19705885
White Noise
Underworld

>> No.19706641

>>19705885
1. Ratner's Star
2. The Names
3. White Noise
4. Underworld
5. Libra
6. End Zone
7. Cosmopolis
8. Players
9. Mao II
10. Point Omega
11. The Body Artist
12. Point Omega
13. The Silence
14. Americana
15. Zero K (his only novel that is an outright piece of shit. one of the worst novels ever written, probably.)

>> No.19706652

>>19706641
Jesus, I like the idea of going this in depth with a more-recent novelist, but I don't find deLilo fun enough to read this many. The only one I'd consider is Bellow, but what other modern American/English writers do you like? Roth? Pynchon?

>> No.19706666

>>19706641
>Zero K (his only novel that is an outright piece of shit. one of the worst novels ever written, probably.)
lol, never finished it

>> No.19706670

>>19706652
Roth is mediocre from what I've read. Don't bother with him at all aside from Sabbath's Theater; American Pastoral, The Counter Life, The Human Stain, and Portnoy's Complaint are completely unremarkable. Bellow is also mediocre. Pynchon is one of the greatest, no doubt about that. All of his novels are great except his two most recent ones. As far as modern or contemporary American writers go I would say:
William Gaddis
William Gass
John Hawkes
William Vollmann
Barry Hannah
John Barth
Joseph McElroy
Gilbert Sorrentino
Rober Coover
Gary Lutz
are all worth reading at least their best works.

>> No.19706678

>>19706670
>William Gaddis
>William Gass
>John Hawkes
>William Vollmann
>Barry Hannah
>John Barth
>Joseph McElroy
>Gilbert Sorrentino
>Rober Coover
>Gary Lutz
Thanks a lot

>> No.19706679

>>19706620
I have. Here is a random line of dialogue from page 20: "The money is always there, the point spread, the bet itself. But consciously I recognize a split. Whatever happens on the field I have the point spread secured in mind but not the bet itself."
"Intellectualized" is not a claim about the quality or insight of a line of dialogue but about its tone, manner, and structure and about how it differs from unprocessed and direct speech that you hear in everyday life. It's just a description of a style of writing, not a judgement. That line is glaringly intellectualized in all of these respects including the syntax and verbalization of reasoning. he character says how he intellectually sorts through information and observes an ironic "split" within it and his thinking of it. I really don't see how you can read that line and think that's "normie dialogue." People don't talk like that.
Don't tell me you're the same anon who was bitching about Delillo not being good at "thinking" kek.

>> No.19706694

>>19706679
I literally said I only read a few chapters of The Silence.

Alright maybe normie isn't the right word, but it seems like a line from a Hollywood movie.

>> No.19706695

>>19706666
>never finished it
well you made a good choice, i forced myself to finish it and deeply regret every minute spent on that dreadful shit. the "Artis Martineau" section is one of the most embarrassing things I have ever read.

>> No.19706704

>>19706694
>but it seems like a line from a Hollywood movie.
You're just dumb my man. Give up.

>> No.19706721

>>19706694
>it seems like a line from a Hollywood movie
if we're going to think along these lines, I'd have to say it certainly beats sounding like a (translated) Russian or French soap opera.

>> No.19706727

>>19706704
>>19706721
I FUCKING HATE DELILLO STOP SHILLING HIM ALREADY JESUS CHRIST HE HASN'T WRITTEN A GOOD SENTENCE IN HIS LIFE. STOP SHILLING HIM I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU

>> No.19706729

>>19706721
I don’t read either of those, it’s worse than translated German though

>> No.19706733
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19706733

>>19706006
>The Names
based pick, anon

>> No.19706774

I always felt like DeLillo's prose and dialogue had a strange quality to it, like stilted and unrealistic, but not without a consistent logic, and it gives a very peculiar tone to his works, which I think works well in something like Zero K and Cosmopolis, but I never even finished Underworld. I thought White Noise was the best novel of his that I've read, followed by Mao II, but god I am so sick of fucking books about writer's writing books.

>> No.19706775

He's completely humorless which would be fine if he didn't think he was so funny. I imagine DeLillo writes all his "novels" one-handed while stroking little DeLillo with the other. Completely full of himself, has nothing to say and says it anyways. I have no idea where the critical acclaim is coming from, usually there's some redeeming quality even to bad books which get praised. I want to beat him over the head with a can of tuna.

>> No.19706860
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19706860

Libra is obviously the superior novel

>> No.19706921

I have never managed to get into DeLillo, I started both Libra and White Noise, something about his writing feels artificial and detached from the world, I just can't get into it. It is like a technical manual written by an engineer who intimately knows the machine as only the one who designed it could, but never actually ran the machine, many like it which performed the same function, just not the one he designed.

>> No.19706944

>>19705885
>Libra
>Underworld
>Mao II
>White Noise

>> No.19706954

>>19705985
What was the problem with the silence and for that matter most of his post 2000 novels? Has his ability to write just gone with age?

>> No.19707003

>>19705885
White noise

>> No.19707677

He wasn't a postmodernist

>> No.19708699

>>19705979
Wikipedia mentions no relation.

>> No.19708737

>>19706774
you might like it maomao knowing IT'S ABOUT PINECONE, basically

>>19706641
you're the one i trust although no valparasio also WHERE IS YR GREAT JONES STREET but the ranking is solid enough, i mean i guess.

funny how no one pulls good scenes. like the sex-art collector's secret room, or fear & terror/ terror & fear, or the beach house discovery, the helicopter landing in the desert finding that dude who's been there forever with cats or the greek islands or PEACE

but yeah, i believe... i WANT to believe.

Happy Happy Commune comin; atcha

>> No.19708742

>>19705885
None. The authors name sounds like some vaguely Italian insufferable boomer asshole name.

Can't read an author with such a shit name.

>> No.19708772

>>19708699
I don't need Wikipedia when I have eyes to see for myself, lad.

>> No.19708968

Weird fucking thread

>> No.19709140

>>19708737
Great Jones Street isn't very good. I mean it isn't god awful, but it certainly is not good

>> No.19709608

>>19705903
>>19705979
Can you point out Chicanistan on a map? Didn't think so. Checkmate.

>> No.19710905

>>19708968
yeah, not used to having posts written by /lit/izens who read actual books

>> No.19710915

>>19709608
Can you point out Kiwistan on a map? Whitistan? Ha! Gotcha.