Don DeLillo Books

Masterfully crafted novel. Expressive, satirical, explores postmodernity. Dark, confused story that's both enlightening and depressing.

De Lillo's White Noise is a modern classic. What I especially like about this edition (Viking Critical Library) is the extra material: articles and critical essays on the novel. Reading it was like taking a small course in cultural studies, or something... recommended!

The text is great. Some of the essays are questionable but this may be helpful when teaching how to write a critical essay.

This book provides a critical look at the world of postmodern culture. It gives perspective which is not easy to find and also provides a critique in non-academic language, a helpful addition to any library.

I've sometimes asked myself why I don't get a library card and save the money I spend buying books. This book answered that question, because the reviews and essays featured in this edition provided such insight and enlightenment that I was inspired to return to the novel again and again for a more penetrating read.

The novel itself is beautifully, brilliantly written; DeLillo is a master ironist. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the novel the first time, I highly recommend revisiting it after reading the critical essays (which were so informative that they were quite enjoyable reads themselves).

If you're going to read White Noise outside of a college class, this is the edition you should get.

There's nothing like talking about the universe of the DeLillo. It's nice even uttering a few superficial lines about it. Let alone going fully crazy into the magnitude of textual depth that is possible, and even necessary, in a book-length rave.

I cannot say enough about DeLillo. Apparently, Osteen feels the same way. I would characterize the book as 'critical'. Not just abstractly critical, like 'this is some literary criticism'. But fully critical, like 'there are some extremely serious things happening, happened, will happen. And we need to talk, have talked, about them at a very serious level'. By serious I mean what DeLillo means when he says it took him a few books written to realize how serious we have to be about writing. Serious as in life-and-death struggle. There is nothing more important than life. The closer to consciousness things get, the more meaningful they are. We like to dive in to the flow of DeLillo-dreaming and let it wash over us as we bathe in it and drink it's revealing purity of intention/reality.

We're taking about DeLillo! For this we do not want un-inspire-ing people around. People who think his characters all talk the same, or his books aren't very emotion-causing. We simply want people like us, who-like-us, we want people, like I mean people whose visual resolution is high. Who can really see. Who are fully awake to what death has to take away. Yes, we'll be dead soon. Before then, please do not make me feel like I'm wasting my time. With the things you might say.

American Magic and Dread--a fairly suggestive title. Because DeLillo is american. That doesn't mean limited. It means the center, the solar furnace of the elements with which he designs life-forms, happens to be here, the richest nation ever, the nation at the swirling epic-center of the riskiest, most audacious project to control nature that people-kind has ever known. We're talking about total destruction, nukes on hair-trigger alert, never-ending. So, the apocalypse hasn't happened yet. Like the big media's haven't documented the literal hell-on-earth that is existence for most of the souls who live, animals trapped in the plot of human exploitation and abuse. Apparently DeLillo eats hamburgers. Maybe he's researching. He feels he needs to taste death in order to write books filled with torturers. Maybe he just doesn't care. Whatever the case, I'm not going to police his thoughts--I won't refuse to read him until he goes vegan. Zappa was a murderer. He smoked cigarettes. (Killing yourself is murder just as bad as killing someone else). And I listen to him whole-heartedly.

Smith says "Too much truth is a prescription for failure". He was talking about why DeLillo was not read as much as his total perfection of intelligent artistry called for with respect to size of readership. So, lots of people bought Underworld. But how many people read it? It's nice to imagine that there are multitudes of souls out there "real" enough to appreciate DeLillo. After all, if I can see his text's "burning light", why can't others? As Smith also says, "There is no such thing as a leaf--there are only leaves".

Osteen's work is the full deal. When reading it, I'll quit, becuase it's too good to read. Meaning, I can only integrate so much goodness at any one time. Sometimes I max out, and have to save stimuli for later. It's about how dense text is. How much meaning happens per alphabetic character. There has to be a limit. We know that DeLillo has flirted with this limit. Osteen does what he does fairly well. It may be wrong to say that fiction is better than criticism. Platonic. Ideals and whatnot. They're just things for different modes of you. Modes can be pretty demanding. Often I will be fully unable to deal w text. But like now i'll be textual. Lines will be life. Writing/reading will do it for me. I'll have things to say, I'll be willing to listen to writers' sayings. The question is, does Osteen do justice to D? Meaning D(eLillo) is so twisted and godly and surprising and new--does Osteen come close to whatever in the world kind of things we should be telling each other about D? With this book, do we reach conditions of remembrance of D-text that are equal more or less to the conditions we can reach in our own private ruminations? Does O let us trip? What is the quality of his dream-logic? Does he bring us down, or trip us out? Does he like it? Can he make his book sing? How far can he take us? Is it worth it, walking along with him for some of the times of our lives? With the things he might say? Text is drug. Is the drug mind-expanding? Is the book informational? Do we learn more reading it than we'd learn never reading it? In short, should we read American Magic and Dread? I wouldn't know. As Rilke says, "All critical intention is beyond me".

I just want to you to acquire some sensations feelings and thoughts. I care for you, because if I were you, I'd be you. I'd do what you're doing. I know you want to come and join in song. I know life is not long. It all depends, on how you'll make it through, the things you do, whether true, or too few. Please, give us a chance. Let us tell you things. Do not turn away--our song is not very long. You've come this far. Choose life, and not death. This may be a (difficult) problem. Or it may be effortless, like true love sometimes is. Only you can tell what's true. You shall decide what to let live. No matter what you do, the end will just be you. The life of love, it may take us far. Make your life reach the magic of love itself.

I really love this book and highly recommend it anyone with a strong interest in literature and writing. As a writer I find this book along with others in the "Literary Conversations Series" (the one for Philip Roth is equally interesting and useful) to be fascinating and indispensible as a resource. I wish my creative writing teachers in school had handed them out as parting gifts, it might have saved me some frustration. If you're like me and have spent too much time on the internet nerding out in search of interviews, musings and work routines, etc. you'll be surprised by the wealth of material here. If you want to know more of Delillo's thoughts on writing, his habits, his ideas, etc. then this is the greatest thing in the world. If not, you may not share my enthusiasm. (I'm kind of baffled they don't do a better job marketing these to aspiring writers. I discovered them by digging in the stacks of a giant college library. In my opinion these are of much greater use than the self-helpy style writing books that are more ubiquitous in bookstores, etc. People like Delillo, Roth, Bellow, Morrison, Garcia-Marquez, whomever you like, know what it takes to write great fiction and are often surprisingly candid and thorough in describing their processes.) Perhaps the best compliment I can give this book is that I borrowed it from the library 4 or 5 times before I broke down and bought it--it's great for bedside encouragement and writerly solidarity.

An important contribution to the debate on fame and the novelist-this book is already being snapped up by libraries in the States, the UK and Australia. Literary reviews suggest a work of innovative scholarship. Undergraduate courses in literature and American/cultural studies are using the text as source material.

An old boys netw. left over from the Bay of Pigs fiasco (our own home grown freedom fighters invaded Cuba in April 1961) fantasizes on how to rekindle support for the Castro project: arrange for some non compis mentis to take a shot @the President & let the trail lead back to El Jefe. However, patsy Oswald doesn't know he's supposed to miss, & besides, he's already missed old racist Gen. Walker. Just once, he'd like to nail someone & be a hero.

Delillo's Lee Harvey Oswald is desperate for some kind of recognition; after all, even his own brother wouldn't know him. Oswald's defected to the Soviet Union & returned to the States again. Despite all the high-falutin' chatter about bourgeois oppression & Marx, all old Lee wanted was a crowd to meet him @the airport.

Even just leafing thru the single-volume compendium of the Warren Commission can prepare you for the familiar names of conspiracy here: Guy Banister, David Ferrie. Delillo also gets some extra mileage outta the grassy knoll.

In a way, Oswald & Ruby were similar characters: desperados waiting for the attention train. Come to think of it, they weren't so different from those guys cut loose by the CIA.

Delillo is the foremost poet writing in America today.

The fact he writes it in prose means nothing.

His dialogue is so brilliant it makes you think you are eavesdropping--on minds.

His descriptions of places and emotional states are breathtaking.

His relentlessness in seeing the dark side is like Dostoyevsky.

BUT!

But he wants to make BIG HISTORICAL STATEMENTS, and I am not sure fiction can quite do that. Even Dickens and Hugo have a hard time of it.

Fiction, even poetic fiction, like "Libra," deals with individuals; history deals with groups.

Groups are dull to read about; individuals interesting. Delillo tries to fuse the two (Americana, Endgame, Ratner's Star, The Names, Underworld, even White Noise--better, because less serious), by making his individuals reflect history.

But it still never quite works.

I applaud his attempt.

His writing is always worthwhile, even if his points don't always succeed.

Another problem with this particular book--wonderful as it is--is that it focuses on the death of JFK as the Defining Moment for the American Loss of Innocence.

But what really broke the back of American Innocence was Vietnam--because American Innocence was and is a self-deception for imperialism, and Vietnam is where the provinces fought back, and won. (We're seeing this all over again in Iraq.)

Still, a great book. Some of the scenes are as profound and memorable as dreams.

I've read Libra at least 30 times in the past 12 years and I'm still looking forward to reading it again.

So what is it that keeps me coming back to this book? Its the way Delillo created a virtual reality of history, character and place. As I read, I feel as if I'm inside the minds of each different character, even characters that have bit parts.

There he is, standing in the front car of the subway, peering into the tunnel as the train hurtles "on the edge of no control" through the darkness. "A tenth of a second was all it took to see a thing complete."
Sewer rats, workmen with lanterns, people standing on the local platforms. The wheels of the train howling in the curves.

Here's an example of vivid: "There was so much iron in the sound of those curves he could almost taste it, like a toy you put in your mouth when you are little."

The structure of Libra can be a bit overwhelming on the first read: a large cast of characters and multiple threads to the story. It helps to be familiar with the history of the JFK assassination too.

"Libra", to say this book is about the assassination of JFK is to miss the point of the book. By using basically the same exact cast of characters as James Ellroy does in his The Cold Six Thousand, DeLillo comes to a likewise and evenly frightening conclusion. Unlike many novels relating to JFK assassination DeLillo's attempt details events from two unlike perspectives. The first which explores Lee Harvey Oswald's life is well accounted by the authors fulgurous creativity. The other more schematic plot construes the infamous conspiracy to assassinate the President. By the end the quality of the author's delivery and characterization, we are left with empathizing Lee Harvey Oswald, Who is known to the mass public as one of the most notorious men of the twentieth century.
Libra is a fictional novel about the history of the assassination of President John Kennedy and an insightful narrative about the man who is said to have pulled the trigger: Lee Harvey Oswald. This dead obligating novel was found to be confusing by some people, but I really enjoyed reading it. What fascinated me for the most was how DeLillo takes this historical event, tear it up, and remodels it, playing with all different types of stereotypes that were made, and fighting the challenging hypothesis. He follows Oswald life from a young boy, to manhood, and to an assassin (is he?). Don DeLillo delivers many sides of Oswald giving readers a chance to come to their own conclusion. The meaning of the title itself if given a second look, deliver multi-levels of meaning to what DeLillo is actually conveying.
The assassination scene finally hails after 400 pages of reading and is worth the waiting. Very well written, I found the events to flash in slow motion. It's gripping and intense, the examining descriptions of his time spent in USSR, his wife and his mother. Libra contains Delillo's most accomplished characterizations, especially of women - Oswald's mother and his Russian wife. The dismaying and scary Mrs. Oswald is a proof of her son's insanity. Mrs. Oswald was demented, and so was lee.
His cold and brilliant novel begins with thirteen-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald sharing oppressively close quarters with his mother. Lee was the third of three children in the family the youngest of all, the oldest boy Robert Oswald, was Marguerite's son from her previous marriage. As a single mother, Marguerite was often unable to provide for her three sons. They spent several years in and out of orphanages. Lee's childhood was marked by constant turmoil, as they had to move from one place to another. It was rare for him to attend more than one semester at any given school. His grades were poor and as he grew older, his attendance became less even. He was characterized as a lonely child. And his mother generally refused to comply with recommendations about counseling and other treatments for her son.
"If she had faced it, if she had seen to it that Lee received the help he needed," Robert Oswald would state, "I don't think the world would ever have heard of Lee Harvey Oswald."

Before reading Libra, I was curious about the title. Why Libra?

It becomes apparent (for those of us that didn't know) that Oswald is a Libra, and like the tipping scales of his astrological sign, Oswald is presented as a mass of contradictions; a confused, idealistic young man who can easily tip (or be tipped) one way or another. Delillo manages to make Oswald (somewhat) sympathetic, reminding us how young he was in 1963 and presenting him as someone prone to manipulation.

Libra is a fascinating novel that seamlessly blends fact and fiction. In Libra, the JFK assignation is not a carefully constructed, brilliantly executed conspiracy. Like the tipping scales of the title, the assassination is presented as a merging of conspiracy and chance. There are shadowy secrets and plans within plans that tip the scales one way, while spontaneity and chance tip the scales the other way. The outcome on November 22 was unpredictable; part strategy, part circumstance. In the end there is no overarching plan. Conspiracies are runaway trains that take on a life of their own, hijacked by others and affected by chance.

Libra is a brilliant novel, extraordinarily well written. The novel is not, as some might expect, Delillo's attempt to settle, once and for all, what happened on November 22, 1963. History is our collective consciousness. Our reality is what we believe is real. The truth is something else.

This play is definitely an interesting read, but I can't see how it would play out on the stage when the audience can't read the stage instructions (like letting you know that a guy in a straight-jacket is the TV, and other such low-rent "quirks" that this script has).

The Day Room definitely contains raises interesting questions about what is real and what is an illusion. The circular ending really saves the entire play, but it can't make up for 111 pages of confusion before that. While trying to build up to the shocking and consciousness-raising ending, the play sputters for a while in pseudo-intellectualism and leaves the reader wanting at least a little clarification to hang their hat on. Some randomness is beautiful, too much leaves nothing solid to hold the randomness up, and throws the reader off.

Delillo's style is reminiscient of Beckett and other experimental minimalists. There's not a typical plot, with a character arc to follow. There are hospital patients, and hospital workers, and the audience never really knows who's who or what's going to happen next. At times this is exciting, but at other times it separates the reader from the story.

There are some very good monologues sprinkled throughout the play, both in Act I and Act II, but sometimes long-winded monologues can get boring and slow a show down on stage. And if you're looking for good monologues, look somewhere besides a long-winded production set in a psychiatric ward.

This is one of the better books ive read. Buy it, read it and lend it to a friend.

We did this play in my high school dramatic production class. It is an interesting view on the meaning of reality versus illusion. Although a bit convoluted in parts, it is worth a read if you are into that sort of thing

Turn your radio to AM and randomly switch from channel to channel. Record the snippets of call-in questions, sports reports, legal advice, and advertising slogans that follow. Read it as you would a story. It's disjointed, sure, but every once in awhile, you'll find a moment of transcendent brilliance. Like this book by Don DeLillo. He's taken nutrition labels, manufacturer specs, commercials, newscasts, popular music, history, religious polemics (I could go on) and woven his soundbytes into a story of a man and a woman who are terrified of death, a toxic cloud, speculation on the similarities between Elvis and Hitler, and ultimately, the question of meaning.

I can't believe how many negative reviews there are of this book here. Don't listen to these naysayers. This book is unbelievable! Not only is it written in an awe-inspiring prose, but it also has a lot to say. It is a very big book, considering the mere 326 pages of text.

This book reads like an epic, and is critical of media, consumer culture, the modern family unit, violence, fear of death, and probably a hell of a lot more.

An interesting quote from a Delillo interview: " I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfillment in America."

This is one of the few modern books to make it on Professor's reading lists throughout the country's campuses, which is saying a lot considering the names of postmodern sensibility- Pynchon, Kundera, Vonnegut, Erickson, Danielewski, McCarthy, etc.

This is the only Delillo book I have read, but I'm psyched to read the slew of others he has-- Libra, Underworld and Mao II, to name a few. Do yourself a favor and read this postmodern masterpiece. This is sure to be talked about in classrooms and coffeehouses for the next fifty years or so. Don't be afraid, accept its' chaos.

Delilo's White Noise is an existentialist tale about people's relationships with the media, technology, mortality and each other. It's a well written book that has some creative scenes (those in the grocery store) and characters (Murray, Wilder)that give the book depth. Delilo uses these strengths to explore his main themes.
However, I didn't think his ideas were very original, and so I only gave his book 3 stars.
Mankind's love/hate with technology was captured in Frankenstein, so it's nothing new here. The absurdist's dilemma of how to live in a godless world goes back to Camus and Dostoievski. So, while Delilo creates a novel with depth, he doesn't create a novel novel.
I think that reading the authors above would be a better way to spend your time.

By R.Taylor (Not BLT Taylor and not a music review). My first impression of "White Noise" by Don DeLillo was that this book was scattered and going nowhere. But with an author of such acclaim, I went back and started again. This is when I saw the satire and caught its impact and the strong messages about the fear of death and the role it plays in our lives, and how we deal with, or try to avoid dealing with, the fear of death. DeLillo's message about our conventions, diversions and obsessions that we utilize as our "white noise" to deal with the daily rat race also came home with a poignant, and sometimes
comical impact. The book provided great food for thought and discussion for our monthly book club.

If you have a taste for the edgy and profound, you must read this book. I laughed out loud several times while reading this...it stands out as brilliantly conceived and just plain fun. Definitely the work of an intelligent and astute male writer. It is disjointed and there are a lot of nonsequiturs interspersed throughout the story, but this is actually kind of the point. I enjoyed being treated to the common dilemma of Americans in America through the eyes of the narrator, who seemed quite sane until the end...but getting through to the end makes it entirely worthwhile. I admire the ending and wasn't quite sure how he would pull it off, but he did. The dialogue is what really makes this fun to read...there are entire conversations between people that would never plausibly take place in reality and yet they somehow resonate with the reality we experience, the unspoken agreements. This is not a traditional novel and you should be prepared for that and in the mood for something witty and verbose prior to embarking.

This was a riot! Small college football team - half of whom are the stereotypical "dumb jocks" and the other half are Rhodes Scholars. Imagine if you will the interplay among them as they go through a season.

Not a football fan? No problem. You probably will be no closer to being one after reading this book. But you will be a fan of DeLillo. The sports setting is just his device for a take on the study of war.

Why only four stars? This is one of his earlier books and the writing wasn't as developed. The story and the characters, though, make this a fast and fun read.

"End Zone" is like a Delillo primer: it introduces and develops his major themes, gives a taste of his absurd, over-the-top dialogue, and treats its genre conventions playfully. A football novel, "End Zone" is hardly a football novel- its a football-as-ritual novel, and as such it's about conceptions of identity and nuclear anxiety, and how language develops and even designates the forms of both these things. Delillo is concerned with language first- always- and how it shapes the stories we tell that make up who we are. This is about language as a distancing device used to subvert the passage to death. Which, come to think of it, is what pretty much all his books are about. In fact, "End Zone" is such a concise introduction to Delillo that I'd pretty much demand that anyone wisheing to read his stuff start here. It'll make the others much, much easier.

"End Zone" is packed with scenes of men shouting in elaborate code languages and with obvious symbolic tableau. Which is fine. Delillo is rarely a realist, and he's never one here. He's diagnosing the human condition down to the moment and the place. His books might leave America but they're always about this country, and "End Zone" is no exception. It's a visionary novel, and a fine one at that.

It's also very, very funny. It's pretty much a comedy from beginning to end- and it's a good one. Delillo is always humorous, but rarely is he half as funny as he is here on nearly every page. "White Noise," which is extremely funny at times, has nothing on "End Zone"- this book has the distinction of containing the funniest and best sex scene I've ever read. Every sentence in the scene is an ironic bombshell, all eroticism and absurdism brilliantly commingled. But, as always with Delillo, the laughter may sometimes get stuck in the throat; his books are, invariably, about our shared national tragedies, and they never fail to chill one to the very core of one's being. Scenarios of mass death are described in almost perverse detail by the characters in this novel. It's the only Delillo novel to have made me queasy; it may have even numbed me in its entertainment of horror. And this in a book that never has a character die on the page.

"End Zone" is a fine novel- powerful, thought-provoking, and hilarious. It runs on a finely tuned thematic engine, and has devastatingly precise prose. Had Delillo not written "The Names," "White Noise," "Mao II," "Underworld," and "Libra," "End Zone" would still be a 20th century American classic.

End Zone is a taught, spare novel that focuses on extreme states of mind and place. Delillo, developing the tone for most of his work, uses super-smart, semi-sane, white American males to work through the peculiar sensations and emotional curves of modern American life. There are heavy hits of data, meditations on extreme ideas of philosophy, love, language: 'If any words have reality outside language they are German', nuclear war - with a wild speculative 'mythic' meditation on this at the novel's climax, and most of all, the hard power plays of football.

On this last point, I am not familiar with the game. But quickly it becomes apparent that this is what the book is about. Right out the traps, typical sentences emerge: 'Hit and get hit; key the pulling guard; run over people; suck some ice and re-assume the three-point stance.' (p2).Presumably Delillo knew most of his readers would not be hardcore football fans (I guess the overlapping point in the venn diagram of lovers of avant garde pomo literature and college jocks is not massive). As a result, for me, much of the book read like Samuel Beckett having a whirl at some weird sports poetry about an absurdist game somewhere west of Endgame or Godotville. The dialogue is original and powerful, and tighter than in Delillo's first novel, Americana, but I found less sustenance here than in that book. Still, it is one of the most original sports novels you are likely to find, even if it is the sort of book that divides opinion.

DeLillo demonstrates his genius at analogy once again by providing a football-oriented school lost in the isolated desert. We see in the pain and heat of football practice the searing prospect of nuclear war and holocaust. His main character is - again - obsessed with death, but unlike "White Noise", the obsession is not one of fear, but rather fascination. Powerful.

The book had some moments, but they were few and far between. I get the metaphor, but then what? Football as a metaphor for life and war isn't exactly new, and while DeLillo has a nice style I just felt let down. The only thing I could say about DeLillo's End Zone is at least it wasn't as bad as the Body Artist.

Don De Lillo's work is characterized by its obsessive prose, beautiful to the point of brilliance...yet neurotic in detail and obsessive repitition of themes...The Names is a pinnacle of sorts in this neurotic obsessive dance.

Somewhere, it's called a 'thriller'. Wouldn't go that far. thriller, not in the usual sense at all, but yes, there is a mystery. Except that the mystery is less important than the fascinating characters that the narrator occurs, the bizarre conversations he has with him, his own wierd sense of observation of local colour and details--most of th ebook is set in Greece and thereaboutss..and the prose that proceeds at snail's pace but manages to tell you everything important, in emotional sense.

It's a great book, but not for everyone. Read it at random pages see if you can enjoy the brilliance of De Lillo's prose and writing...some passages are exquisite. If you want stronger plot and coherent story go for his underworld then, but if you want a beautifully written book you can't do much worse than Names.

DeLillo does a remarkable job on this book. Takes place in Greece, Middle Eastern countries, and is just very informative and amazingly descriptive.

Though it seems to go against popular opinion, this is my favorite of all of Delillo's books. The language (and the meta-obsession with language) rings most true here. All choices seem precise, and well combined: from place choices, language choices, historical evidences. Maybe I'm most taken by this novel because of its self-location among mythologies, but it definitely works. Delillo has a tendency to wax poetic/philosophical, which can seem heavy-handed in other works (The Players, The Body Artist), but flow perfectly here with the landscape of the novel. This is one novel I read repetedly, and I always find it lyrical and profound. On par with the best of his works -- White Noise & Underworld -- and reminiscent of John Fowles The Magus. Really, a tremendous novel.

I eagerly began reading The Names, my first Delillo novel, assuming I would be adding him to my rotation of can't-miss authors. I agree with other posters, Delillo's characters are very well developed, complicated and believable, and Delillo demonstrates true skill as a writer. Unfortunately, as a coherent story, this book was a miss for me. I consider myself a sophisticated enough reader to handle most fiction but this novel was confusing - perhaps esoteric? It was hard at times to figure out who was speaking to whom and to remember characters that were introduced earlier in the novel. I plodded through hoping to find links that would pull the story together but they eluded me. I won't rule out giving Delillo another try, however, based on my experience with The Names, I'm in no rush.

Delillo would get better, but those later novels prove that these early novels weren't some kind of weird writing fluke, while the novels from this period prove that he didn't exactly come out of nowhere. All of the classic elements of Delillo are already in place, the razor sharp prose that forms intricate and effortless rhythms where you think the words were always supposed to fall together that way, while the dialogue snaps back and forth like a live wire, even when the characters are talking languidly, and the characters themselves, both sharply defined and vaguely drawn, studies in contrasts. The plot here has something to do with language and a cult that is killing people for reasons that might have to do with language, while "risk analyist" James Axton ponders being separated from his wife and what all this travelling really means. What does it mean? It means the reader get a very meditative novel, carried along mostly by shifting from character study to character study, from observation to observation. For the most part it's a joy just watching everyone interact, the cult plot for the most part never becomes more than secondary and in fact most of the plot is secondary, you get more of a sense that you're peeking in on the lives of real (and very flawed) people. If Delillo wasn't such a master at crafting prose then all of this would come across as highly boring but he can make the descriptions of even the most static scenes and the most mundane thoughts crackle with a strange kind of energy, where behind the flat events sparks a vital sort of life. Probably more experienced than actually read, and not something for people who are expecting an exotic suspense thriller along the lines of what's currently in the movies (though it is exotic and you do get a good feel for the countries that are visited) it's for those who admire charactization and insightful prose over deft plotting . . . Delillo would sharpen all of these traits even further later on but if you want to see where it all came from and how it all started, this novel is one of the places to begin to look.

ratner's star is an excellent look at a period in the life of billy, a boy of (it would seem) unequalled brilliance. he's brought to an institute for advanced study-type place to work on a problem that continually changes in its basic character. between billy's basic adolescent nature and his mental abilities, delillo has put together a thoroughly enjoyable story, and if you are the type to go wild with criticism, the book provides and exceptional playground, replete with swings of exceeding height.

now as a fun-type book, if you enjoyed the "calvinball" in the "calvin and hobbes," you'll love half-ball, and for fans of "deep thought," delillo's "space brain" provides nearly un-endurable humour (oh, wait, space brain's changed it's mind again. . .). the only way in which i'd fault delillo is that he (as many others have done/continue to do) is under the impression that mathematicians desire to win a nobel prize, but the truth is, not-just-a-few mathematicians see the nobel as a cute prize that pales in comparison to the fields medal. other than this (annoying) hindrence, ratner's star is a truly exceptional book. if you want lighter reading, go with "white noise," but ratner's star is most definitely its equal, and in some ways (that are directly related to how much the book demands of the reader and how much work the reader is willing to put into the book-as-art aspects (i.e. going after meanings not plainly displayed on the surface)) i think it exceeds all of the delillo i've read excepting underworld. basically, read this book, it'll make you're life better.

oh, that "typewriters?" things? that's because the book has a remarkable futuristic feel and does an exceptional job of transporting the reader to a pi-in-the-sky/ivory tower research facility, but there are constant mentions of typewriters that do a pretty good job of breaking the flow, but they have the effect of endearing the work rather than trivializing it.

For those looking for a bit of light reading, I would advise against this book. True, very little of DeLillo is easygoing, but this, his fourth novel, makes his others read as easily as the likes of Grisham or King. Ratner's Star can perhaps be best described as DeLillo does Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow." It focuses on a group of quirky scientists and mathemeticians trying to decipher what they believe are messages from extraterrestrials, and the crazy "adventures" they have in the process. There are lots of great moments in this book, great humor, and the central message (the more we learn, the less we know) is very cleverly displayed in true DeLillo fashion. However, the writing is so confusing and dense in most places that it hardly seems worth it except for the truly dedicated DeLillo fan.

Early Delillo novels aren't exactly honed affairs. I mean, all the elements are there but the sharpness of his vision wasn't quite in place at the beginning, so you get good ideas and great prose and it doesn't really come together into anything awe-inspiring, even if it reads well and it still way smarter than most other books. Ratner's Star is probably the first one to really feel complete, even if it's not all the way there just yet. Its vastly more esoteric than his other novels, while it deals with the same themes of alienation and loneliness that normally characterizes his work, here he always throw in a bunch of high theory science just to make things more interesting. The plot of the book involves a bunch of scientists working on trying to decipher a message from a distant star. To help, they bring in a child genius, Billy, who has won the Nobel Prize in mathematics. From there he spends the rest of his time bouncing the various eccentric characters off each other and letting them interact over the course of the book. A lot of time people are throwing extremely complex sounding theories back and forth, which may or may not be actual theories (they sound good but I'm not a mathematician, and I have no idea how much research he did for this), some of which are actually useful and some just reflect the personalities of the people coming up with them. As it goes along Billy eventually winds up working on some other project deep in isolation with an even odder group of scientists. If you were reading them chronologically (which I'm not but bear with me) this is the first book that really "feels" like Delillo, it's exploring themes but also trying to puzzle through what all the chatting means, so it feels a bit more focused, instead of vamping on a topic until it reaches the end. The characters don't ever feel totally three dimensional, because they are wacky scientists but he imbues them with enough so that they aren't total stereotypes. The point of it seems to be that the more you know the less you understand, as if you have a whole bunch of people who can't at all relate to each other or the real world. The science project itself is just an excuse to get everything together and bounce them off each other, and the ending basically reflects that. His prose is sharper here, without showing off, keeping what could be an utterly boring story moving along nicely, never getting bogged down in all the science, but not skimping on it either. There are a few passages that are downright brilliant in composition. And when he gets a little experimental toward the end, it feels right, in the sense its a culmination of what's gone before and not "well I feel like doing this now." That said, the book didn't blow me away, but it was surprisingly readable and entertaining given the subject matter. In a way it also pointed toward what was to come in later novels. Probably the first sign that he might be able to hit a stride, and stick with it.

This book has quickly become one of my favorites. A beautifully written novel about language, mathematics, the fear of death, and an individuals place within the complexity of reality. There are sentences within this book that made me read them six or seven times they were so beautiful. An exceptional work that i cannot wait to read again.

I must admit that this book, even after two stabs at it, didn't thrill me the way other DeLillo novels can, and I did feel as though I were reading something more by Thomas Pynchon. Many of DeLillo's finest work seems to work on the exploration and twisting of its own metaphor, but filtered through extraordinary but still accessible characters, people who feel both rooted in and confused by the complexities of the world behind them. _Ratner's Star_ seems to want to delve in such a way, but through a situation far more absurdist.

Billy Twilling is a young math Nobel laureate who is pulled into a think tank that bombards him on all sides with eccentrics, from fellow mathematicians to the custodians. Yet many of these characters become redundant through their lack of introduction and propensity for monologue. Many moments of the book read like Kafka and Michio Kaku co-writing an episode of _Dragnet_. Twilling's main job is to decipher a coded message received from outer space, but of course his progress is hindered and his job outright disregarded by many in Field Experiment One. Eventually, the book breaks down in plotline and form itself when Twilling is pulled underground into a new project that is off the charts.

There are many delights in this book--Twilling himself is a wonderfully concise and hilariously unhumorous boy. DeLillo shows his skill at even comic timing on the page. The scenes with a mathematic precurser who has banished himself to a hole in the ground and the meeting of the esteemed Ratner himself during a torch ceremony are wonderful, yet I didn't find the book as a whole challenging with its exploration of metaphor as DeLillo does in later books. There is a wide expanse of characters, but the ecentricities become the focus of the book, not the crucial ideas, and the eccentricities become a little formulaic at times, even in their seeming randomness.