Don DeLillo, �Mao II�
Okay. Fifteen days ago, I finished Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk, which featured a refugee from a cult. Ten days ago, I completed Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, which detailed a writer having trouble finishing his next book. And now I�ve finished this novel spotlighting the lives of a refugee from a cult who meets up with a writer who�s having trouble finishing his next book.
There really isn�t anything new under the sun, is there?
To be fair DeLillo came first, as this was written 13 years ago. Here�s a little insight into how dated this is and how well it aged: the author and another character are discussing life in New York. The secondary character, named Karen, describes her residence.
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�Where I live, okay, there�s a rooftop chaos, a jumble, four, five, six seven storeys, and it�s water tanks, laundry lines, antennas, belfries, pigeon lofts, chimney pots, everything human about the lower island—little crouched gardens, statuary, painted signs. And I wake up to this and love it and depend on it. But it�s all being flattened and hauled away so they can build their towers.�
�Eventually, the towers will seem human and local and quirky. Give them time.�
�I�ll go and hit my head against the wall. You tell me when to stop.�
�You�ll wonder what made you mad.�
�I already have the World Trade Center.�
�And it�s already harmless and ageless. Forgotten-looking. And think how much worse.�
�What?� she said.
�If there was only one tower instead of two.�
�You mean they interact. There is a play of light.�
�Wouldn�t a single tower be much worse?�
�No. Because my big complaint is only partly size. The size is deadly. But having two of them is like a comment, it�s like a dialogue, only I don�t know what they�re saying.�
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Insert crass joke here.
Anyhoo, DeLillo has a problem. Or to be more precise, I have a problem with DeLillo. There is no denying that he�s a vicious satirist, or that he�s a helluva lot smarter than your average reader. He�s the Dennis Miller of literature. He uses a lot of big words and acerbic comments, replete with allusions to the mores and morals of society, but I think only a select few know what the hell he�s talking about.
Mao II is one of the more accessible of his novels, for he manages to keep a fairly straight narrative going throughout the entire book and manages to do something he seemed to forget about in other novels, which is to keep the narrative flowing. Libra, Running Dog, Underworld and Players often spun out of control bringing the entire flow of the story to a screeching halt, if only so DeLillo could show how clever he can be when writing dialogue that makes since to no one but himself. And perhaps Dennis Miller.
But like I said, Mao II doesn�t fall into that trap. For the most part anyway. And I have to hand it to the guy — This story line was a pretty ingenious way to present the issue of dependence, shown in four different ways by as many people. Fern was right; this was one of his best books.
But at the same time, the way it�s presented is done in such a high-falooting fashion that it makes it hard to recommend to the average bored housewife who asks me for suggestions. DeLillo seems to be one of those authors who you have to be ready for; you need a certain amount of sophistication and philosophical knowledge to process the subjects he belabors.
There�s a certain amount of pretentiousness to that, but perhaps it�s because of all those news writing courses that I took that cater to the notion that you should be writing on a level that a fifth grader can comprehend.
That�s why I talk incessantly about boogers and monkeys.
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School Progress: Bought two books on studying for the GRE. (Which cost me a total of $50.86! It's like I never left school!)
