Don DeLillo, �Great Jones Street�
I�m really starting to have a love/hate relationship with DeLillo. When he wants to tell a story, it�s usually an amazing story. If this guy does outlines for his novels, there must be huge flowchart in his study.
But he needs to connect the story with dialogue, and this is where he grates on my nerves. People in DeLillo books will launch into soliloquies longer than Shakespeare�s characters, only he doesn�t use the speech to make a point. Instead it�s just to show how clever he is while writing dialogue.
He also throws in 200 characters, most with nondescript names each who turn up for three pages, then don�t reappear until a hundred pages later, right about the time you�ve forgotten who the hell they were.
This marks the tenth DeLillo novel I�ve read, and I�ve only really enjoyed three of them. Slogging through all his mush-mouthed characters neurosis� novel after novel makes me wonder if my time wouldn�t be better spent talking to Stevie Win, or some other person who will talk about absolutely nothing for hours at a time.
I still have two other DeLillo novels waiting for me to read, and I�m sure I�ll pick up other books by him at some time, as I can�t get over how much I liked White Noise but as for now, I�ve declared a moratorium. (Sorry, BabyDave, I know you said to read the newest one, but it�s gonna have to wait.)
In fact, I�ve declared a moratorium on buying any more books for the rest of the year. I have enough, thanks. Of course, I still have the stack at work that I need to buy (I buy one book for every two I finish), so I�ll still be buying books. But I�m not going to put anything new on my stack until I get through with what I�ve squirreled away.
I�ve already passed on the newest DeLillo book, two Kerouac books I�ve never seen, two Christopher Hitchens books, and two collections of The Onion. If they�re still there in 2004, I�ll get them then.
Of course, right after I decided that, The Michael J. Nelson novel, Death Rat and the second Dave Eggers novel came in, both books I�ve been waiting for a loooooooong time.
So I�ve upped the ante: If there�s something I have to get, I remove other books from my stack of the same size. I�ve already put away books by Orwell, Steinbeck AND Palahniuk, so I�m serious about this.
Which leaves six other books by Steinbeck, two by Orwell and one by Palahnuik that I just have to finish first.
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School Progress, sent out the forms for my letters of recommendation for Columbia University.
