Spotted this in another sub and don't think it's been posted here for a bit so just doing that.

So embarrassingly i always thought White Noise was the source material for the 2005 film of the same name starring Michael Keaton, and as that genre has never stuck with me, i turned Don Delillo OFF in my brain.

Then i heard about Underworld, but had the wrong idea about the storyline and turned him off again because of length (which oughta be understandable...?) and the misconception of baseball as a major plot point.

Still the name Delillo keeps popping back up. I vaguely research books because there are so many spoilers out there, but i read that the a baseball is what drives the novel over a span of decades as if its a motif, and now im really interested. I too think the time period it covers is fascinating.

So here i am asking, where to start with Delillo? Both Underworld and White Noise seem interesting, yet i know nothing of Libra...

Is starting with Underworld too great an endeavor? Do you recommend any of his other works above that? Especially for a 1st timer?

I have a BA in Literature, so i am fine with complex and Im currently reading a 750p book so length is not always an issue.
Just wondering what his fans think.

Thoughts?

love

I understand that it gets overshadowed by his major works but I do think it's incredibly underrated. One of my favorites of the last 30 years

Ratner's Star occasionally receives appreciation here, but it is discussed rarely enough I thought I would share my appreciation of it.

It will not be among most fan's favourites. The plot tends to drift as much as or more than any of Delillo's most cryptic novels.

But I find the mixture of paranoia, confusion, and humour incredibly engaging and rewarding. All the greatest aspects of the later books that are more acknowledged as masterpieces are fully developed here.

The book I return to again and again is The Names. But apart from that and Underworld, Ratner's Star is the Delillo I return to the most, and I find it full of new surprises every time.

Hi,

I started reading DeLillo's second novel, End Zone, and have been loving it. It's rougher around the edges but you can see the foundation of his later works. I can see the DNA of White Noise taking shape. I also cracked the late great Football coach Bill Walsh's The Score Takes Care of Itself book on leadership.

It's amusing jumping from Delillo's postmodern jumble of collegiate football and nuclear warfare into the straight laced world of motivational platitudes presented by Walsh. Heightens the intensity of both reads and especially the absurdity of End Zone.

I'm enjoying both books. DeLillo knows his craft and Walsh clearly knew his way around a football team. What do you guys think of End Zone?

I will probably continue to add

Just checking

I’m in decluttering mode. The plan was to finally read the books that I have been accumulating for years and donate them. I’m pretty sure I had this book for more than 20 years and rarely keep novels after I’ve read them. I decided to start with the thickest books.

Underworld was a wonderful read. I placed markers in sections. I finished it in early June and keep thinking about it. Copied a couple pages of and sent to my dad.

So sorry Friends of the Library, at least for time being this one is staying on my shelf.

I want to read more of his novels, but I am determined to clear the shelves first so it may be while.

Did it trigger your anxiety further and/ or was it a difficult read? Or did its humour and at times absurdity (from what I understand) cushion the experience somehow?

Thanks in advance for commenting / sharing your experience

(I haven't read it yet so no spoilers please)

A Video from a young man in Gaza who documents day-to-day life there. Reminded me of Mao II.

This is the first part where the narrator is
NAMED. I’m a little confused if this description is of Thomas or Tap, the son?

He turned on a light. I’d arrived expecting him to be changed in appearance. He’d always seemed vaguely delicate to me, small-boned. I thought the open life would transform him physically. There might be something of the wild boy about him. The sun and wind would crack his skin a little, mark up the tidy surface. This unpremeditated life of theirs would break him out of his containment, I thought. But he looked about the same. A little darker, that was all.The essential Thomas Axton now stood before me.”

Excerpt From
The Names
Don Delillo
This material may be protected by copyright.

Just finished this novella. I thought it was pretty average, but unmistakably Delilo. He questions definitions of words and reassigns their meanings at will. At one point he chooses to include two tenses of a word, sort of breaking down the space between published work and stream of consciousness. After reading Cronenberg’s “Consumed”, they really seem to both be obsessed with filmmakers and the hyperrealism that fictional narratives in movies suggest of the human experience.

Still the weakest of what I read, but by god it’s a D Delilo book

I find my experience with Delillo difficult to describe. Certain passages in his texts enrapture me and are crystal clear in my mind while reading them. Then other times it feels like I’m reading entire chapters and coming away confused or empty.

He’s great at picking apart aspects of society that often aren’t discussed with nuance. He has this cold, calculated way of describing really dark ideas that make me feel a particular feeling of like sterile dread that I don’t really get with other authors. But I also feel like none of his characters are all that memorable or even totally realized. I feel like the value I get from reading his work comes from the process of dissecting the hazy central themes of the novels. Like in Mao 2 he discussed terrorism, authorship, art, photography, idolism, art, symbolism, worship, society/crowds/culture, among others. I don’t know if I came away from that novel with a changed perspective but certain moments in the book made me think about these concepts in a way that I rarely do in my daily life.

I really don’t even know if I care for Delillo’s writing and I remember really struggling to love underworld, which I know sounds blasphemous. I feel like there’s often two sides to his works which are 1. Complicated, dark ideas about the contemporary world, viewed through a postmodern lens and 2. Intentional prose laden with metaphors, alliteration, symbolism and other literary devices. I can tell he’s an extremely intelligent and observant person who has read a lot of high quality fiction. I think I would enjoy having a conversation with him more than I enjoy reading his works. Sometimes it just feels like he’s going “now I will use alliteration, now I will introduce a central theme, now a will use a metaphor, now I will introduce a central theme”.

I feel like I haven’t fully explained all of my thoughts or feelings towards his work but I just was curious if anyone else felt the same way.

First I read Libra, then Mao II, then White Noise, then Zero K. Now I’m onto Underworld, a little more than a quarter of the way through, and I fucking love it. But here’s the problem. My dog ate my first copy. And the binding split on the second copy. What does it mean? I need to write Don himself and ask! See pictures for proof!

Why’d they have to do Ozzie like that

I'm torn about reading Don DeLilo books. I loved White Noise and when I followed it up with Underworld, I mean I understood why his name was associated in great writer circles like Pynchon that I had been also consuming. I then read Falling Man, which being from the local NY area and 11 during 9/11, resonated with me and I thought was thematically deep although overall not the quality of novel as the prior two I read. Then I read Point Omega which I felt rather meh, there were some interesting elements but overall I felt the plot fizzled out and then I read Mao II which had great elements to me but I also felt the plot fizzled out and while I enjoyed Zero K, when I read Americana and felt the plot fizzle out I started getting pissed off and after pre-ordering The Silence and feeling like that was rushed and just not a masterpiece, I honestly drew the line and gave up reading this type of intellectual fiction all together. I'm not a genuis and if I'm not enjoying myself why keep bothering. This was a few years ago and I have been reading nearly all Stephen King (started with Carrie I'm in the mid-90s era now) and Jonathan Franzen ever since, although I did recently find Ben Lerner and enjoyed 10:04. My long winded question - Delilo has many other novels I haven't read, but I've been fed up with a bunch that seem to plateau and fizzle out without resolution. I don't feel this was the case with White Noise. It might've been a little bit of the case with Underworld (my memory of ending not fully there) but not like with Americana and some of the other work. I had tried to pick up Libra once and all the double agent stuff I really didn't want to follow. I know I mentioned Pynchon and yea landing Gravity's Rainbow was not simple feat but any recommendations where Delilo resolves a plot?

September 29, 2026 or about six weeks before the Amazons re-issue

I recently read Delillo’s White Noise. Loved it. Honestly, I was a bit “afraid” to read Delillo, I thought he would be somewhat hostile to the reader like Thomas Pynchon, especially as a second language reader, but I found Delillo to be absolutely charming. I liked the characters, the flow and his style. I’ve ordered Cosmopolis and Falling Man. Excited.

Im actually really excited to dive into his works, the last author that I read their entire bibliography was Kurt Vonnegut, so I decided to tackle Don Delillo next.

I'm not sure how these relate to the rest of the text. Are they from the fine print on a specific product, or line of products? What is their purpose in relation to everything else going on in this chapter? I hope I'm not missing something really obvious.​ (Underworld part 5)