The Names is probably DD's best novel — what's not in these particular volumes, however, is his collection of extraordinary short novels that filled the 70s (Ratner's Star is the major exception; this is a monster-sized book, and it is a strange precursor to Stephenson's middle work). End Zone, Great Jones Street, Players, and Running Dog are all amazing portraits of the paranoias of the age — terrorism, bomb fear, rock & roll, long-running conspiracies. Reading DeLillo alongside JG Ballard's novels of the same era is an education in the social and political undercurrents running through the 70s and early 80s.
The Recognitions by Gaddis gets you the 1950s in similar fashion (and it's clear he was a major influence on those postmodern tome style writers who came later). Pynchon has pretty good coverage of the 1960s. Then DeLillo and Ballard get you through the 1970s. It's fascinating how much history and culture you can pick up through some of these fiction writers.
Agreed on all counts. Pynchon and DeLillo are often linked together, but Pynchon and DD seem to be at least a generational half-step removed from each other. And Gaddis nails the 80s in JR back in the mid-70s.
Having been reading The Names recently, DeLillo is certainly brilliant. For an author often grouped in with the American “maximalist” authors mentioned by sibling commenters like Pynchon and Gaddis, I have appreciated DD perhaps even more for his subtle and sensitive dialogue and exploration of interpersonal interaction. The lead and his ex-partner in The Names have that sense of tired accustomedness to their relationship which is hard to neatly encapsulate.
I didn’t really enjoy the absurdist humor. Was the Department of Hitler studies supposed to be a running joke? Not that its offensive, its just not very funny.
Which mirrors the modern world where people can get degrees in Classics at many institutions working completely from translations and not knowing Latin nor Ancient Greek.
I read white noise first by a few years and found it much more enjoyable. I remember a few parts of underworld, and I definitely annotated it a bit, but I don't find it broadly memorable or formative. (Judging by some receipts I left in it, I probably read it in fall 2010. I probably read white noise in 06-07ish?)
That said, I don't give it unqualified recs. It's a good rec if you enjoy other postmodern fiction. It and Catch-22 are my two favorite recs if you haven't read any postmodern fiction but are curious.
If you know you hate postmodern or otherwise self-aware fiction, feel free to skip it.
As an aside: the movie is a surprisingly-faithful rendition, but tbh I was a bit shocked when I read that they were making it.
So much of the book is winking and prodding at pillars of modern US culture through textual absurdities that were hard to translate to the screen. It works surprisingly well, but I'd just read the book.
The opening chapter of Underworld is one of the greatest things I have read, I can't even explain it because there's almost nothing like it, it's the literary equivalent of a spectacular movie chase scene. Iirc it was excerpted in the New Yorker years ago, I can't find it now there or anywhere, but it made me buy the book despite having sworn off 800 page American novels. The first chapter was still great, but I gave up in boredom ~30 pages later in boredom and have not read another word by him.
It would probably be beneficial if someone could explain what I am missing, or what I should read by him instead, because it just can't end like this.
... You can read most of it here[1], probably doesn't have the same impact missing the first few pages, but maybe get a flavor of what he's doing it. I don't know what the correct analogy is, but it's definitely something cinematic.
Like others downthread I recommend White Noise. But I highly recommend the Viking Critical Edition — which will explain what you’re missing. (I mean, skip if you loathe postmodern litcrit; but I found the batch of essays/analyses well-chosen and accessible rather than the inscrutable academic katas such things can be)
I haven't read DD and thank you for this, as maybe this is what I need. Just today I was looking at my shelves of 20th century fiction and lit and thinking how none of it mattered anymore.
