Recently, walking around a Barnes and Noble's I found myself staring, again, at several of Delillo's books. It occurred to me that I've probably read more novels by him than anyone. I've never been one to read someone's entire canon with a few exceptions - I've read most of Beckett, Camus, and David Foster Wallace. I've read more Heidegger than anything, but I'm thinking particularly about novels at the moment.
So I bought another Delillo book, Americana - his first work. So far, so good. I've previously read White Noise, Mao II, Libra, Cosmopolis, and Great Jones Street and started Underworld, but I have a serious problem finishing novels that are over 800 pages.
So what is it about Delillo? I remember him discussing in an interview that the JFK assassination was the defining moment for his generation because it was an example where we actually see something happen and still don't know what happened - the digital age, the age of the screen, whatever you want to call it, had been ushered in. And what we found out is that in a post-modern world the problem with knowledge isn't lack of information - certainly nobody thinks there aren't enough theories about JFK - the problem is there is too much damn information to make sense out of the world.
And then there is the most photographed barn in America from White Noise - a perfect example of the simulacra. Similarly, in Americana there is a scene where a boy is taking a photograph of a photograph. Delillo expresses the dangers, paranoias, and excesses of a hyper real world in a way that is wonderfully complex while still being readable - unlike some of his contemporaries, Pynchon for example, who I have always wanted to love, but have never been able to embrace.
I recently picked up Mao II after watching “Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y,” a sort of documentary that traces the emergence of airplane hijacking as a social/political/media phenomenon. The filmmaker, Johan Grimonprez, intercuts narrated segments of Mao II and White Noise throughout the film. The bit of dialogue from Mao II in which the writer recluse, I forget his name, describes terrorists as having usurped the role of the novelist in the contemporary world figures prominently. Interestingly, in the film, Delillo’s text feels stirringly lucid in contrast to the images of terror which, though affecting, are brutally opaque, impenetrable. In deploying this tension, I think Grimonprez captures what is best in Delillo’s writing: the cool, almost sinister voice which seems to emerge just at the point where nothing could be said, where voices are silenced by the suffocating teem of images.
ReplyDeleteThis is going to sound random, but I remember you mentioning at one point that you were writing a paper on Foucault and the impossibility of History. I’ve been taking up questions related to History quite a bit lately and I was wondering if that paper was available online or if you’d be willing to share it (?).
The documentary sounds interesting. I'll definitely check it out. I have that paper on my computer in my office. I'd be happy to email it to you. It's not particularly mind blowing but it was a way to start thinking about history and to get through a grad course.
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ReplyDeleteI sent you the paper - and I'll make an apology for it - I reread it today - it was written to get through a grad class so there's tons of name dropping and references and I don't love that at all. Hopefully you'll find something interesting in it - I must say, I do like my take on Burke's terministic screens. Thanks for the comments.
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