I finished this book last night.

What in the hell is the point of the sad failed orgy and then the random guy telling David they need to compare dick sizes to see who is top and bottom after picking him up?

Has Delillo ever commented about this part of the book?

“He erased it,” she said. “Because what else was he supposed to do?”

can someone please explain the context here...has this been addressed in the text before?

Hello,

So I'm a student in high school and I need to make a presentation about The silence. I found the story a bit blank and nothing really sparked any ideas for how to present it. I like the way he writes and I see the theme of how we depend on technology, but nothing really inspired me.

I need to present the book itself, what it talks about, what I thought about it in a way that interests the listener. It's an important criteria, but I really don't have any ideas. I'm presenting alone, so if anyone has any thoughts on what to talk about or what should I do to make the presentation (not like a boring powerpoint), I'm listening.

Also, I read other books from Delillo and I really liked them. Is it just me or is The silence not as good as the others. And why so?

Copyright 1991. “The future belongs to crowds.”

Above

Any news on delillo new works?? Any new novels and projects?

I just re- fell in love with DeLillo after recently reading Mao II. What a gem. I've now read all of his "middle" novels, from The Names through Underworld. My ranking would be something like:

1. Mao II/Libra
2. White Noise/Underworld
3. The Names, which I place pretty far below the rest. Just couldn't engage with it as much.

I'm wondering if, from this point, you all might push me in the direction of his earlier work or his later work? I do understand that the general trajectory of his work is to get leaner, more concise and distilled. Cosmopolis or Zero K sound interesting to me, but on the other hand am I really missing out if I don't read End Zone or Running Dog?

I’ve read 3/4s of DeLillo's novels, and can comfortably say he’s my favorite writer. His voice is the voice I hear when I read anything— not his approach/indifference to plot, or to literature as a field, but the voice itself, that’s the voice and perspective I always hear, for better or for worse.

A few things about the book that really struck me:

1. The experience of being in the confines of the Convergence echoes the intended effects of the place, in strange and disturbing ways. I felt lodged in a manufactured infinity that felt the need to remind you why you were there, and how just being there meant you could never truly leave. Kafka would have liked this, these portions definitely owe a debt to his constructions and traps.

2. I don’t know how Delillo managed to predict that a Ukrainian orphan drawn back to the conflicts of his origin would have such lasting resonance, to the point where the character comprises the emotional center of the book (for me, anyway). By the end, the links between our narrator and the overgrown, overthinking 14 year old he encounters are unmistakable. Definitely a variant on Heinrich from White Noise, to be sure, but Stak becomes this beacon of wild purpose, however illogical, that conflicts with the white-flag acceptance of collapse that the Convergence begs you to see and bow before.

3. The fragmented vignettes of the final chapter are stunning. I’ll admit I was shy to warm to the “return to normal life” sequence that followed the book’s Part 1, but I thought Delillo brought things home really nicely, abstractly but in a way that managed to address multiple emotional and intellectual loose ends.

4. The respect and prescience afforded to Madeline, Artis, Emma, and the anonymous woman standing on the street without a sign grant a power to women and mothers as preservers of humanity and experience, not just mere nurturers to the boys and men who cause the wars, play out their games, and document the chaos that comes.

5. The prose thoughout the whole book is exceptional, so fully DeLillo, but also surprising at times in the best ways.

My first Delilo novel was White Noise in Highschool, I remembered liking it so I re read and it was honestly so relatable and funny it left a profound impact on me. When I saw that Delilo wrote a novel about Lee Harvey Oswald I was sold immediately. It took me a while to finish it and I almost put it down at one point because I was having trouble following all the characters (I have gerbil brain) but I couldnt be happier that I finished it. It's been a few months since then and I still have it on my mind.

The moment this book touched me was when Lee hits his wife. I was so shocked and dissapointed in Lee, and it kind of took me aback because it made me consider my relationship with the character. Even "knowing" how the book is going to end I couldnt believe he would do something so nasty, despite the fact he is one of the most infamous men in American history. I just think it's crazy how Delilo is able to make this character you can have so much empathy for out of someone you think you already have figured out.

So often people that get caught up in the narrative of the world become just that, a narrative piece, no longer a human being and devoid of character. We lose so much of our understanding of humanity and the events that take place when this happens. I'm grateful that this book illuminated that thought for me, and when the attempt on Trumps life happened pretty soon after I had finished reading Libra I was able to come at it with the perspective that the world is insane and it forces people to do insane things no matter what their reasons or beliefs were - not that we'll ever really know why.

On top of creating great stories that are fun to read, I love that everytime I've finished a Delilo book I'm able to walk away with a deeper understanding of myself and eachother. That's two in the bag for me and I'm trying to decide which Delilo book I'll read next if anyone has two cents about that, or something else to add about the amazing character that is Lee Oswald :)

I'm curious, how do people read into the final excerpt from the chapter "4 October"?

Win's daughter takes out a pair of Indian figurines that were gifted to her and she keeps hidden.

The chapter closes with: "The Little Figures were not toys. She never played with them. The whole reason for the Figures was to hide them until the time when she might need them. She had to keep them near and safe in case the people who called themselves her mother and father were really somebody else."

My first thought was a metaphor for CIA assets (like Mackey and his team, Alpha 66, etc). The figures somehow representing the clandestine actors and keeping them hidden until Suzanne (the Agency) needs them to fight some imposter out to harm her (JFK easing Cuban tensions)?

This is my first DeLillo read and this section just seemed more detached from the narrative than any other part of the book.

I'm involved in theatre, and so I'm always searching for interesting material. DeLillo as a novelist is well-respected by me, but how good is he as a playwright, seeing how he's got a good dozen of plays to his name?

Just picked up Americana on Kindle and read chapter 1. Anybody else reading this now?

All of the best writers are long dead and then there is Don Delillo.

Start with any novel and read all of them.

Try everything and if you don't enjoy it after a few pages then stop and try another and if you are so turned off that you never read one of his novels again then he wasn't for you and that's ok because this is subjective which also means you can't take advice from people on specific novels to start with.

Hello DeLillo Reddit. I am about to jump in to my first reading of Don DeLillo. I have both White Noise and Libra staring at my from the bookshelf and I’d love to get your opinions on where to begin based off my general taste and what I’ve been reading lately. I am a major fan of Pynchon (esp. GR and against the day) McCarthy(the Passenger, Border trilogy), Nabokov (Ada, Pale Fire) and Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain). I also very much enjoy Knausgaard, Le Carre, Houellebecq, etc. I am just finishing up Suttree and wonder what you think should come next. Thanks in advance!

This was my first DeLillo and I’m blown away, I’ve been a JFK conspiracy nut for since youth but this novelization of those events made me feel like I was watching a Greek tragicomedy unfold.

I’m sitting on a copy of Underworld, but I think I may go through White Noise before that.

https://lit.salon/

Hi, I launched lit.salon on small lit subs like dondelillo exactly a month ago, and the feedback has been fantastic. We now have almost 1000 users, with 200-250 daily active users everyday. And no, the site is not monetized. Thank you so much for the initial feedback and words of encouragement, the site is much much better now. The site is getting better everyday, and I would love to see some more users from dondelillo join the site, since the reception has been especially fantastic in the this sub. I am excited to soon expand to original writing and more features <3.

Now the site has:

• Quotes feature
• Ranked lists
• DM / Groupchats feature
• Custom ordering for lists and shelves
• Custom book covers! (custom book descriptions coming soon)
• Fast! fixed all caching problems
• Better UI/UX overall
• A solid community of interesting users!

I take the feedback from the lit subs very seriously, so please let me know if you have any feedback at all! We also have a (very) active discord where people frequently contribute feature requests and bug reports (and just banter about literature): https://discord.gg/VBrsR76FV3

Got a few delillo books recently (zero k, Underworld and white noise). Am really keen to get into delillo and Underworld seems epic. I read zero k and tbh really didn't like much about it all. The story and concept were good but I found it a bit pretentious and meandering. Is this indicative of his style?

[Possible spoiler]

I have a kindle edition of RS and can’t see the graphic(s?). I’m on chapter 4 or 5. It looks like it’s a table detailing some data. It’s at the section where Billy is considering the transmission. Anyone have a more easily viewable pic of this (or any other) table from the book?