This was my first Don DeLillo book. I have to say, I’ve really got mixed feelings about this novel. His way with words is fluent, but at times his sardonic tone really wore me down. There were such insightful parts where he perfectly wrote about the inexorable and omnipresent buzz of modern technology that is foreign and advanced but somehow has become such an inescapable part of our lives that it goes majorly unnoticed. Another theme he pointed to (especially in scenes where the family would be speaking about factual, gossip-laced anecdotes they heard through the media and friends) was the ambiguity of fact in an era of unlimited information from myriad sources. Which authority of intellgience should be trusted? How we do qualify the overwhelming amount of information thrown at us as either fact or fiction. Is there even such a thing as pure fact? And do university professors, much like this novel’s main character, actually stand back and wonder “What does that even mean?” after delivering an impromptu lecture that eager wisdom-thirsty ephebes frantically jot down in their notebooks, attentively compiling the truths of the world?
This novel is worth the read, but I ended up more interested in the themes (and even the familial indiosyncrasies so well described) than any of the plot. The abrupt and out of place ending was also a bit disappointing. I’m reading Libra by DeLillo right now (as a break from Infinite Jest), and it is dramatically different in style from this novel. DeLillo is effortlessly proving his versatility to me.
