(Sheet lightening follow-up)
I'd forgotten that Underworld was supposed to be like this. I'd lain the book down for a while and I was thrown by the third-person voice. But this is current- the third-person isn't what it used to be. News sources are known to be unreliable- so instead of absorbing the facts we keep the whole thread (the voices) stored in different locations and then weigh them against each other. We give them points ratings, or try to, but we end up with a muddle- a thing we hope is our opinion.
After reading a few more pages I realized that this was a book where everything is wrong. Or ""wrong"". Not false but incorrectly thought. In contrast to Pale Fire which is also false. A torrent of false ideas- which should in theory be hilarious. And maybe it is. I continually get the feeling with Nabokov that I'm missing it. So I sit and frown at the book. And occasionally when I get something sniff, because I get it, or think I do.
So it's a lot of fun.
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I just endured the nigh-five minutes of crud to post this. I now am the proud owner of a myza vera owna persona' blogga! With my own pre-designated blog-ground- clearly representing in an agile and colorful summary my tastes, convictions and quiddity at large to other bloggers.
At any rate, Seth, with Nabokov it is understandable, feeling inadequate and insecure. But one grows from the encounter... With Delillo… Well, what can one say… One's soul is not filled from an encounter. One is diminished. Literally. Reading Delillo makes you go short! I've seen the studies, man! I've see ht white-walled hospitals where the hide the unsuspecting victims! He's not even a fiction writer- perhaps nominally, but nothing more than that. The 'writer' tag is mere garb: it's protective coloration enabling him to blend in and hide the fact that his novels are clumsily disguised preening academic blather. The man is a whore. His corpus is one massive blow job for Graduate Level English Courses.
If the world of tendentious lit theory posturing were a bland sales convention of unimaginative balding overweight schlubs (an apt metaphor in my mind) Delillo would be the motivational speaker. His novels exist so that the post-modernist pseudo-pedants collecting their ill-gotten tenure can have something 'edgy,' or 'subversive,' upon which to comment. He is the low-water mark of the polluted shores of literary hubris: where baby seals and pelicans flip about coated in the viscous residues of Rushdie and Ellis and Foster wallace…
BUT. There is one thing that makes his works bearable: They can be utilized as a litmus test.
The G. Romero Guide to D. Delillo's World
Just follow these instructions: If someone bookish that you know or care for likes or recommends a Delillo novel to you, quietly acquiesce. Take the book in your hands and smile looking pensive and considerate. Then, once they've turned their back to infect some other sucker, you crack that person in the back of the skull with a fence post, an axe, a stale baguette, a rock or a police baton and RUN!!!!
…and count yourself lucky: You just narrowly escaped being eaten alive by the living dead.
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