Has anyone read 'The Names' by Don DeLillo?

Yours Sadly, A Delillo Fan Who'd Like A Shot At Editing His Next One

Thinking now, though, I can't remember a thing about the plot itself.

In the current semester break I'd like to plow through Libra or maybe even The Names again. Underworld has to wait for now, but it's on my list. Oh, and I liked Mao II a lot as well.

this book kicks ass btw. i kept reading it and being like "this is maybe the best book ever written"

yeah, i love it and had the same feeling when i finished it. one of my favorite delillos. it reads much slower than the other ones i've read, but in a good way. you really have to take your time with it. also, i love the kid novelist.

i read this in like 2000 when i was in college & remember taking it when i went on a l8 spring break 2 new orleans

i legitimately remember zero abt it other than my friend katie making fun of the cover

i should prob read it again as i love a lot of other delillo

there's this description of a generic new england small town that is so precise it is amazing.

whoop

collected stories 1979 - 2011; the two recently published were terrific.

That's excellent.

In other Delillo news, David Cronenberg is filming a version of "Cosmopolis" starring Robert Pattinson:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/archives/2011/05/26/first_look_at_robert_pattinson_in_david_cronenbergs_cosmopolis/#

I haven't read Cosmopolis. Been kind of leery of it because it got some pretty bad reviews.

bought libra yday. ive only read the names and white noise but the names took me so long to read bc i would obsess over certain passages for days. theres this descrip of some upstate ny smalltown that is so eery or the descriptions of the movie the guy is making or the line about souls being x-rayed in the airport

like its ridic showy

i wonder if johnny crunch has a copy w the same crappy cover as mine

feel like this is a guy i pick up a book easily by that will snap me out of a spell of not reading

threw my copy of cosmopolis out the window of my senior year calc class in high school

i've read libra and falling man and tried to read underworld and will hopefully finish it some day

tried to read cosmopolis too obv

ive only read the names and white noise but the names took me so long to read bc i would obsess over certain passages for days. theres this descrip of some upstate ny smalltown that is so eery or the descriptions of the movie the guy is making or the line about souls being x-rayed in the airport

ha, i am 'reading' the names, inasmuch as you can be reading something you're not touching & started months ago*, and just crawling through it because it's so dense and it lingers so much that you have to actually take in every graf. so reassuring to know you were going slow, as i'm enjoying it all the same and really am getting close to picking it up again sometime very soon. and there are so many of those super resonant sections, about the time we write off to air travel, and about the quiescence of his post-married life and the disintegration that made it that way.

psyched for the stories anyhow, i loved loved loved midnight in dostoyevsky.

* there's a philip roth quote about how if you read something in more than two weeks you don't really read it, over which i've developed a guilt-complex with slow-reading not-excessively-long books like this

point omega is the only one i like as much as the names so far. i love him on movies.

kindof struggling with libra

I've probably read a dozen Delillos, and Libra is the only one I quit on (About 2/3s through). I also loved Point Omega and definitely agree with you about his take on movies. Running Dog, Americana, and Underworld also have bits on movies. You might want to check one of those out.

what is the struggle?

Libra is the last novel of his I loved.

i feel like he wants libra to be difficult. like its supposed to be like sifting through files or something. the bits where they talk about constructing motives, shaping a character out of a real life. those are great. the writing is still fantastic but there's so many fucking characters. i'm perservering with it because i hate when books defeat me and i've been rolling over a lot lately. might stick my mother's copy of underworld in my suitcase.

after libra i read falling man and the body artist, i'm reading running dog next.

Is Falling Man any good?

i thought it seemed really conventional for maybe the first third of it, almost trite. but then something happens, theres a short chapter called on marienstrasse about the cell hiding out in hamburg, the stuff abt morandi and kierkegaard. i liked it a lot, not as much as the names or point omega (i like him at his most austere) and there are several dozen descriptions in this that just floored me. still the 2 short chapters about the cell, 1st in hamburg then in florida, are prolly the best sections of the whole book and you do sortof wish for something more spec. about ideology, the symbolism of terror. One of the best things is how he will reintroduce parts from earlier in the book again and again (the morandi painting that comes back into conversation with sev. plot points, reappears in relation to different themes, how it works as a piece of art criticism, illuminating different themes or) i mean in the end he's just so ridiculously skillful as a writer that you can just sit back and admire how artfully he stitches everything together, crossreferencing back and forth. but then i'm sortof in the process of becoming a superfan right now.

Have you read Underworld? There's a Breughel painting in there that does the same trick, which is pretty excellent.

i think i'm sortof working up to underworld

underworld was stsring at me from a shelf yesterday, i think it is gonna come up soon here too. would like to maybe do another lighter/fun one first though.

names = best delillo

feel bad about sagely agreeing with that while not actually having finished it yet

Also in 1982, DeLillo finally broke his self-imposed ban on media coverage by giving his first major interview to Tom LeClair,[13] who had first tracked DeLillo down for an interview while he was in Greece in 1979 (on that occasion, DeLillo had handed LeClair a business card with his name printed on it and beneath that the message "I don't want to talk about it.")[13]

haha

With the publication of his eighth novel White Noise in 1985, DeLillo began a rapid ascendancy to being a noted and respected novelist. White Noise was arguably a major breakthrough both commercially and artistically for DeLillo, earning him a National Book Award[2] and a place among the academic canon of contemporary postmodern novelists. DeLillo remained as detached as ever from his growing reputation: when called upon to give an acceptance speech for the Award, he simply said, "I'm sorry I couldn't be here tonight, but I thank you all for coming," and then sat down.[1][14]

Libra became an international bestseller,[2] earned DeLillo another nomination for the National Book Award, and won the Irish Times Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize the following year. The novel also elicited fierce critical division, with some critics praising DeLillo's take on the Kennedy assassination while others decried it. George Will, in a Washington Post article,[15] declared the book to be an affront to America and "an act of literary vandalism and bad citizenship."[15]

does george will really want to set a precedent for making literary vandalism an indictable offence, though

I wish i hadn't read the names so soon, it was the second one i read after white noise. I don't get why white noise is regarded as one of his best. I mean its good but its really gimmicky compared to everything else iv read by him.

there's a short story he wrote about a series of gerhard richter paintings, which is exactly perfect. all his books should have gerhard richter paintings for illustrations.

white noise gets so much love because its fits perfectly in any post modern fiction syllabus

It's also the one that took off, no? I've liked all the other stuff better I think, though White Noise does have a nice dry humour to it.

falling man

http://blog.ruthless.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/zwei_kersen.jpg

libra

http://www.gerhard-richter.com/datadir/images_new/xlarge/2458.jpg

white noise

http://www.gerhard-richter.com/datadir/images_new/xlarge/2713.jpg

for eg.

i love white noise but its not quality as his best

the characters are more cartoonish than usual (though i think maybe this is something that is true of his early work maybe?) and too much of it feels jokey in a surface way, the lecture on hitler is a really great set piece but it doesn't have any of the eery resonance that i like most abt this guy.

anyway i'm waiting for running dog to arrive, i ordered it at the same time as the body artist so it should come hopefully monday.

the names, mao 2, underworld and great jones st are best imho

and maybe libra iirc idk its been a while for any of these tbqh

have not read: falling man, point omega

mao ii is the one i want to read after running dog

point omega i seriously recommend

cool ill check it out, i opened falling man, and clearly lol not sure what i was expecting, and read abt the thumping bodies and was just like 'no thx'

couldnt really get into great jones st iirc

ive read it like three times, could totally understand why one might find it lesser or pointless, but to me its hilarious and awesome

i havent read any delillo for a long time, this thread is inspiring me tho

i have to stop myself getting into conversations about him. i want to quote him from memory all the time.

its p tiresome prolly

think white noise was the one that took off because its pretty much the only novel he's written about a suburban family and the traditional novel about a suburban family subjects -- college professor, raising children, marriage trauma and reconciliation, specter of death, critique of life as it is lived today in these united states "for most people" -- i.e. the kind of shit that's catnip to awards-givers and literary-naturalism-lovers.

libra and running dog are my faves, but then delillo is my fave living writer, so it's hard to choose. i don't think he's been working at near his peak capacity since underworld, but the only novel i've outright disliked has been players, which seems like a trial run for running dog, the names, and all the "men in small rooms making terrorist plots" ones he's written since.

i actually dread the first few pages of reading a book by him, worrying that its gonna disappoint me. like he's on such a roll for me and i'm rooting for him.

btw anyone considering reading falling man should read this, its an article he wrote for the new yorker after 9/11 and quite a few descriptions make it into the book (in one or two cases in a importantly different context)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/dec/22/fiction.dondelillo

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31w-PbtitiL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

those new covers bug me. i am psyched to pick this up & hope i can get a different edition.

he's in conversation w/ bret easton ellis in this months believer fwiw

has anybody read his story videotape.

he's in conversation w/ bret easton ellis in this months believer fwiw

oh dear.

ooo

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/alex-ross-perry-to-write-and-direct-adaptation-of-don-delillos-the-names-20150407

of course the child author is perceptive and eloquent. corny as f

however - breezed through "ratner's star" on holiday which was FUN.