Don DeLillo
Paperback | Pages: 254 pages Rating: 3.68 | 9578 Users | 551 Reviews
Present Books Supposing Mao II
| Original Title: | Mao II |
| ISBN: | 0140152741 (ISBN13: 9780140152746) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Bill Gray, Karen Janney |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Fiction (1992), PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (1992) |
Commentary In Favor Of Books Mao II
"One of the most intelligent, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America" (The New York Times), Don DeLillo presents an extraordinary new novel about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist. At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years and enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms. Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover—and Bill's.Specify Epithetical Books Mao II
| Title | : | Mao II |
| Author | : | Don DeLillo |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 254 pages |
| Published | : | 1992 by Penguin Books (first published 1991) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Novels. Literature. American. Contemporary. Literary Fiction. 20th Century |
Rating Epithetical Books Mao II
Ratings: 3.68 From 9578 Users | 551 ReviewsArticle Epithetical Books Mao II
It's hard to believe this novel was written pre 9/11. Dandy Don's assessment of the role of terror in our society is almost prophetic. Catastrophe, he observes, is the only thing capable of penetrating our distracted consciousness. "In societies reduced to blur and glut, terror is the only meaningful act. There's too much everything, more things and messages and meanings than we can use in ten thousand lifetimes. Inertia-hysteria."Delillo also focuses on the rise of crowds and our need to fit"The secret of me is that I'm only half here..."Andy Warhol says this & perhaps because I'm a such a nonfan of his I was a super nonfan of this.The novel infuses you with images and DeLillo attempts to do something wholly Warholesque with his own brand of literature. More discerning minds can tell me what that something is, and/or what specific effect it produces. The novel is also about: the indifference of society personified by crowds, the act of writing as a doppelganger for terrorism,
The future belongs to crowds.If youve tried DeLillo and didnt get on with him this probably isnt going to change your mind. All the familiar DeLillo hallmarks are present and correct every character speaking in an identical voice, every character as intelligent and eloquent as the author; dramatic tension is hewn into the sentences rather than the plot; and its primarily cerebral in its appeal as opposed to emotionally engaging. There are five players in Mao II. Bill is a famous reclusive
I could feel DeLillo grappling with something important as I read this book, trying to deliver something profound, and that feeling made me want to press on, to see where he was going, even though I found most of his narrative a slog.There were astounding moments. The funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini was gorgeous prose. The discussion between Bill and George about the power of the terrorist to affect change was tense and convincing. Karen's time in the homeless shantytown was poetic and always
The premise: terrorists have taken the place of writers (specifically novelists) as shapers of the public consciousness. Timely subject, nearly fifteen years later. But it takes great skill to make a subject like this dull as dish water. But Delillo, unfortunately, succeeded in doing just this. We have Bill, a reclusive novelist who has, after decades, allowed himself to be photographed. We have Brita, the photographer, who in my estimation should have been the focal point of the entire novel.
The Novelist as Substitute Terrorist (Or the other way round?)I have a great deal of sympathy for DeLillo's protagonist, Bill Gray, alias Willard Skansey Jr. He has my fear of being over the hill. He, like me, talks to relative strangers more intimately than is warranted. I share his doubt that any of my accomplishments have even personal importance. And I really would prefer to spend my remaining days being ignored by the world.On the other hand, Bill puts me off viscerally. His clipped
I am a fan of Don DeLillo's artistic ambition and his want to address ideas more profound than simple character study. When Tom Wolfe wrote his diatribe against MFA writing programs and accused them of passing along a tradition of meaningless, nonempathetic stories rather than work that addresses morality and social meaning, he undermined his own argument with his own bare-faced self-promotion of _The Bonfire of the Vanities_, a work that may in essence have fit his own ideal but was poorly
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