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Without expecting anything or even knowing DeLillo, I bought a cheap faulty copy of "Libra" a few years at a train station bookshop. It is a brilliant novel for
by lqet 7y ago
Without expecting anything or even knowing DeLillo, I bought a cheap faulty copy of "Libra" a few years at a train station bookshop. It is a brilliant novel for reasons I am not nearly eloquent enough to describe, and I very much doubt that the point DeLillo wanted to make could be phrased in less than the novel's 400 pages (which I think is true for most (if not all) great novels and the main reason why I was always extremely sceptical of anything resembling the classic "write down what the book is about" exercise in school).
- veggieburglar 7y agoHow was the book faulty? That’s not an adjective I’ve ever heard ascribed to a book before.
- lqet 7y agoIt had a small scratch on the back, I didn't know the english translation and checked https://en.langenscheidt.com/german-english/maengelexemplar https://en.langenscheidt.com/german-english/maengelexemplar
- veggieburglar 7y agoThanks! I love words, and Mängelexemplar is a great one. You used it to basically mean a beat up used copy, if I’m understanding correctly.
- lqet 7y agoNot exactly, a "Mängelexemplar" is unused and new, but was damaged during shipment or unpacking (often by a box cutter).
- veggieburglar 7y agoEven better, thanks for the clarification!
- defen 7y agoCheck out American Tabloid by James Ellroy if you're a fan of Libra.
- cnasc 7y agoI couldn’t get into Libra at all, but I couldn’t put down American Tabloid. Maybe I should give Libra another shot.
- defen 7y agoI read American Tabloid first and then Libra after learning that Ellroy cited it as a spiritual inspiration. I also enjoyed American Tabloid more. Libra is a character study of Oswald and a piece of post-modern fiction (about as much as I can say without spoiling things). Tabloid is more straightforward in terms of literary techniques, the plot is more compelling, and in my opinion bigger in scope - it tries to look at the whole system that would bring such an assassination to fruition (meaning, America itself). More than any book I've read it captures a "dark" vision of America - one driven primarily by violence, racism, greed, paranoia, hypocrisy, and corruption. It's got everything - Hollywood, the mob, CIA, FBI, Hoover, Hughes, Hoffa, Vegas, the Kennedys, Cubans, the Klan, and more - and yet it doesn't feel overstuffed. Definitely one of my favorite books.
- run2arun 7y agoI had the exact same experience with DeLillo. The opening scenes with the boy travelling in trains with his face glued to the window as the train "smashed through the darkness" got me since I used to travel by suburban trains a lot. From there, a portrait of a man emerges that's the opposite of the usual biography. Biographies tend to be portraits drawn with a strong hand, dark pencil, clearly outlined, full of details and colors and leave no ambiguity. If intimate moments are at one end of the spectrum and their consequences are the far other end, DeLillo moves between the two like only a true craftsman can. Of course, there is a gimmick in the book. I didn't realize that at first. I don't remember at what point and like usual gimmicks it hits you and you react as you realize whose story this is. As an engineer, I live in a world full of definitions and determinate actions and consequences. Literature is what I have access to that constantly reminds me that there is more that meets the eye and truths are relative. Don DeLillo's literature ranks right up there.
- krelian 7y ago>As an engineer, I live in a world full of definitions and determinate actions and consequences. Literature is what I have access to that constantly reminds me that there is more that meets the eye and truths are relative It's a truth I dreadfully came to realize over the last few years. Not about literature, although that is a great way to figure it out and enforce the sensation, but about the world. Ideas, things that I took for granted for so long with my scientific and data nurtured mind no longer have the same hold. Like a glacier that forever seemed eternal they are now melting but not have not yet melted completely, I cannot see what's behind the glacier. That's were the dread comes in.
- itronitron 7y agoYou might want to read 'The Crying of Lot 49' by Thomas Pynchon, or not. It's a fairly short book.
- krelian 7y agoThanks. I've been meaning to start reading Pynchon for a while now. This gives him another boost in the proverbial ladder.
- kyuudou 7y agoAlso recommend "Mao II" and "White Noise".