Did you like the book? Was it what you expected?
I thought it was funny, incisive and oddly touching at times. I thought the characterization was particularly strong, maybe the best part of the book. "Babette talks to dogs and cats. ... She plans ski trips that we never take, her face bright with excitement." Or, "Steffie became upset every time something shameful or humiliating seemed about to happen to someone on the screen. She had a vast capacity for being embarrassed on other people's behalf."
And, I'm sure worth a few separate discussion threads, there's DeLillo's oddly prophetic multimedia blitz. He's like a Nostradamus of pop culture.
While I found it to be an entertaining and absorbing read, I sometimes found the writing to be a little oversaturated, like the author was working in every witty observation in the course of his life into one story. Sometimes a novel lets you breathe a little bit in the course of the plot, and this one seemed to pack in facts, witticisms, philosophy into each page. It made it a slow read for me as I tried to pick through all of the codes to decipher a message ... of course, that would make this one of the cleverest facets of the novel -- to drown out the reader with its own white noise.
What did you think?
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6 comments:
Yes, I liked it! It was not what I expected. I expected something more sci-fi-doomsday-dark-heavy-unfunny (clearly I'm having trouble finding the right word, but maybe you know what I mean). It's a book I've been aware of but unfamiliar with for a long time now, so I had collected some off-base assumptions about it.
I was most struck by its humor, by its intellectual jauntiness. One of my assumptions was that it would be a kind of macho, Philip Roth-ish type work, so its gentleness surprised me.
I highly enjoyed the characters, especially the son and Babette and — oh my gosh — Murray. The family is the cradle of misinformation.
I found my pace slowing near the end, especially the drawn-out motel/hospital scene. Good observation, cl, with the feeling of oversaturation and the lack of breathing room. I had that feeling sometimes, too. And, yeah, that's a mind-boggler about how the book itself is possibly white noisy.
Intellectual jauntiness is such an apt description, Kim. It does read initially like a Philip Roth, to me, but so much kinder and emotional. Roth would never value a Babette with such love and tenderness. He'd be screwing the neighbors and fantasizing about stepdaughters.
Roth would never value a Babette.
That's my whole critique of Roth in six words!
I liked it, too! "Intellectual jauntiness" is perfect. It was funny and surprising, and the characters were fantastic.
I totally agree with your oversaturation description. It was so dense with witticisms and lists and advertising references.
I really liked the book. It was funny and had great characters. So many of them (like Murray!) had larger-than-life, caricatured personalities, but their complexity and uniqueness made it possible to suspend disbelief.
And the noise was suffocating at times. I didn't like it at first, but came to feel almost mesmerized by it, as though I were a character in the book. And it fit the story so perfectly!
I did make the mistake on this one of putting it down too many times rather than committing to a mass reading. I don't know about what you think, but because of the density of the material, I found it hard to jump back in. Kind of like reading a book from another era when the dialogue sounds so different ... you sort of have to adjust to literary temperature. It wasn't hard to read; it just was demanding.
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