Don DeLillo deserves the Nobel
bookforum.com
bookforum.com
> I ask him what attracted him to writing, whether he studied literature or was stirred by certain authors or books. "No, no," he says, "I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation, I don't know why I wanted to write. I did some short stories at that time, but very infrequently. I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore. I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, and jazz, and Abstract Expressionism."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-de...
And yeah, he should get the Nobel.
If it were up to me I might pick Thomas Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy over DeLillo for a Nobel prize, but there are many other worthy non-American candidates
It is nobody's fault or bias.
Probably somewhere in the world a baby’s first word will be “Corona.”
Been a while since I read _White Noise_. If my memory "serves", it's not "Toyota" and it's not a baby's first word but a meditative focalization of one of the characters on the Toyota model "Corolla".
She uttered two clearly audible words, familiar and elusive at the same time, words that seemed to have ritual meaning, part of a verbal spell or ecstatic chant.
Toyota Celica
A long moment passed before I realized this was the name of an automobile. The truth only amazed me more.
A very poignant memory.
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.
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.
You used it to basically mean a beat up used copy, if I’m understanding correctly.
One such quote haunts me to this very day: “No definition of ‘science’ can be complete without a reference to ‘terror’.”
If I loved White Noise but didn't get much from Underworld, which DeLillo book would be best to read next?
I've been trying to get through Ratner's Star for years. It's not bad but I suppose it's just not the most compelling.
I've read white noise and zero-k, and found both underwhelming. To be fair, I read these after having read most of DFW work - which I find far superior - which probably spoilt it for me. I didn't find the prose good enough to make up for the lack of a story. Nor the themes that interesting or well explored.
"Zero-K" was so boring, I dropped it maybe 75% way through. In general I enjoy both genre and "literary" novels, but Zero-K felt deliberately anodyne: meandering minimalist pseudo-scifi optimized for the sensibilities of the "New Yorker" readership.
Awards are not really a meaningful way of recognizing the merit of any kind of artistic endeavour. Sometimes they get it right, but often they do not.
It's not for everyone in any case. One of my best friends jokes about the fact that every time I say I like a book, for a while she would buy it, read a chapter, hate it and not read any more.
> The inner workings of the Swedish Academy are opaque,
Huh? How do we know its obvious if we don't know what the criteria is.
No millennials read or connect with his work, and only very few boomers do. I find Delillo’s work largely hostile to readers that don’t share his exact super-wide frame of references and age.
I like DeLillo but the idea of giving him a Nobel is an absolute joke, save the Nobel for artists who actually influence other artists and cultures. DeLillo just doesn’t have much influence and his highly verbose style is transparently hostile.
David Foster Wallace and Harold Bloom both have called Delillo one of the greatest living authors. I and quite a few other people I know in my age range (mid-20s) have enjoyed him without sensing his work is irrelevant to our demographic. Even his denser works like Underworld read like a 'pageturner' relative to his contemporaries like Pynchon or even Wallace. Let alone other writers in the canon like Dostoyevsky.
My criticism would honestly be that his writing is overly stylized and lacking in nuance. He inherits the hyperbolic, poetic quality of McCarthy but often applies it to the mundane and the result sometimes feels overwrought and overdramatized vs realistic. Zero K specifically felt like a fan fiction version of William Gibson's non sci-fi stuff like Zero History. And most of what he is trying to convey he just says outright in a 3rd person omniscient voice.
I actually think he is very culturally relevant and influential but I sense that if you were to evaluate his writing through the lens of academic comparative literature like the Nobel Prize committee (not the standard literature should be held to imo) it would fall short of most other laureats, Bob Dylan notwithstanding
Could not agree more.
Bob Dylan and DFW deserve Nobels, IMO. Both of those guys have fans of all generations.
I feel like DeLillo is a “writer’s writer.” People like DFW applaud him, as you point out.
I just don’t agree that DeLillo has anywhere near the amount of influence as, say, DFW.
I’m frequently amazed how large and diverse DFW’s fan group is.
DeLillo seems to only appeal to writers. His work is very obscure, even within educated niches.
If the so-called millenials are not reading DeLillo, the onus is not on DeLillo to say things that appeal to them. Rather, the onus is on them to figure out what DeLillo is saying and see if they identify with him.
(Edit: I am not American and english is not my first language. I like American literature among others.)
My point is that no matter who the Committee in Sweden choses, there will be people writing how stupid that decision was.