Martin Amis was 24 when he published The Rachel Papers, his first novel, in 1974. It’s about a young man, almost 20, who wants to have sex with a fairly uninteresting young woman named Rachel. He also wants to go to Oxford. He is a literary smart-ass, who apparently puts everything about his life on paper: how to seduce Rachel, how to get into Oxford, and so on. We don’t get to read what the young man writes. Instead, we get his interior monologue. It’s funny at times, with many clever remarks, but way too many references to bodily fluids, bad skin and questionable hygiene.  (6/17/11)
Category Archives: Fiction
The Mikado by Willliam Schwenk Gilbert
This is the wonderful libretto to the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado. It makes for a very short book, only 57 pages long. And, of course, it would ordinarily be read while listening to Sir Arthur Sullivan’s stunningly melodic music.Â
I saw The Mikado once and didn’t much enjoy it because it was hard to understand the dialog and the lyrics. Having the libretto makes a very big difference. The plot is extremely silly, but the words are extremely clever. A lot of the jokes are still funny. My only complaint is that some of the songs are too short.  (6/7/11)
End Zone by Don DeLillo
I took a walk this evening. I could write about the eerie quiet of my suburban neighborhood at twilight, or the odd geometry of the local high school’s main building, or the etiquette that applies to meeting another pedestrian. If I strung together enough such descriptions and observations, putting them in the mouths of several characters, I’d have a novel. If I had enough skill, I’d have a novel by Don DeLillo.
End Zone is about a college football player named Gary Harkness. After an erratic career at some larger schools, he has ended up at an obscure college in a desolate part of Texas. Gary has a special interest in nuclear warfare. His fellow players and students and the college staff have their own distinctive peculiarities and concerns, which they discuss with Gary in unrealistically vivid, intellectual language. No small college in Texas has ever had such universally well-spoken football players. The centerpiece of the novel is an engrossing account of a single game.
I was expecting more of a plot, but still enjoyed the book. There is something going on here, although it’s not clear what it is. As usual, DeLillo’s characters have a lot on their minds. Too much, in fact, like many of us. Â (6/3/11)
Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo
DeLillo writes some wonderful paragraphs, not always easily understood or obviously true, but always evocative of contemporary lives that are technological, media-saturated, self-conscious, affluent and/or rootless. Â
Cosmopolis tells the story of a billionaire who spends a long day getting in and out of his limousine as he travels along 47th Street in Manhattan. He wants to get a haircut on the other side of town. There are too many conversations, adventures and coincidences along the way. He makes it to the barber shop but mostly dismantles his life. Â
If the characters and incidents in the novel were more believable, the whole thing might add up to something. Anyway, the words are often beautiful. Â (5/19/11)
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
As usual, DeLillo’s language is often beautiful and its meaning is often obscure. This is a very short novel. It begins and ends with an unnamed man watching a slow-motion presentation of Psycho at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Between these two chapters, an aspiring filmmaker tries to get an intellectual older man to be the subject of a documentary film. The older man is to speak about his work with the Defense Department in support of the younger Bush’s Iraq war, or anything else he wants to talk about. These central chapters are set in the California desert and also feature a visit from the intellectual’s disengaged daughter.
I’ve read most of DeLillo’s novels and have never found it easy to say what their theme is. Maybe I’m wrong about the theme of this novel, but DeLillo draws an obvious contrast between the casual manner in which the defense intellectual participates in a war that costs thousands of lives and his intense reaction to the apparent loss of someone he cares about. Â
Interwoven with the novel’s narrative are thoughts on film-making and film-watching, and the passage of time in natural and artificial settings. DeLillo again left me with the feeling that I had experienced something important about modern life, but not sure exactly what that was. Â (5/9/11)
Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦 
You must be logged in to post a comment.