woops

is not like other people
DeLillo's said Ratner's Star's one of his favourites and was the most fun to write.
there's no way he didn't have a good laugh writing americana as well, quit his job and wrote this first novel, just adventures all over america,
 

version

Well-known member
quote-i-quit-my-job-just-to-quit-i-didn-t-quit-my-job-to-write-fiction-i-just-didn-t-want-to-work-don-delillo-49107.jpg
 

luka

Well-known member
when i worked i would often be the first person to pass out or whip their cock out in front of management and it was exhaustion and alienation
 

luka

Well-known member
ive been out of order, ive been intoxicated bt ive never vomited and ive never shit my pants
 

version

Well-known member
The "Airborne Toxic Event" from White Noise actually happening in Ohio is very surreal, especially after the film just came out about a month ago.




t3om3o1jykha1.png
 

luka

Well-known member
ever since i quit work i have never been in that situation becasue my vital spirits are not being drained by Satan
they are now mate and i feel subhuman, i feel like a clockwork toy its fucked. my eyes feel wrong.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
watched white noise last night and today. read the book when i was about 20. the film is really annoying stylistically, in particular the dialogue (although possibly that's because it's got that pithy, artificial style that is in delilos writing, where no one speaks anything like how normal people speak.

it is good to see the pandemic start to be addressed in film though. the collective ignoring of all of that, collective forgetting, is really striking to me.
 

version

Well-known member
"The way I always think of DeLillo's work--and he has described almost exactly like this at some point--is that he is a modernist writing about postmodernism, and I think a big part of that is that he clearly is a theory nut who then filters that stuff through a more mystic/Jesuit/modernist lens."

is there a post modernist fiction writer that hasn't either claimed or been described as that exact sentiment? its like a prerequisite for the title.

Looking at this again, I think that person's right, and no, I don't think I've heard anyone make that claim about themselves beyond the Gass example you mentioned.

When I think of 'postmodernism', I think of trickier writers than DeLillo. People who do things like write themselves into their novels, break the fourth wall, give their characters on-the-nose names and make a point of and draw attention to artifice. The only book of his I feel fits that description is White Noise. The others I've read don't have the same sense of him winking at the reader.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
He's got a lot of those little cute ideas hasn't he? Those neat little self-contained thoughts. Reading Mao II and I can't decide if I want these or not.

Like this one:
Sometimes a pain feels familiar even as it hits you for the first time. Certain conditions seem to speak out of some collective history of pain. You know the experience from others who have had it. Bill felt joined to the past to some bloodline of intimate and renewable pain.

They're nice enough but they're peppered on so heavily.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
You do feel like you get to know his tricks don't you? The way he carefully destabilizes the meaning of descriptions that get too commonplace.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Just read The Silence and can't believe how bad it is. How has he managed to conjure up such a cast of aliens, and stud the text with such uninsightful and poorly expressed aphorisms. I get the feeling that this is literature for people who have no literary sense.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
is good to see the pandemic start to be addressed in film though. the collective ignoring of all of that, collective forgetting, is really striking to me.
If I were a filmmaker I really don't think I would address it cos I didn't enjoy that time much. Hopefully the directors we actually do have are not so shallow as me though. When you think about it, it often takes a little while for good films to emerge about any particular event - I think there is a necessary space of time that must pass for digestion and reflection etc
 
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