[lbo-talk] Pynchon (was James Heartfield's Unpatriotic History

[Jordan Hayes]

I learned of Delillo in a class at Berkeley where we got to read White 
Noise.  I just looked it up, and it was published in 1985 but this class 
was in 1985!  Or maybe spring 1986.  I liked it a lot and have re-read 
it several times.  I wound up trying to read his earlier stuff -- Great 
Jones Street, End Zone, Players and finally Ratners Star.  I like his 
style, but he's got a consistent flaw: he's incapable of a strong 
finish.  Sometimes they end too early, dropping you off at a random bus 
stop; sometimes they go on 50 pages longer than the end of the story.

I really enjoyed Libra, but it came out right around the time that 
Oliver Stone got his awful JFK movie made and I realized: Libra will 
never get made into a movie, which is a shame.  I think Mao II is his 
2nd best work (after White Noise), and Underworld remains my Gravity's 
Rainbow for him: I've tried to crack it 3 times, unsuccessfully.  I 
haven't gotten past it, and haven't read anything he's written since 
then.

Mao II's prologue also has one of the best postmodern lines since 
"People are afraid to merge" in Less Than Zero: "The future belongs to 
crowds."

/jordan