I finished the book early so that I would have time to work
on other end-of-semester projects next week, so if you don’t want details past
chapter 11 spoiled, you may want to avoid reading this post.
Anyways, my opinion hasn’t changed. I haven’t read many novels
in my life, maybe 20 at most, but if somebody asked me what the worst novel I
ever read was or who the worst writer I ever read was, I would probably
nominate Mao II and Don DeLillo.
Sentences like “she talked to the woman in the plastic bag, offering to get a
shopping cart for her, which is something I might be able to do” are just
infuriating to me. Why write it like that? Why deliberately write so
unconventionally when it doesn’t seem to add any value? Is the sentence more “powerful”
or meaningful written like that instead of using “she” in both places or “I” in
both places? I don’t think so. The same is true for most of the ungrammatical sentences
DeLillo uses. Most of them don’t seem to add any value as opposed to a more
grammatical way of writing them, so why choose to write fragments and mix
perspectives? My opinion of DeLillo is kind of similar to what I said about
Jack Kerouac in a previous blog post. Sometimes it seems like people embrace
writers simply for doing things different, but in my opinion different doesn’t
necessarily mean better.
But I don’t want to spend this whole post complaining about
DeLillo’s writing. A more neutral topic worth discussing is Brita’s character.
I just don’t understand it. It seems almost like her sole purpose in the novel
is to serve as a sort of human diary for Bill and Rashid to vent to. Her
character just doesn’t seem properly fleshed out to me. Her sudden development
of a smoking habit is unexplained, she suddenly quits photographing writers
with no explanation other than “it stopped making sense” even though she had
previously considered it her reason for living. She just ignores Bill’s message
on her answering machine as if never happened, which isn’t a big deal but
confused me a little because it’s just not a normal human reaction. I mean, if
somebody leaves you a message you call them back, or at least acknowledge that
you just got a message. She didn’t even comment on it at all—you’d think she
didn’t even hear it. And those are just a few of the things leaving me with
questions about Brita. If I fully explored all the questions I have in
connection to all the characters, this post would end up over 10,000 words. This
novel makes me self-conscious about my ability to comprehend what I read,
because I honestly can’t fathom why anybody would praise it. It makes me feel
like I’m missing something, and maybe I am, but I don’t think I could handle a
reread.
I’ll end with the one thing I appreciated about the novel
from chapter 11 to the end: the scene describing Ruhollah Khomeini’s death and
the crowd reaction. Granted, I’m not sure how it fit in with the story and it
is yet another thing I have questions about, but it drove home a poignant
point. The masses were distraught by his death, which is especially significant
considering some of the things he was accused of doing. Somewhere in the scene,
I can’t find it now, there’s a brief mention that something like 8 people had
been trampled and killed in the mourning crowd. And then the description of the
scene as a whole continues. It got me thinking of the way people’s deaths are
remembered depending on their station in life. Even in America, where we claim
that all people are created equal, we don’t treat all deaths equally. We rally
behind causes seemingly chosen at random, get outraged about some particular kid
being shot and killed as if there aren’t several others that suffered the same
fate. And celebrity deaths receive the most attention of all! Just like the 8
(or however many it was) people who died in the crowd weren’t spared a second
thought even as Khomeini’s death drew a response from thousands and was broadcasted
on television as well, some deaths in real life fall completely under the radar
while others are mourned around the world. There’s something wrong with that. I
appreciate that DeLillo got me thinking about it, even if I didn’t particularly
care for his novel as a whole.
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