So I'd read some of DeLillo before he was properly DeLillo, that is, before the publication of "End Zone".

However, "Americana" seems to be the crucial point where he truly realized his potential and began to envision the canvas-like possibilities of the American landscape.

In this work, you can detect the rumblings of his later masterpieces like "Underworld" and "White Noise", with the aerodynamic prose that would come to define his subsequent career.

Yet, it only approaches those lofty heights; it does not quite transcend.

If you're already a dedicated fan of DeLillo, "Americana" will offer you a fascinating glimpse into how the master developed his unique style.

But if you're not yet familiar with his works, this might not necessarily be the most ideal entry point.

It requires a certain level of understanding and appreciation of his themes and writing techniques to fully grasp the essence of this book.

Nevertheless, it still holds value as an important step in DeLillo's evolution as a writer.

The war was on television every single night.

However, despite the constant presence of war-related images on the small screen, we all still chose to go to the movies.

Soon enough, a rather strange phenomenon occurred. Most of the movies started to look alike, lacking the distinctiveness and originality that had once drawn us in.

As a result, we found ourselves going into the dim rooms of the movie theaters. There, we would simply turn on or off the thoughts in our minds, or perhaps watch others do the same.

It was as if we were in a trance, seeking an escape from the reality of the war that surrounded us, yet finding that even the movies, which were supposed to be a source of entertainment and diversion, had lost their luster and become a sort of monotonous routine.

It was an anti-On The Road and a proto-American Psycho all at once. In this regard, it was truly remarkable. The story seemed to offer a unique blend of elements that set it apart from the typical road novels. However, just like most works in this genre, it gradually lost its luster as it progressed. The initial excitement and novelty began to wear off, and the narrative started to feel a bit tired and formulaic. Despite this, the book still had its moments of brilliance and managed to keep the reader engaged for a significant portion of the journey. Overall, it was a good read that had the potential to be great but ultimately fell short in the end.

"It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams."

My fifth DeLillo. First, a few words about the man himself. When I'm reading DeLillo, my world functions a little differently. All things perceivable are said in silence, or through raised eyebrows, some form of subtle human action conveying a novel's worth of emotion; an indelible comment on the human condition. That's the influence he has in my ordinary life when I'm reading him....and that's not something any other writer manages to do...he seeps into the consciousness.

Americana has undertones of everything DeLillo would eventually go on to write. It is very much a work of apprenticeship. There's a bit of Underworld here and there, with the utterly fragmented narrative voice. There's also White Noise, about how mundane sometimes life gets, that we fetishize melancholy and morbidity itself.

Americana starts out so well. There's so much to enjoy here, but the pleasantness comes in drips and drabs and never is the swathes of narrative pleasure that one gets from Underworld. There's no epiphany either. The splintered narrative never comes together poetically as it does. But nearly every sentence out of context feels so quotable. However, it loses steam so quickly.

A self-proclaimed writer of not stories, but of sentences will eventually go on to write some of the most artfully conceived novels of our time. But this one is unripe and quivers in its unrealized scope. This, too, is artfully conceived, and there's no denying that, but it's not fully, compellingly realized, and feels underdeveloped. Severely, if I may add.

I had not delved into any of DeLillo's works before. One Monday afternoon, as I sat in my office, perplexed and wondering what to listen to during my long daily commute, I browsed through my library's vast collection of electronic audiobooks. That's when I came across "Americana". The title caught my eye, and the blurb seemed interesting, so I decided to give it a try.

While "Americana" was downloading to my Kindle, I quickly researched DeLillo and learned that he is often associated with Modernist and Postmodernist literary styles, exploring Postmodern themes. Raised and trained on Modernist literature, I've never been a big fan of Postmodern style and structure, but I do see value in some of its themes. My research didn't suggest I'd made a bad choice. In fact, after reading about his influence on today's lauded authors and his impressive list of awards and nominations, I thought he might be a good candidate for a project I'm working on - reading an author's entire works or as much as I can in a year. I've done this with Kurt Vonnegut, José Saramago, and Umberto Eco and loved them all.

I listened to the first 90 minutes of "Americana" on my way home and then the next day on my way back to work. Almost immediately, I struggled with whether to continue. The protagonist, David Bell, is a privileged, successful, and rising executive, but he's also bored, disillusioned, an alcoholic, an unfaithful womanizer, paranoid, and a ruthless gossipmonger. He's surrounded by similar flat, stock characters. I hated David Bell and most of his supporting cast, and I didn't want to hear about their vapid lives. Nevertheless, I pressed on, admittedly with less attention and a jaded ear. I was sure it would get better once the promised road trip across America began.

But it didn't. Part 2 is a flashback to Bell's youth. Although it wasn't as painful as Part 1, there are a couple of stock Postmodern diatribes that made me tune out. We also learn about Bell's dysfunctional family, especially his father, who is as entitled and judgmental as Bell. As frustrating as it was to listen to, it at least explains what Bell becomes later. At the end of Part 2, I again struggled with whether to give up.

And yes, I carried on. Finally, the road trip began, but Part 3 dashed my hopes. Instead of being inspired by the road and the people they meet, Bell and his companions become benumbed and bewildered by the monotony. By the time Bell has the idea of making a film about his life, they've gone off on more Postmodern rants. It was at this point, after almost giving up for the third time, that my audiobook malfunctioned. Hallelujah! Saved by the gods of reading!

To be fair to DeLillo and not offend his fans, I'll concede that maybe the medium and my state of mind contributed to my dislike. Given his status among living authors, I think I'll check out the physical book and give it another chance. Depending on how that goes, I may read more of his work.

No star rating for now; I'll let you know what I think after I read the actual book.

‘Til then, take care, be well, and happy reading!

I dragged my feet throughout this for over a week and stayed up late to finally finish it. At 5 am, I found myself laughing hysterically at a particularly vulgar and extremely funny scene very near the end. The big cat, from his perch on the couch arm, was expressing waves of concern - and the big cat usually concerns himself with very little these days.

I was lost for several medium-long stretches, just like the narrator in his fever dream of elaborately produced synthetic American culture. However, this particular scene made me want to read the entire thing again.

If I were able to criticize the work of the American master Donald DeLillo, I would say that there is so much content in here. But it was difficult to spend the amount of time I should have because there was just so much, so many little details. And perhaps ultimately, there wasn't enough significant material or the sense that the little things were building up to a meaningful whole to make it, overall, the kind of thing I would invest that much time in.

It's like an avalanche of imagery. The sheer number of words on the page and how they are arranged excuse some of the more overwrought and/or underdeveloped elements, while also being a lot in general. It's a lot. I'll probably read it again. In fact, I look forward to reading more books by the same author.

Dellilo, in his first novel, astonishes with the maturity that pervades its thematics and sets his personal tone at a very high level from the outset. Even as the primary text of a debuting author who would come to play a leading role in post-war American literature, it manages to have a specific displacement, which will serve as the impetus for his later works that will earn him acclaim. He dares to be pervaded, in an era when television and its influence are beginning to shape consciousness on a global scale, by the criticism of a system that imposes advertising as a form of necessity in an America that is moving towards postmodernity with an ironic, cold-war obsession. He satirizes this obsession with acuity, humor, and his own language, and offers a counterfactual approach that attempts to understand the limits of a plastic, artificial world, through the existential journey of an advertising executive in search of the real America, behind its constructed image. And he does this by creating a personal, psychedelic "on the road" movie, reassembling pieces of the American interior.

“The packaging of television is a package and it's full of products. There are detergents, cars, cameras, breakfast cereals, other television sets. The programs are not interrupted by commercials; it's exactly the opposite. Television is an electronic form of packaging.”

DeLillo's debut work is truly remarkable as it not only holds the potential and seeds of his future great novels but also shows the remnants of the typical American fiction that he would later abandon.

The first section presents an absurdist office comedy that bears an uncanny resemblance to the popular TV series "Mad Men." It offers a satirical look at the corporate world and the absurdities that occur within it.

The second section, on the other hand, reads like a unique remix of the works of Updike or Cheever. It delves into the lives and relationships of the characters with a细腻 and perceptive touch.

The third section is a profound examination of stasis and marks the beginning of DeLillo's enduring fascination with artists, representations of reality, and extreme works of art. It explores the complex and often enigmatic nature of art and its impact on society.

The final section is like a script of "Two Lane Blacktop" written by Robert Stone, providing a final and hard look at the 1960s. It captures the spirit and essence of that era, with all its hopes, dreams, and disillusionments.

Although the story may not completely hold together in a traditional sense, the novel is filled with an abundance of finely tuned sentences and keen observations. DeLillo's writing style is already evident, and it is clear that he is a writer of great talent and promise.

Imagine the protagonist stepping right out of "American Psycho". Then, as you reach a third of the book, it's as if DeLillo of his more mature works intervenes, reminding you that the writer isn't Easton Ellis.

"Americana", the very first novel written by the author of "Underworld", certainly doesn't have the weight or the pretensions of his great subsequent works. In fact, at times it gets lost in a plot that seems to lack a precise direction. But it's precisely with this indecision that DeLillo, once again, managed to strike a chord with me: "Americana" speaks of everything that America, in the '70s as well as today, represents. There's a great deal of talk about television and advertising in its pages, but also about family and work. It's a critique of the business world and new technologies, but also a hymn to the personal (and artistic) search for one's own path.

Everything is seen through the eyes of the protagonist, David Bell, a very young twenty-eight-year-old with already an important position in a major television network, a sort of yuppie before the term existed. To his personal success, which is littered with important milestones in work as well as a private life marked by countless conquests, there is, however, a counterpoint in the increasingly frantic search for his own being. It's thus that, taking advantage of a work commitment, David Bell will find himself traveling across America in a camper, filming his personal movie, an autobiographical feature in which amateur footage and improvised actors represent the "American dream" of the young twenty-eight-year-old, interpreting, often accentuating, the behaviors that in his first 28 years of life he has been. But not only: in the lens of his movie camera are captured dialogues that express all the malaise of the American people, all the dreams and fears, the successes and the unforeseen events, the anger and the relationships, the betrayals and the discoveries.

From this comes out that imprecise plot I was talking about: "Americana" is a book that prefers to a linear story a "collection" of moments, increasingly unconnected to each other as you progress with the reading. The obsession and the search of the protagonist coincide with the "rarefaction" of the novel, up to a finale in which the protagonist almost seems to disappear from view.

"Americana" is not a book for everyone, and it's absolutely not the DeLillo I would recommend to someone who hasn't read anything else of his. However, it's a novel that paves the way for many others: the themes dealt with in this book will become fundamental for American postmodernism, and in particular for all those authors of the immediately following generation - David Foster Wallace above all - who will have to face themes related to the American dream and its (often distorted) representation through the media.

I read this book several years ago, and I have to admit that I quite liked it.

Although it is not really his finest work, there is a truly wonderful part within it.

In this particular section, the writer is in the process of making a film. He has written the script directly on the walls of the motel room where he is staying.

Then, he gets the actor to read the script while he uses the camera to film the actor or pan across the text on the walls.

It creates a unique and vivid scene that really sticks in your mind.

Overall, his books are filled with incredibly powerful and strong images that have the ability to stay with you for a very long time.

These images seem to linger in your memory, years after you have finished reading the book.

They have a certain charm and impact that makes his works truly memorable.

I haven't delved into any of DeLillo's other literary creations, but this particular novel left me with a profound sense of dissatisfaction.

It seemed to be pretentious merely for the sake of being so, overly self-conscious about its intended message to the extent that it forfeited all semblance of authenticity.

The narrative felt as if it dragged on interminably. While I could fathom the intention behind splitting up the flawed voice of David Bell, especially in the initial half of the novel, I ultimately walked away with the impression that the author was only proficient in crafting one type of character with any degree of finesse, namely the overprivileged white businessman who believes he is entitled to extract more from a world in which he already prospers.

And what on earth was that final chapter supposed to signify?

Sorry to my ex-boyfriend who thoughtfully gave me this book, believing I would cherish it. You made an effort, but unfortunately, this novel just didn't resonate with me.

No ❤️

Americana is a profound exploration of existential emptiness.

Americana is a story that delves deep into the human condition of existential emptiness. The war blares on television every night, yet people flock to the movies. Soon, the movies all start to blend together, and individuals find themselves in dim rooms, aimlessly turning things on or off, or watching others do the same. Some burn joss sticks and listen to tapes of near silence.

Emptiness pervades every aspect of life - spiritual, cultural, intellectual, and societal. It is omnipresent, and there seems to be no escape. In this void, one can only obey their basic instincts.

The description of the office is both vivid and disturbing. The girls are hammering away at their little oval keys, while some talk to themselves and mutter expletives when they make mistakes. The supply area is like a sexually charged fantasy, with women in various positions that seem almost designed to shock.

Don DeLillo's vision of the present and the future is bleak and filled with bitterness. He suggests that, deep down, we all secretly desire to destroy the beautiful and historic things that make up our world. We want to replace them with tasteless and identical structures, creating a world of straight lines and right angles.

The main character, realizing the futility of it all, decides to run away and embark on his own existential journey. However, he quickly discovers that there is nowhere to run. Life may seem full of events, but it is all just froth. A light blow of the wind, and there will be nothing left but emptiness. We have learned not to be afraid of the dark, but we have forgotten that darkness means death. And the yawning emptiness will ultimately devour us all.