The rating is 3.5 out of 5. Maybe it deserved a 4, but I read it during the exam period and couldn't remember all those names. After a certain stage, I completely lost track.

The writing was extremely beautiful, though.

Please provide the article that needs to be rewritten and expanded so that I can help you.

If "Mad Men" were to continue on for another five/ten years, or worse, do a spin-off, "Americana" would be its jumping of the shark.

I really wanted to like this book. But I just couldn't connect. David wasn't doing it for me. He seemed like a character who was trying too hard to be cool and edgy, but in reality, he was just coming across as pretentious.

There is a great line though, (thus two stars and not one), "The whole country's going to puke blood when they read it." I wish I had that sort of visceral reaction to "Americana." Instead, I found myself getting bored and frustrated with the story.

Seriously, the fictional novel Brand was referring to, "Coitus Interruptus," sounded like a better story than this one. It had a more interesting title and seemed like it might have had more depth and substance.

I hate to stop reading something when I'm less than one hundred pages from the end, but I need to move on to something a little breezier and a lot less masturbatory--it's Friday. Hello, Jonathan Ames. I'm hoping that his work will provide me with the entertainment and escape that I'm looking for.

Alert! Attention! This is not simply "a road novel" as it is marketed. It's like that Kerouac scroll that travels from sea to shining sea, but this is something more. It is just as much, if not more so, an office novel and a coming-of-age/emerging artistic sensibility/search-for-meaning novel. Disregard all commentary that fails to recognize that this is a triptych.

The third section occurs to some extent on the road, but for the most part, the characters are stalled out in Fort Curtis, perhaps in Illinois or Missouri, filming an artsy experimental film. Here, the novel dissolves, much like the similarly titled young man's novel (Amerika) by Kafka. This is a remarkable late-'60s zeitgeist core sample of a novel, an unparalleled performance in prose for a first novel. Although the style and especially the dialogue aren't yet fully individuated, it has a certain charm.

It feels like a combination of Roth, Salinger, and Cheever, after they've taken psychedelics. It is aerodynamic and aerated in its lack of reliance on plot, more imagistic, clever, and shit-talky. It's important to note that on page 370 (of 377), the narrator makes a phone call asking about the third-baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies at a random point in time related to something about Judy Garland. This is significant because when the reviewer first moved to Philadelphia in 2006, the third-baseman was David Bell, who later achieved his middling level of play with the help of steroids. Coincidentally, the narrator's name is also David Bell, an "extremely handsome young man," a 28-year-old employee of a NYC TV network, the son of an ad man, with a mother who died when he was 20, from Westchester County.

The opening section is a raucous depiction of a young man working in an era when men smoked and drank in their offices and casually made out with their secretaries. Today, most interactions among colleagues, especially between men and women, would result in HR reports. He longs for more in life and ultimately hits the road after a section that beautifully depicts life at home when he was young, around eleven years old, during a party his family throws. Knowing that DeLillo is from the Bronx too, one can see that it all slyly satirizes conventional commuter culture, suburban ennui, and more. Just as the first section slyly satirizes the office novel and the last section slyly satirizes the road novel, it is always jocoserious, amusing yet detailed, reverential, and aware of the enormities and complexities of existence.

"... once again I felt it was literature I had been confronting these past days, the archetypes of the dismal mystery." There is also great occasional writing about baseball. It gets 4.5 stars rounded up since it's his first novel and the first two sections were really enjoyable before the third section, which, like parts of Underworld and Ratner's Star, opts for dissolution over a conventional expected resolution. There were a few stretches of dense, overindulgent, borderline incomprehensible all-out art writing usually related to madmen on the radio. Overall, it's a fantastic period piece with top-notch prose and a young writer to watch!

ΝτεΛιΡιο is a unique and interesting place.

It has its own charm and characteristics that attract people from all over.

The scenery in ΝτεΛιΡιο is breathtaking, with beautiful landscapes and natural wonders.

The architecture here is also very distinctive, showing the unique cultural heritage of the area.

In addition, ΝτεΛιΡιο offers a variety of activities and experiences for tourists.

You can explore the local markets, taste the delicious local cuisine, or participate in outdoor adventures.

Whether you are looking for a relaxing vacation or an exciting exploration, ΝτεΛιΡιο has something for everyone.

It is a place that leaves a lasting impression and makes you want to come back again and again.

So, if you have the opportunity, don't miss the chance to visit ΝτεΛιΡιο and discover its beauty and魅力 for yourself.

Part One is truly the most enjoyable section. It presents a hilarious world of work and co-workers, filled with comical situations and interactions that keep the reader entertained from start to finish.

Then, Part Two makes a significant switch and delves into a boyhood account. Whether this is autobiographical or not remains a mystery to me. It offers a different perspective and takes the reader on a journey through the memories and experiences of a younger age.

However, Parts Three and Four take a rather disappointing turn. They seem to wander off into pointless non-sequitur passages that, at times, are written with beautiful eloquence. Despite this, I felt obligated to read them simply because I had already invested 200 pages into the book and held out hope that it might somehow crawl out of the hole it had gone down.

Unfortunately, my hopes were in vain. The book failed to redeem itself and left me feeling somewhat dissatisfied with the overall reading experience.

Like many others, I became interested in Don DeLillo due to David Foster Wallace. It is indeed easy to spot the similarities between these two authors. However, I did miss DFW's humor.

The tone of the first part of DeLillo's work also reminds me a great deal of American Psycho. This is another obvious comparison, as the author, Bret Easton Ellis, was also a big fan of DeLillo.

Americana has a lot of style and contains some truly great passages. Nevertheless, as a whole, it didn't quite work for me. It is a bit too experimental and open-ended. These are things that I don't typically consider as "problems," but in this particular book, they made the reading experience rather boring and a bit repetitive.

I found myself struggling to stay engaged throughout the entire novel. Despite its literary merits, the lack of a more straightforward narrative and the excessive experimentation detracted from my overall enjoyment.

Perhaps others will have a different experience with Americana, but for me, it failed to live up to my expectations.

Words on paper and evoked images, blurred, cut, stolen: "Americana" is one of the most successful marriages between literature and cinema, with a clear style and excellent narration that shines in some passages of great beauty.

David has chosen to become the director of his own life, to make it a great film without paying spectators, full of fragile and adrenaline-fueled relationships, perfectly embodying an adorable cliché. Deep down, however, there remains a void to fill. DeLillo, like Fellini, molds a character of talent and charm, yet full of uncertainties, prey to an artistic confusion that becomes the greatest stimulus for a new, true work that seeks authenticity precisely because the creator is saturated with the stagings that have filled his own existence. The camera, then, ceases to be a tool of pretense and becomes the witness of distant and unknown lives, often corrupt and marvelously genuine. David's project becomes the reflection of the book: long, fragmented, not very linear, essentially plotless and without a precise direction. But indelible. A work on America and its dream, on postmodern society, the media, (already) invasive technologies, Art, on the lives of each and on the Life of all.

Americana is DeLillo's first novel. However, I can't help but notice that it doesn't seem like his debut work.

It's as if he had already reached a certain level of writing proficiency right from the start and never really felt the need to progress further.

It's as if he had chosen a particular style of writing and remained committed to it throughout his career.

The story of Americana revolves around a man named David Bell. He decides to leave his job in pursuit of a more fulfilling life, hoping to truly "live."

But instead, he embarks on an adventure that has a profound and lasting impact on him, from which he never fully recovers.

This novel delves into the themes of identity, the search for meaning in life, and the consequences of our choices.

It offers a thought-provoking exploration of the human condition and the challenges we face in trying to find our place in the world.

Overall, Americana is a captivating read that showcases DeLillo's unique writing style and his ability to create complex and engaging characters.

It's a novel that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.

There's an excerpt that I truly adore and which essentially encapsulates the very essence of the entire novel.
“What we really want to do, he said, deep in the secret recesses of our heart, all of us, is to destroy the forests, white saltbox houses, covered bridges, brownstones, azalea gardens, big red barns, colonial inns, riverboats, whaling villages, cider mills, waterwheels, antebellum mansions, log cabins, lovely old churches and snug little railroad depots. All of us secretly favor this destruction, even conservationists, even those embattled individuals who make a career out of picketing graceful and historic old buildings to protest their demolition. It’s what we are. Straight lines and right angles. We feel a private thrill, admit it, at the sight of beauty in flames. We wish to blast all the fine old things to oblivion and replace them with tasteless identical structures. Boxes of cancer cells. Neat gray chambers for meditation and the reading of advertisements. Imagine the fantastic prairie motels we could build if only we would give in completely to the demons of our true nature; imagine the automobiles that might take us from motel to motel; imagine the monolithic fifty-story machines for disposing of the victims of automobile accidents without the bother of funerals and the waste of tombstones or sepulchres. Let the police run wild. Let the mad leaders of our nation destroy whomever they choose…”
I have a profound admiration for his remarkable prose and meticulous attention to detail. These small details endow the story with an enigmatic originality. The protagonist resolves to embark on his own existential journey, yet there seems to be nowhere to flee. Life appears to be replete with events, but it all amounts to mere froth. With just a gentle blow of the wind, there will be nothing remaining but emptiness. The gaping emptiness that consumes you. One day, when I venture into filmmaking, I might perhaps contemplate an adaptation of this work.

What is America? It is a country that everyone perceives in their own way. It is the people (work and acquaintances), it is the memories (childhood), it is the space (journey) and the landscapes (film). All of this forms the perception of the country and the person within it.

And David, identifying himself with the country on one level, still films all of this.

The novel, where the author's style is formed. The debut (which some call problematic), which could have been the culmination of creativity for someone weaker than Don. The book, where the themes of death, war, advertising, freedom, family and generally the place of creativity in the then modernity are intertwined into a tight knot. And it is still relevant.

The director, the writer, the sculptor and even the obsessive quoter - these are the people of the world where art stands above ordinary life. There is an explicitly expressed desire to capture reality (even through memories) and fix it. Because without fixation there is no immortality. As in the quote from Saint Augustine that is important for the novel (and generally for all of DeLillo's creativity) "And there will never be anything worse for a person in death than when death is immortal."

In general, this is a novel about everything that makes a person not an empty place.

The main thing is to understand and know what all this is for, because otherwise what is the point of all of it..

Cruel but Hilarious

Some things in life can be both cruel and hilarious at the same time. It's a strange combination that often catches us off guard. For example, imagine a situation where someone trips and falls in a public place. On one hand, it can be quite cruel to witness their moment of embarrassment. But on the other hand, if the fall is particularly comical, it might忍不住 make us laugh.

This kind of cruel but hilarious moment can also occur in movies, TV shows, or even in our daily conversations. We might see a character in a comedy make a really stupid mistake that leads to a series of absurd and embarrassing events. While it's cruel to the character, it can be highly entertaining for us as the audience.

However, we should be careful not to take this cruelty too far. We should always respect the feelings of others and not laugh at their misfortunes in a mean or hurtful way. After all, we never know when we might be the ones in a similar situation. So, let's enjoy the cruel but hilarious moments in life, but do so with a sense of kindness and understanding.