Another of the second tier of DeLillo's books, this one talks of writer's block and of the crazy marriage cult of Kim Jo Pak's Unification cult. Bizarre and full of action, it is well-written and a page-turner. It is however one to read after the masterpiece of Underworld.

Mid. Maybe I just don't get it. Cool that it's about 9/11 despite being written ten years earlier.

O livro se perde em certas passagens, mas é tão brilhante em outras que merece cinco estrelas. Tratado ficcional sobre os desafios da escrita, os limites impostos pela fama, o poder da imagem e a narrativa do terrorismo, Mao II começa e termina com cenas inusitadas de casamentos, mostra a trajetória de um escritor recluso que vai dos EUA a Beirute e de uma fotógrafa que termina sendo alvo de flashes numa cidade destruída. A riqueza das cenas, diálogos e descrições é imensa. Em toda sua elegante confusão e inteligência, o romance fica ressoando depois da leitura e não há como evitar os vários questionamentos que o autor propõe.

What I like about DeLillo is that his writing consistently tingles at the sentence level & his characters are reliably weird and soft and guileless. What I don't like is that his novels feel like intellectual circle jerks, probably against their own intention, and this one in particular is so full of unresolved thoughts about Maoist China / the Cultural Revolution / global "terror" / the Baudrillardian "masses" that it made me uncomfortable.

"He could have told George he was writing about the hostage to bring him back, to return a meaning that had been lost to the world when they locked him in that room. Maybe that was it. When you inflict punishment on someone who is not guilty, when you fill rooms with innocent victims, you begin to empty the world of meaning and erect a separate mental state, the mind consuming what's outside itself, replacing real things with plots and fictions. One fiction taking the world narrowly into itself, the other fiction pushing out toward the social order, trying to unfold into it. He could have told George a writer creates a character as a way to reveal consciousness, increase the flow of meaning. This is how we reply to power and beat back our fear. By extending the pitch of consciousness and human possibility.”

This is the first Delillo novel I have read. As such, I wasn't yet aware that it would need a textual analysis in order to write a proper review. That being said, I will make remark on what I experienced.

Postmodernism
Each time I read a postmodern novel, I am reminded of that I prefer its painting tradition rather than its novels. Postmodern themes remind me of a Cubist painting of dark, dirty city. Purposefully dreadful. In Mao II, everything feels askew, almost like a near-perfect fifth dimensional Earth where everything takes a postmodern bend: the idealistic extremism; the writer as recluse and hostage negotiator; the religious mass marriage prologue; the strange sexual relations between three main characters; the dialogue that fits together like a Picasso face; the idolatry. This also caused me to feel distanced from the novel, totally lacking empathy for the characters and plot. Only the photographer, Britta, felt like a warm-blooded human being.

Idolization
A strong theme, though perhaps periphery or synonymous to a better term that I am failing to conjure, is the idolization of different subjects in Mao II. Brita’s idolization of writers and Bill in particular; Scott and Karen’s idolization of Bill; Karen toward her estranged husband and Master, the leader of a church cult she used to be part of; the numerous mentions of Mao Zedong’s Red Guards; the new idealistic militia of Beirut’s “Ali 22” terrorist group; the reported funeral of Iran’s Khomeini. These examples aren’t identical; some include throngs of believers devoted to their political or religious leader, while others are a complex and intimate attachment to Bill, a public figure and writer. These cases serve to create a current of extremism that charges the story.

Spurts of Delillo’s Mao II proved his master class and general mystique that follows him. While Mao II is remarkable in that it precipitates the rise of terror that envelops our modern world, its prose didn't do enough to lift me out of the dumps that the themes put me in. I wasn't attached to the characters in any way, and the commentary on terrorism didn't speak to me in any profound or unique way. To truly justify this opinion I would need to read Mao II again, paying close attention line by line. But that isn’t something I plan to do.

It's hard to believe this novel was written pre 9/11. Dandy Don's assessment of the role of terror in our society is almost prophetic. Catastrophe, he observes, is the only thing capable of penetrating our distracted consciousness.

"In societies reduced to blur and glut, terror is the only meaningful act. There's too much everything, more things and messages and meanings than we can use in ten thousand lifetimes. Inertia-hysteria."

Delillo also focuses on the rise of crowds and our need to fit in: to find something bigger than ourselves that gives meaning to our lives. It is a prominent theme that he touches on steadily throughout the novel. "The future belongs to crowds." Meanwhile, our central character spends his time doing everything he can to avoid crowds. A nice bit of irony there.

I liked how Delillo brings these two themes together in the final chapter.

Other than the chapter dedicated to Karen's ramblings in the park, the plot is entertaining. So not only do we have interesting thematic discources, but we have a fun read as well. Not quite 'Libra' great but certainly another excellent work from Delillo.

Mao II o de las extensiones posmodernas

Una novela del maestro Don DeLillo, publicada en 1991, donde se exploran temas como: la identidad, el terrorismo, la cultura de masas y la influencia de los medios de comunicación en las sociedades contemporáneas postindustriales. La novela fue galardonada con el Premio PEN/Faulkner de Ficción en 1992.

La trama de gira en torno a Bill Gray, un autor recluso que no ha publicado una novela en muchos años y que vive aislado del mundo (una especie o más bien un homenaje a Thomas Pynchon). Gray está en medio de un bloqueo creativo y es persuadido por su asistente, Scott, y una fotógrafa, Brita, para romper su reclusión y participar en la vida pública. La historia se complica, de un modo rocambolesco y beckettiano, cuando Bill decide ayudar a rescatar a un poeta suizo secuestrado por un grupo terrorista en Beirut. Elementos destacables en la obra de DeLillo:

i. La figura del artista: se explora el rol del artista en la sociedad contemporánea y la tensión entre la necesidad de privacidad y la presión de la vida pública. Bill Gray representa el arquetipo del escritor torturado, cuyo arte se ve afectado por su aislamiento. Es un personaje extraño, que no acabamos de comprender; obsesionado con la perfección literaria y con alcanzar la gloria entendida como salvación.

ii. Terrorismo y medios de comunicación: se aborda cómo los terroristas y los novelistas (entendido como artista de la totalidad) compiten por captar la atención del público. DeLillo sugiere que el terrorismo se ha convertido en una forma de espectáculo mediático, cambiando la percepción pública y la política global. El terrorista es el novelista del siglo XXI. Recordemos que la novela fue escrita antes de los atentados del 11S.

iii. Cultura de masas: a través de la referencia a Mao Zedong –la portada de la serigrafía de Warhol—, DeLillo analiza cómo las imágenes y las figuras carismáticas pueden influir y manipular a las masas. La repetición de la imagen de Mao en la novela destaca el poder de los símbolos en la cultura contemporánea. Warhol como alimentador de esos símbolos y la masa como un animal hambriento fagocitador de esos símbolos. La masa siempre está necesitada de símbolos. De Lenin a Mao, de Mao al Che, del Che a Obama y de Obama hasta Trump.

iv. Identidad y alienación: los personajes de la novela luchan con su sentido de identidad en un mundo dominado por imágenes y narrativas mediáticas. La alienación y la búsqueda de conexión humana son temas recurrentes en la narrativa de DeLillo. Aquí los personajes se reducen al mínimo, en una puesta en escena que juguetea con lo teatral o con la teatralización de los acontecimientos.

v. Estilo y recepción: el estilo de DeLillo es característicamente denso y poético, con un enfoque en el lenguaje y el ritmo. El ritmo es pausado invitando al lector a perderse en las imágenes que sugieren, imágenes incendiarias, catastróficas, de un mundo agónico.

Even better upon a second reading, DeLillo books are ones that need demand two readings you read and see things with such vivid clearity, a wedding party escorted by a Russian Tank.

Hey America deal makers or diplomats, " Don't bring your problems to Beirut" or Syria,

The novel can't compete with the war and death on the 24-hour news networks shown without remorse, we relay on the carnage seen on CNN so we feel lucking about drinking our Coke-a-Cola with out bombs falling on our heads feel less guilty becouase we are aware of the injustice even when CNN makes Billions of dollars of showing death! We should step back perhaps, read more !

An original novel about a reclusive, successful author, Bill Gray. Bill comes out of hiding to read some poems at a public venue and finds himself communicating with a terrorist organization. There are some well written, thought provoking paragraphs throughout this novel. Events occur that provide reading momentum, however the novel is more about ideas, with no real plot resolution.

This book was first published in 1991.

While this doesn't come close to Underworld or Libra, the ideas are extremely enticing. I'm ranking it with Cosmopolisand Falling Man. Ambitious and damn good but not great. Yet DeLillo is still and always an exceptional author for me, and hey, this may not be a home run but the ball is way the hell out there.

“The future belongs to crowds.”

If you’ve tried DeLillo and didn’t get on with him this probably isn’t going to change your mind. All the familiar DeLillo hallmarks are present and correct – every character speaking in an identical voice, every character as intelligent and eloquent as the author; dramatic tension is hewn into the sentences rather than the plot; and it’s primarily cerebral in its appeal as opposed to emotionally engaging.

There are five players in Mao II. Bill is a famous reclusive writer. The more he disdains any public persona the more attention he receives – there’s a poignant dramatisation of the Elena Ferrante situation here. You could say he’s held hostage by his reluctance to assimilate himself to the demands of celebrity. He is stalked to his remote hideaway by a fanatical fan, Scott. Scott ingratiates himself and becomes his personal assistant. Scott eventually picks himself up a lover, a waif he finds lost in a local beat up town. Karen is running from a religious cult she joined as a nineteen year old, she is also running from her family. The theme of the individual attempting to flee crowd mentality is reinforced through Karen. Then there’s Brita, a photographer, who is allowed to photograph Bill and taken to his hideaway in the dark, much as a journalist might be escorted to the burrow of a group of insurgents. Lastly there’s the French poet who has been taken hostage by a terrorist group in Lebanon and is kept in a tiny room with a hood over his head. Bill has come to believe the writer has been usurped by the terrorist as the prime forger of world narrative. And that they have achieved this by means of replacing the word with the mass produced image as the collective focus of debate. When Bill flies to London to take part in a reading of the French poet’s work the suggestion is made that he might be able to facilitate the release of the hostage if he meets with the terrorist group.

As usual with DeLillo’s books, Mao II was ahead of its time. This was written in 1990 when barely anyone had heard of Osama Bin Laden. Also, as is usually the case, DeLillo’s sentence writing achieves a more thrilling transcendence than any other living writer I know. I don’t think any novelist has made me think about and understand our modern world to the extent DeLillo has. He writes about the present as if with the eerie razor sharp lucidity of hindsight. What happens in his novels on a small scale invariably starts happening in the real world on a large scale years later.