look buddy I can get my fix of pseudo-political crank poetry on twitter any day of the week

“All the odd belongings bundled in a corner, wrapped and tied, many things concealed as one, things inside other things, some infinite collapsible system of getting through a life.”

We are amassed and programmed and guided by voices and gestures and products that pose the idea of originality, of singularity, of epiphany and an almost messianic presence and long-awaited repose, but really we are at the same time both one and one, individual and collective, and nothing is original, nothing is preserved except for a skewed likeness and a short, muddled legacy. For every thing/one, will always be a II.

What I Liked
The writing in Mao II is powerful, stunning, and lovely. Each sentence is structured with care and perfection. Descriptions of mass events and roaring crowds are immersing. I don't know if I've ever rated something so low that was written so well, but I could never get into this book. I did not enjoy this read. And I will not come away a changed person from reading it. The profound message that DeLillo labored to pound into the reader didn't wash over me.

What I Didn't Like
I hated the dialogue in this book. Every character's voice sounded the same, all extensions of DeLillo's own voice and opinions. There were almost no dialogue tags to the point where, when four or five people are talking at once, it's difficult and frustrating to gather who is saying what.

The novel was boring. The characters, dialogue, and storyline were all incredibly dull. The only thing enjoyable about the book was the pretty writing, which can only carry a book so far. I struggled painfully to make it through to the end. I would not have finished if the book was not a mandated read for my literature class.

Writers writing about writers, ostensibly fiction but sometimes starring themselves, sometimes recognizable and sometimes not, sometimes in first person, sometimes in third but maybe not especially omniscient, sometimes winking at and sometimes ignoring the reader. I feel like I’ve read lots of books mining this vein, from Dickens and Maugham to Vonnegut and O’Brien, and Mao II feels like another one, no disrespect meant. I thought it was a great read, with the combination of intimacy and scale familiar to me from other DeLillo books. At its core I think it’s about how we tell and experience stories, what storytellers may actually be trying to tell us, and what our relationship with our storytellers says about us. It takes place mainly in 1989-90 and features lots of cultural landmarks that already seem swept away by history: a mass Moonie wedding in New York, the war in Beirut, the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Coke II. Terrorists are replacing novelists in delivering a communal narrative to a fractured society, where the self is increasingly being subverted or sacrificed for some outlandishly unlikely deliverance. Some readers will undoubtedly associate Bill Gray, the novelist in this story, with J.D. Salinger, which I assume was intentional, but I felt the character could be a reference to the larger body of novelists in general, living more or less comfortably in the familiar isolation of their minds and work, despite a perception or projection of soulful despair. The Bill Gray character has some pretty funny moments, as do a few other characters, most enjoyably delivered via DeLillo’s trademark dialogue. Gray was especially funny after he got off his meds, which was the only predictable plot twist in a book that was otherwise full of surprises.