"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, gets said in silence, or through raised eyebrows, sone 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. Very much a work of apprenticeship. There's a bit of Underworld here and there, the utterly fragmented narrative voice, I mean. There's White Noise too, here and there, 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 swathes of narrative pleasure that one gets from Underworld. There's is no epiphany either. the splintered narrative never comes together poetically as it does. But nearly every sentence out of context feels so quotable. But 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 unrealised scope.

This, too, however is Artfully conceived and there's no denying that, but not fully, comepellingly realised, and feels undeveloped. Severely, if I may add.

No ❤️


I haven’t read any of DeLillo’s other work but I really didn’t enjoy this novel. It felt pretentious for the sake of being pretentious, so self-conscious in its purpose that it lost all authenticity. It also just felt like it really dragged and whilst I understood the intent in splitting up the flawed voice of David Bell (particularly in the first half of the novel), I just came away feeling like the author could only write one type of character well, and that was the over privileged white business man with an entitlement to get more out of a world he already thrives in. Also what the HELL was that last chapter?


Sorry to my ex boyfriend who got me this book thinking I’d love it. You tried.

Un po' Kerouac, un po' Roth, un po' Tom Wolfe, Delillo ci conduce in questa critica serrata della società americana e del desiderio di fuga che i numerosi controsensi di questa realtàculturale inducono nelle anime più sensibili e meno allineate intellettualmente. Ho apprezzato molto la brillantezza dei dialoghi, degni di una vera e propria sceneggiatura e alcuni passi della terza parte. Molto meno lo sviluppo generale del romanzo. Prolisso, disorganico, surreale in molti passi, con troppi personaggi da seguire e troppe divagazioni secondarie non sempre funzionali a trama e messaggio. Eccessivo lo stacco tra prima e seconda parte (sembrano due romanzi giustapposti senza una vera continuità di fondo). Insomma, così come ho gradito poco Wolfe, mi ritrovo a non gradire granché nemmeno Delillo. Forse sono le caratteristiche della corrente letteraria a cui appartengono che mi fanno sempre sentire stranito durante la lettura.

White Noise is one of my favorites. This didn't do it for me. It's dated and was almost painful to read; all the characters are self-absorbed and one-sided. It's written almost as stream of consciousness, but grates because it's trying too hard to prove something.

I am planning to read Libra soon because the concept is just too interesting. I wish I'd passed on this one though.

Deludente, noioso; una vera fatica leggerlo.

dico l'ovvio siamo eoni di distanza da underworld ma questo è un romanzo che chiunque scrittore in erba venderebbe sua madre per porterlo scrivere. il protagonista mi ricorda molto Pasolini quando andava a intervistare la varia umanità che abitava Via del Mandrione a Roma... questo romanzo sprizza neorealismo italiano da ogni pagina

come al solito chi ha dato 1-2 stelle si aspettava underworld ma ci sta
e io che mi stupisco delle 5 stelle a saviano

devo ricordare che questo è il PRIMO romanzo di Delillo? quindo ovvio che non si tratti del capolavoro della vita Delillo qui è uno scrittore che deve ancora capire e padroneggiare non tanto cosa deve dire ma come.. quindi ben ci sta che sia prolisso e se la seconda parte del romanzo è cronologicamente staccata dal resto del romanzo devo ricordarvi che prima di Delillo, Mario Puzo ne "il padrino" uscito nel '69 ha raccontato l'infanzia e i primi anni del padrino nella terza parte...
tutti critici tutti premi pulitzer qua che il massimo che hanno fatto come scrittura è il tema alle medie

It's a four-star book, I guess, but I love the opening. Early Delillo is underrated; everyone places too much emphasis on the later "big books."

“The war was on television every night but we all went to the movies. Soon most of the movies began to look alike and we went into dim rooms and turned on or off, or watched others turn on or off….”

ok debut: delillo är jätterolig & det fanns några partier jag verkligen gillade (”death is just around the corner”)

"I couldn't make the leap. Too much has been forgotten in the name of memory. She was the one, I decided, who would guide me into the vortex of the cliche. America can be saved only by what it's trying to destroy."
- Don DeLillo, Americana

I've taken a bit of a break from reading books, but this one. This one was a great novel to plunge into, head first (not realling, I knew exactly what I was jumping). Delillo is one of the first, great American, literary novelists who made me WANT to write. I still remember when I was 17 reading MAO II from a small, military library and being absolutely blown away by every paragraph. The novel practically pulsed in my hands. I felt somethhing alive in the words and something that was both dangerous and almost explosive to the touch.

Now, almost 25-years later, DeLillo's first novel jumps from a quasi-normal narrative to almost a prose poem, from Mad Men to David Lynch. It is funky, infinitely quotable, and haunting in its strange awareness and paranoia. It is like Don Delillo wanted to describe a documentary of America verbally, but grew unsatisfied in just telling you what he was seeing. Soon, he switched to describing what America was saying/singing. After that he was licking the Acetate off the Super 16 and describing the trip. Funky.

I'm taking a road trip with my brother (a writer), his friend (a documentary filmaker and former CIA agent), and another freind (a literary American writer of both fiction and nonfiction) later this summer. I was teasing my brother that during the trip, I was going to literally EAT the author's book, page-by-page, while traveling with him on this road trip through the West. Perhaps, I need to switch books and eat 'Americana'. Our road trip is starting and ending in Dallas. Love Field. I feel like my Summer of 2017 started and will eventually end with the taste of 'Americana' in my mouth.ding in Dallas. Love Field. I feel like my Summer of 2017 started and will eventually end with the taste of 'Americana' in my mouth.

Completed this book in three days. A great read. I enjoyed. Highly recommend

Delillo writes about image and death and it seems that most of his characters are fascinated by war and terrorism, whether it’s David Bell from Americana or Gary Harkness of End Zone. At times it’s as if Delillo is writing thru a video camera and there’s a sense of excellent cinematography in all of Delillo’s work. Americana is Don Delillo’s first novel and I loved it but felt that the third part was lacking something, it didn’t do a lot for me and felt the other three parts were much better. I liked the nine mile race track in the end of Americana and when David Bell is in his NYC high rise office in the beginning looking out the window at the Mohawk skyscraper workers working on a skeleton of a high-rise building going up, it’s at this point, a scene only Delillo can write, that you feel David Bell's need to escape. Wonderful and ruff around the edges a brilliant first novel