Whacky story where a young boy wins a nobel prize in mathematics and is then recruited to solve the messages seeming originate from Ratner's star.
Bizarre characters and scientific geek language abounds.

There is plentiful evidence of DeLillo's brilliance strewn throughout these pages, but for the most part the going is laboriously slow. In the imaginative conclusion, math and science are revealed to be just as much a creation of the human mind as mysticism and language, where no single one of these approaches is any more able than another to objectively answer the question: "What is the universe as it exists beyond the human brain?"

Earth has received an apparent message from a planet circulating Ratner's Star, and a brilliant mathematical boy is called in to decipher the message. Commentary on science and astronomy and a study on brilliant minds and how they relate (?)

Despite the interesting premise, this book was torture to read. The ideas expressed are as vast and disconnected as the characters created to portray them. The characters were not integrated into the plot - not only did you (slowly and painstakingly) read along as Billy worked on the message, you tried to solve the mystery of why DeLillo included about 90% of the characters. The science, math, astronomy may be interesting to a very small minority, but it wasn't explained or integrated well, so those completing those sections was as fun as reading a dishwashing machine manual. I've read that DeLillo likes to forget his earlier stuff, and now I know why.

Ratner Star

P241, death, v. like W.N.
P222, power of alphabet, "If you know the right combination of letters, you can make anything."
p13 1st full P, "Mathematics made sense."


Ratner Star

!!Q p195, "Existence would be sheer dread without the verifiable fictions of mathematics."
"Watch out for your nervous system in particular." (235)

!?Q end p357, "What we're really doing..."

Q p50, "I think I'm finally tired of being made to journey from speculation to accepted fact and from there to sudden doubt, denial, and contention."
p125, "If dreams don't exceed grasp, all human life is futile."

"What's black and white, left or right, growing little and has no middle?"
"Two answers really. A book that's being read. The universe itself." (173/6)


****

Nascent genius at work. One of those charming episodes of an author "finding their voice." (Except that's not true, it's his 4th novel and DeLillo'd been writing essays too)

4 stars. Big ideas but perhaps without properly fitted britches.

****

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
...
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
...
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws

- "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

*

I fell into a real love-hate relationship with this one.

4.5 stars. Big ideas that need to go see a tailor about resizing them britches.

*****

Bear with me here,

DeLillo tells of a mathematician driven to madness who now lives in a hole eating grubs. It is not always "screamingly" funny but that's splitting hairs. It's pretty darn funny. But here's the thing: you gotta suspend a lot of disbelief to let the joke land. You may "get" it right away but to enjoy it, to keep it from becoming tiresome, you have to lean into the weirdness.

Bear with me here,

Einstein tells of a space-time that is curved by gravity and experienced at different rates relative to the observer.
Assuming a spherical cow...
Given an infinite number of monkeys...
On an island where the barber shaves everyone who does not shave themselves...

Math is not always "realistically" logical but that's splitting hairs. It's pretty darn logical. But here's the thing: you gotta suspend a lot of disbelief to let the theories play out. You may "get" it but to use it, to identify value amid abstraction, you have to lean into the weirdness.

5 starss


~/~

A book so nice
Should be read twice
A book so nast'
Can't be read fast(y)

5 stars. Hurts the noggin. In a good way.

One of the first Delillo novels, where I actually considered not finishing at two or three points. Very slap-sticky if you can geek out on the math/science commentary. It read kind of like a Kubrick movie.

LATEST ATTEMPT (aka, attempt #3);

I WANT to like this book, would love to dig into a novel that takes place in a science think tank with odd characters, but I would liken this book more to some poor Kafka, and as listless as DeLillo's novel The Names. There is an intriguing mystery here, and like a Kafka K-named character, Twilling meets only further distraction and obstruction as he tries to decode a mysterious space message, but unlike Kafka, the distractions and obstructions become too redundant, and steadily lacking interest. Like The Names, the characters mainly in play just don't keep up enough intrigue to make the 400+ pages worth the consistent effort.

************************

I must admit that this book, even after two stabs at it, didn't thrill me the way other DeLillo novels can, and I did feel as though I were reading something more by Thomas Pynchon. Many of DeLillo's finest work seems to work on the exploration and twisting of its own metaphor, but filtered through extraordinary but still accessible characters, people who feel both rooted in and confused by the complexities of the world behind them. Ratner's Star seems to want to delve in such a way, but through a situation far more absurdist.

Billy Twilling is a young math Nobel laureate who is pulled into a think tank that bombards him on all sides with eccentrics, from fellow mathematicians to the custodians. Yet many of these characters become redundant through their lack of introduction and propensity for monologue. Many moments of the book read like Kafka and Michio Kaku co-writing an episode of _Dragnet_. Twilling's main job is to decipher a coded message received from outer space, but of course his progress is hindered and his job outright disregarded by many in Field Experiment One. Eventually, the book breaks down in plotline and form itself when Twilling is pulled underground into a new project that is off the charts.

There are many delights in this book--Twilling himself is a wonderfully concise and hilariously unhumorous boy. DeLillo shows his skill at even comic timing on the page. The scenes with a mathematic precurser who has banished himself to a hole in the ground and the meeting of the esteemed Ratner himself during a torch ceremony are wonderful, yet I didn't find the book as a whole challenging with its exploration of metaphor as DeLillo does in later books. There is a wide expanse of characters, but the ecentricities become the focus of the book, not the crucial ideas, and the eccentricities become a little formulaic at times, even in their seeming randomness.

Reading this has been like panning for gold in a mud-riven creek bed. There were a few flakes of value but not even enough of them to buy a new mule. And my brain now feels like it could use a thorough hosing or beer bath.

Oh good lawd why WHY! I do not like this author. Bloom thank you for the suggestion, but he is not for me. EVER not for me. Just one big NEVER
I’m stopping this book. It’s just ridiculous as far as I’m concerned.
I think I may have two more of his books to attempt listening to, and I will most likely feel the same way, so I will start them but I may cut them short because have you noticed? I have 5000 other and maybe much better books to read before I die.
God I feel like the narrator is just rambling. The synopsis is enough information about the plot for those of you who wish to attack me about not actually writing what I don’t like about this book. This is just not my thing and I can’t fake it. But hey! High point-no nazis were discussed in the writing of this book.

I can't believe this came out in 1976, making it 67 years old.

Chapter Alpha:

n  n

the book is a wall of sound a wall of words it took me over two months to read it, unheard of for me. you open the book you go to a chapter you read the chapter you fall into a black hole it takes forever to read it is a timeless experience you come out of the chapter and you wonder, where has all the time gone? gone... gone... gone... the book is an echo chamber of ideas but each echo comes back louder louder LOUDER and then the idea is discarded. BOOM on to the next one! or maybe not discarded, maybe looked at from another angle all kinds of angles looking look looked let's look at that idea from behind a one-way mirror, the idea doesn't know you're looking at it, keep looking you sneaky horny thing, your breathing gets shallow and rapid, maybe the idea will undress. or maybe the idea will become something different, transformed. transubstantiated? transcendentalized? transmogrified? the ideas are still there, just turned into new ideas, one shape into another, at dizzying speed, the book is dizzying, I'm getting a headache, my vision is blurring and so are the pages, my mind it hurts. the book is layered with ideas like a room stacked full of pillows, some comfy some not, each pillow is an idea, some soft some hard, just throw yourself into the pillow room, into Ratner's Star, have fun with it, it's pain-free after that first time. "Ideas" are like words, their meanings "change" over time, now is as good a time as any, as ever, what is "time" anyway, let's switch things up! I like talking like this so I will, just listen.

n  n


Interlude:

n  "But when he put quotes around words for commonplace objects, the effect was unsettling. He wasn't simply isolating an object from its name, he seemed to be trying to empty an entire system of meaning."n

Chapter Omega:

n  n

the boy is a genius he is a boy genius, a wunderkind, a Nobel prize winner, his skills with maths is amazings. he is not a curious boy but he is a horny boy like all boys well I suppose he is curious about things that make him horny so he is not completely not-curious. he is here to solve a mystery the aliens have communicated with earth but what is it they are saying and are they even aliens. the first two-thirds of the book is set above ground on a campus for scientists trying to solve this puzzle there are so many characters all buzzing around the boy it is a beehive he is a drone, a horny barely curious drone with a mystery to solve. in the last third of the book he moves underground he and his mentor and a sexy author and four other characters and suddenly the book feels much smaller but the ideas remain big and flexible and ever-changing and the perspectives suddenly shift, it's not just the boy it's all of them, these underground folk, their perspectives blur into each other fade into each other dissolve into each other, sometimes in the same long paragraph, he thought this and she thought that and the reader is like What? I thought I was reading him? but now I'm reading her? and who is having sex with her, the mentor or the boy? the mentor comes out from underground and then he goes into another hole in the ground, he crawls into a hole that he has dug in that hole in the ground, just like the other mentor. ah the fate of all such mentors to all such boys. also living underground was an Asian scientist specializing in bat guano, a Dr. Wu, I liked this scientist not just because he's Asian but because he thought he was going to die and he didn't, he reminded me of me, I root for bat-loving Asian scientists who think they are going to die but don't. "Words" are like people, both die, but do they really, I mean really for "real" in reality, like if you repeat a word enough times, it loses "meaning" and it dies like a person? I don't like listening to that so I won't, just stop talking.

n  n

In my defence, I was young, my degree in mathematics was still relatively new and shiny and I was just at that point in my life when I was discovering the joys of "literary fiction". This story of a young mathematician hired to attempt to decode a message received from the vicinity of Ratner’s Star ticked a lot of boxes for me almost thirty years ago.

And I do owe this book a huge debt of gratitude. It was, I believe, my first DeLillo and I went on to read just about everything else he has written. Some of it isn't to my taste, but a lot of it is. I am very glad that my reading life includes the stellar quintet of The Names, White Noise, Libra, Mao II and Underworld (if there were a prize for "best 5 sequential novels from one author", surely that would be the winner).

But, now, nearly 30 years later, I find Ratner’s Star crosses even my high pretentiousness threshold.

I’ve read a lot of books in the nearly 30 years between my readings of this one. Now I find myself looking at it and thinking DeLillo was attempting one of two things. Either he was seeking to copy Thomas Pynchon, in which case he failed, or he was seeking to parody Thomas Pynchon, in which case this might be brilliant. We have people with bizarre names, we have a mysterious graphic symbol, we have snatches of song, we have a company called ACRONYM where we never get to know what the letters stand for (that bit is quite funny, to be fair). We have complicated sentences that you get to the end of and realise you have forgotten the beginning, we have paranoia, we have puns. In short, we have everything Pynchon does so well but which, for me, just doesn’t work here.

I really wish I had enjoyed this more. I am loathe to stop thinking of it as brilliant. But I can’t live on a 30 year old impression of a book where a re-reading has shown I don’t actually remember that much of it. In summary, Billy Twillig is a teenage maths genius who has recently won the first ever Nobel prize for mathematics. He is recruited into a team of 30 other Nobel laureates who are working to understand a bizarre radio message received from the eponymous Ratner’s Star. The book is in two sections that are modelled on Alice Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass: part one is called Adventures and part two is called Reflections. In part one, each Nobel laureate seems to present Billy with different theories and different hopes for what the message might mean. In part two, Billy, appropriately given the structure, disappears down a hole and sets to work on a different problem with a smaller team.

There’s a lot of maths talk, quite a few maths jokes. There were occasions when I thought I might be getting a glimpse through the mist of what the book was actually about. But, as fast as I thought something was coming into focus, the mists closed over it again and it was gone.

It’s quite possible I have missed something significant as I read this. The trouble is, a lot of the writing is so pretentious that I have no real desire to go back and attempt to unpick it.

I feel like DeLillo was trying hard to make this his epic postmodern novel and although there are some pretty funny scenes and his prose sings in typical DeLillo fashion in parts, I think it fails ultimately. I admit it was a struggle to finish. There's just too much nothing talk and although there are obvious parallels to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels, the randomness is just not justifiable as entertainment (even to people like me who are willing to plod through that sort of thing if it ultimately goes somewhere). I felt like Don was writing outside of his element. To compare to my favorite postmodern novel, Gravity's Rainbow (a book that admittedly goes on forever and challenges you at every point to make sense of it), the main failure occurs when the giant postmodern novel lacks real emotion. GR has some of the most random scenes ever, but it is completely overflowing in emotion (The Jessica Swanlake/Roger Mexico scenes alone make you absolutely feel their love). I was tied to the characters. In Ratner's Star I feel nothing for any of the characters (which isn't necessarily atypical in a Delillo novel) and that made it harder to get through the randomness. The best parts of the book are the flashbacks of Billy's childhood in DeLillo's beloved Bronx. His parents relationship is expertly crafted and Billy's father is by far the best character. Sadly, these flashbacks are few and far between and completely gone in the second half of the novel.

Every great author, when his books are eventually ranked, will have low points. I'd say this is one them. Certainly the worst of his first four novels. That being said, I'm looking forward to see where he went from here and how he progressed as a novelist (one of the benefits of my plan to read/reread all of his books in chronological order). Great authors need to try and grasp at something more, to "blaze paths into the unknown" as Amalfitano puts it in Roberto Belano's 2666. This book is just that.

Skip if you're a casual reader. Maybe even skip if you're not. I'd say it is only for the completists like me who love Don DeLillo and need to read all of him.