In perhaps the most memorable trip through New York since Holden Caulfield’s, multi-billionaire Eric Packer takes a snail-paced, surreal ride in his very large white stretch limo. (How large? It has a retractable toilet and room for a doctor to set up an examination table and give Eric a rectal exam while Eric chats with one of his advisors on another seat).

Traffic jams and road closures abound to slow his passage, but this doesn’t seem to bother Packer. Occasionally other people get in the limo to talk with him, or Eric exits the car to investigate the various islands of activity that arise – violent protests, a movie production set, a passing funeral, etc. These events are all entertaining in their ways – sometimes laugh-out-loud funny – though just as often they feel a bit like arbitrary, draggy, purposeless, linked journal entries.

What I loved about this book was its masterful sentences and its sharp observations. The narrative voice is a riot, spotlighting the foibles and quirks of late 20th-Century urban society in an off-hand, darkly funny way. DeLillo is one of those authors with such a unique style that if you found a random sentence on the ground that he had written, you would immediately recognize it as his.

What didn’t work for so much was the story’s forward momentum or lack thereof. Sure, we have the through lines of what’s going to happen to the yen, of the looming threats coming from the ether that Eric’s life might be in danger, of the occasional, comically unlikely meet-ups with his wife-of-less-than-a-month whom he seems to barely know, etc, but the book often seems to mosey this way and that, abandoning (or just failing to make) any attempt at real direction.

Also, the dialogue is clunky at best, never feeling natural at all; realism in this respect is probably not a goal of DeLillo’s, who seems to have other people talk to one another in order to give the author topics to mock or to express his own opinions about.

The last chapter in particular — where Packer has a multi-page, paragraph-less internal monologue and a long conversation with a psycho – felt very wearisome and self-indulgent, not a satisfying conclusion to all that has come before. Similarly, the two chapters that focused on a different character felt unnecessary, except perhaps to set up this last chapter.

Still, I looked forward to picking the book up every day, knowing that the reading went pretty quickly; that I’d get some chuckles out of it; and that DeLillo would expertly describe some unique scene in a perfectly-worded way that would make it enjoyable, thought-provoking, and/or envy-inducing (for those of us who dabble at writing).

Overall, this is another modern book where the parts far outweigh the whole in terms of satisfaction and literary heft. Many of the parts (sentences, paragraphs, images) are awesome; the whole is kinda meh. I enjoyed reading it in some ways, but I can't think of anyone I'd recommend it to.

No lo acabé pero por lo que llevaba leído estaba deseando que apareciera un asesino en serie muy sádico para matar al protagonista :)

Che ?
Ambientato nell'anno 2000.
Un giovane uomo ricchissimo e ben addentro nelle stanze del potere attraversa su un'iperaccessoriata limousine, in una caotica giornata di traffico, la metropoli per andare a farsi un taglio di capelli. Durante questo viaggio, dilatato nelle lunghe ore di percorso, accade di tutto, dalla buffonata alla tragedia.

Nel libro di Don DeLillo, molto bello stilisticamente e piuttosto noioso, c'è una rappresentazione inquietante ed implicitamente parecchio critica della realtà americana contemporanea, con una scrittura di vetro e acciaio, che ben si adatta al paesaggio urbano della metropoli, ed un linguaggio che evidenzia la pochezza umana e la volgarità della realtà descritta; linguaggio talvolta in bilico, a rischio di trasformarsi esso stesso portatore di quella volgarità. Lo stile dell'autore però regge, anzi diventa un meccanismo letterario collaudato, in cui spesso è possibile gustare il piacere estetico emanato dall'architettura del discorso, dal concatenarsi delle frasi : per me lettore, unica piacevolezza che questo libro consenta.
Qui DeLillo è punta di diamante dello scrittore tipicamente 'americano-americano' contemporaneo volto allo svelamento di personaggi che han perduto se stessi.
La pienezza di significato del libro sta proprio nella rappresentazione dello smarrimento di significato, in una società dove "la vita è troppo contemporanea" e "il denaro parla a se stesso", quando "l'unica cosa che importa è il prezzo che paghi".
Se il potere capitalistico-finanziario giunge ad avere un dominio pervasivo e totalitario, la realtà diventa agghiacciante e paralizzata: senza radici, senza una tradizione consolidata a cui attingere, priva di interiorità spirituale ; la ragione, poi, non è quella illuminista, bensì un cascame positivistico fatto di tecnicismo e aridità.
A questo punto, l'immagine emblematica che resta è "la grande, sparsa bellezza dei bidoni della spazzatura rovesciati".

La saggezza del nostro Alessandro Manzoni ci avvertiva che "non tutto ciò che viene dopo è progresso".

I keep putting off writing this review because I finished this book six weeks ago AND watched the Robert Pattinson movie and still don't know what I think. I think I WANT to like it but don't really. I WANT to like it because I love White Noise and making fun of rich people and being the kind of person who ✨gets✨ weird books.

Things I did actually like: DeLillo's style (duh). His prose is dryly funny and full of scathing observations, like this one about Eric and his feelings about limos: "He liked the fact that the cars were indistinguishable from each other. He wanted such a car because he thought it was a platonic replica, weightless for all its size, less an object than an idea. But he knew this wasn't true. This was something he said for effect and he didn't believe it for an instant. He believed it for an instant but only just. He wanted the car because it was not only oversized but aggressively and contemptuously so, metastasizingly so, a tremendous mutant thing that stood astride every argument against it" (10).

I also love the whole bit about how Eric can't see other people as people. He can't believe Ingram doesn't wear glasses: "He thought of putting his sunglasses on the associate's face, to make him real, give him meaning in the sweep of other people's perceptions, but the glasses would have to be clear and thick-lensed and life-defining. If you knew the man ten years, it might take you all that time to notice he did not wear glasses. It was a face that was lost without them" (53). He can't look Torval in the face or refer to him by name. He can't understand his wife as having an internal self. She tells him it hurts her that he has sex with other women, and he replies, "This is good. We're like people talking. Isn't this how they talk?" (119). (Her reply: "How would I know?")

Eric is so fucked up, but none of his characterization is too on-the-nose -- unlike, um, basically the whole ham-fisted premise of the book, which is maybe what I didn't like? A billionaire's extravagant journey to get an unnecessary haircut keeps getting stalled and sidetracked by the real world (violence and protest and death), which he observes disinterestedly through bulletproof glass because it really has nothing to do with him. Nothing can touch him because he has enough wealth and power to control every little aspect of his immediate universe. Except he can't control his asymmetrical prostate, so he gets an asymmetrical haircut and blows up his entire life -- even though his asymmetrical prostate can't really hurt him. Because nothing can hurt him. And, he seems to decide, life has no meaning without tension or risk.

Or something. I don't know. I can't remember the last time I've had such incoherent thoughts about a book.

Cosmopolis has certainly received an unfair amount of criticism. I mean, you should know going into this book (if you are of the 99% who read the blurbs before reading the books) that nearly all of the action takes place in one limo in a single day - don't expect the story to follow a typical narrative arc. Not only is it not supposed to, but this book wouldn't work that way. It functions mainly on dialogue, and damn what beautiful dialogue it is.

This book is about the details, the why, the symbols, the duality of man. Rats for currency, the yen can't rise, the yen must rise; the limos are white, wealth for wealth's sake. Marriage for money's sake when neither sex nor money is an issue. There's a lot to stew over here.

The book is short enough to engage consistently without a traditional narrative.

La distruzione secondo il punto di vista del capitalismo e dell’anarchia nichilista
«-Lavora con te quanto più agisce in base alle stesse premesse… per enfatizzare ancora di più l’idea che ci diamo tutti.
-Quale idea?
-Distruzione. – disse lei».

Le ultime 24 ore di un turbo-capitalista finanziario di NY, afflitto dall’insonnia a dal superominismo nichilista. Lunghe descrizioni, monologhi e flussi di coscienza; pochi i dialoghi, sufficienti ad affermare il Sé. Il passato è divorato e rimosso (il passato è il senso di colpa); il futuro è divorato dal presente e dall’Io. L’immortalità? Una speranza nella tecnologia futura che dia campo all’Io smaterializzato di espandere all’infinito il profitto. La scienza? Un modello matematico che permetta di descrivere perfettamente i flussi della moneta e dei mercati.

L’ecosistema? Una città mostruosa, ipertrofica e anonima, degradata e congestionata; quartieri invivibili e preda dell’immondizia entropica; una società civile fatta a pezzi e annichilita.
In una parola: Distruzione prossima ventura, anzi, già iniziata.

Il caso? Una prostrata asimmetrica; un paranoico omicida; un manifestante che si dà fuoco per protesta; un autista africano con una cicatrice all’occhio, fuggito a un colpo di stato e alle torture; un happening notturno di body art; una bottega di barbiere ove mangiare alle una di notte un pasticcio di melanzane.
Oh Fortuna imperatrix mundi!

Avevo dato tre stelle a DeLillo, ma ripensandoci gliene do quattro, e ‘nu miezz.

Somethings are never easy. Like reading a book because it got great reviews but then turn out to be mediocre. That is what happened with Don Delillo's Cosmopolis.

The entire book describes a day in the life or Eric, an 28-year-old billionaire, who is cynic and has his mind on two things; sex and money.

I can understand why it was a big deal when it was published and why it was adapted into a movie but I failed to see the point. We are materialistic and consumed by technology. Our lives evolve around our career and we fail to see anything that matters like love.

OK. Anyone could see these simple messages but I wanted something more. Then again that was the writers intention.to just get your gears spinning. 

I will say though that even though it can become rather dull, towards the end I was intrigued. I did not know what was going to happen and I can say that the most interesting thing about the book is the cliffhanger at the end.

So for those that love cliffhangers, like me, and are left thinking what might happen, my advice is read this book. You will get past the tenacious and cynic writing just because you know you are going to be rewarded in the last chapter.

For me Cosmopolis is worth 3/5 stars. 

Enjoy and Happy Reading!

Nutshell: one-percenter gets haircut, an event worthy of 200 pages.

The less looney toons sibling of American Psycho (“the logical extension of business is murder“ (113)), this text, contrary to my intentions, was not necessarily the correct one to brainbleach the Ayn Rands that I’d read immediately prior hereto--though her mantra regarding self-made industrialists, who nevertheless are heirs to massive fortunes, is given mock heroic treatment here as “self made,” “ruthless,” “strong,” “brilliant” (72).

Slick colloquy on chrematistics, “the art of money-making” (77), an odd phrase, as though currency were created ex nihilo, in a randian fantasy, by the mere intellect of the industrialist. Therein we see that “money has lost its narrative quality” (id.), which readers of Marx will recognize as the always already absent presence of repressed political relations inherent in currency, via operation of commodity fetishism.

We see that “clock time accelerated the rise of capitalism“ (79), and “it’s cyber-capital that creates the future” via transactions at intervals of yoctoseconds (79): “time is a corporate asset now. It belongs to the free market system. The present is harder to find. It is being sucked out of the world to make way for the future of uncontrolled markets and huge investment potential” (id.). Part of the process is the integration of protests against capitalism into its structure: protesters “don’t exist outside the market. There is nowhere they can go to be on the outside. There is no outside” (90). The protest itself is a “form of systemic hygiene, purging and lubricating” (99). When a protestor intentionally self-immolates, dumb cappy grover dill can only complain “it’s not original,” “an appropriation” (100)--a nice emblem of the proto-fascism described by Herf in Reactionary Modernism regarding insistent “authenticity,” which emblem reiterates here: “To pull back now would not be authentic. It would be a quotation from other people’s lives” (85).

Noted as “the hallmark of capitalist thought” is “enforced destruction” (92), a spectre from Benjamin’s ninth thesis on the philosophy of history: “old industries have to be harshly eliminated. New markets have to be forcibly claimed. Old markets have to be re-exploited. Destroy the past, make the future,” apt reference to capitalism’s continuous process of revolutionizing the means of production (92-93).

Recommended for persons undead living in a state of occult repose, waiting to be reanimated, those driven by thinking machines that they have no final authority over, and persons with asymmetrical prostates.

Cosmopolis follows a single day in the life of billionaire Eric Packer, founder of Packer Capital, a financial firm, as he is driven across New York City in his limousine in his quest to get a haircut. It's not as boring as it sounds, as he frequently exits the limousine to see various people, gets caught in the middle of some crazy and interesting events that unfold throughout the city over the course of the day, and ends the book not even in the car anymore but in a rundown industrial area somewhere in the city in the dead of night, in what turns out to be an intriguing finale.

It's not always the most fun book to read, because Packer acts just how you suspect a male billionaire would, i.e. like a huge jerk. He frequently cheats on his wife, who he's only been married to for a few days or weeks, he's horny for every female that breathes air and is ever in his immediate vicinity, and he's a complete self-absorbed narcissist. So generally it can be a bit difficult to even read about someone like that, at least for me.

That being said, I found myself enjoying this book and looking forward to picking it up again each time I sat down to read it, and this was mostly because of DeLillo's writing style. He is completely inimitable, and writes like no other author I've ever read. His writing is short and dreamlike, cold, but in a strange way almost lyrical. It's fascinating. The one thing about his writing that might put off some people is his dialogue, and I've seen this in his other books that I've read so far, most notably Zero K: his dialogue just isn't believable. It's just not how real people talk. It's completely unrealistic, with the characters talking in fragments and finishing each other's sentences, like they are able to communicate telepathically and magically know what the other is thinking at all times.

And even when it's not like that, most of the rest of the time it's just nonsense that no human being would ever say to another person. His dialogue is so unrealistic that it actually takes me out of his books sometimes, so if I had an overarching complaint about him as a writer, it's definitely that.

The book has an interesting ending that, for me, was open-ended and raised more questions than it answered, leaving the book feeling a bit empty. However, in spite of this, it's incredibly unrealistic dialogue, and it's detestable protagonist, Cosmopolis is otherwise a uniquely and at times beautifully written contemporary novel that can be quite insightful, and is far more eventful and engaging than you would expect, given its premise. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but if you generally enjoy contemporary literature that offers something different, or if you're already a DeLillo fan and know what to expect, I'd say this is worth checking out.

3.5 stars

Yes, I read this book because Robert Pattinson has been cast to play the lead role in the screen adaptation. Having said that, I'm still glad I read it. I think a great deal of my issues with this as a book will be fixed in the movie. I occasionally had trouble realizing when the setting had changed, such as when Eric returned to the car. I would also have to go back and reread long strings of dialogue in order to track who was speaking each line. Both of those issues will be easy to correct in the film because you'll be able to see those things on-screen.

This is definitely a dark story and some of the financial discussions were a bit over my head, but it was still very interesting. Eric's relationship with his wife is certainly an interesting dynamic and not at all what you would expect from a marriage. Eric is certainly not great husband material. The time inside Eric's head is sometimes fascinating and sometimes nearly infuriating because of his apparent apathy.

There are some shockers that you just do not see coming. On the flip side, a very major plot point begins to piece itself together early on, making the ending of the story inevitable.

I'm eager to see how this book plays out on screen. It's certainly full of intrigue, money and sex.

delicious.

A dark satire on technocapitalism. Today’s digital utopias lead to alienation, despair, self-destruction. Yet, we can’t escape them, and protest is ineffectual.