of the DeLillo i’ve read, this seems to have the least on its mind, which is fine. there’s only so much “musing” i’m willing to entertain

A quietly unnerving downward spiral.

In his ongoing survey of modern America, DeLillo's third book saw him looking at art and commerce through the lens of rock music and celebrity. One gets the sense that the narrator, rock star Bucky Wonderlick, having fled the stage mid-tour and retracted into a cold, empty apartment in a Lower East Side that was still both of those things (compared to its scrubbed, crowded modern counterpart), is somewhat paralyzed by his need to fully consider and understand what his actions mean, after years of skirting such introspection in favor of the constant sprint onwards. But his inactivity itself becomes a sort of action and ideology (and an unconsidered one, at that), as well as perhaps another marketing angle in his music career. All of these things twist the book up into a plotline and send it on its way.

Despite the fairly direct and active plotting this time around, as with most DeLillo there's a lot of depth and beauty to incidentals, from the sounds of the downstairs neighbor dreaming to a hallucinatory burning fire station. Unfortunately, the bracing austerity of Wonderlick's thoughts and activities (as well as of DeLillo's prose, scalpel sharp even without the complete rhythm and poetry of his more recent work) are undercut by the steady stream of visitors required to advance the story, a drugs-and-cults-and-paranoia arc which seems far less interesting than the tone and central setting.

A quick review of Great Jones Street - simply didn't like this. I picked it up at Book Off with the rest of my "to Steve from Steve" Christmas presents. My initial view was a Penguin label (generally a positive), a book about musicians and a book about NY. None of this sounds bad to me. I just didn't get it. I suppose I'm not Rock and Roll enough, because the whole sitting around doing nothing did nothing for me. On the cover this mentions nihilism. I'm thinking maybe I don't enjoy nihilistic endeavors…but yet some of my favorites are nihilistic in nature. Maybe its just that I read those ten years ago and I'm too old for it now.

I don't know. I just didn't get it. The plot of moving the drug package was eh and the peripheral characters were just unappealing. Its tough for me to offer up a 1 rating…but this was damn close (editor's note: changed this to a 1 rating. In retrospect, it sucked). I'm just not seeing where things were enjoyable here. I'm not seeing how rock and roll this was. Guy decides his music isn't appreciated the way it should be (don't get me started on rock musicians and artistry) and he'll hole himself up and pretend he's dead for a while. Just in general, unappealing.

Do I sound bitter? Good…wasted a week and a whole dollar on this.

http://5cense.com/17/534.htm

Don Delillo's third novel proves to be a good read, though it's one of his weaker efforts. Delillo's best works are about subtext, not the story he's ostensibly telling. This novel, with its rather straighforward story arc, winds up being a bit of a disappointment to readers overly familiar with his work.

This novels tells the tale of Bucky Wanderlick, a musician in the prime of his career. In the middle of a tour, Bucky walks off stage, leaving his fans, bandmates, and record label in the lurch. Holed up in his grubby apartment, Bucky begins to lose a bit of touch with a reality that might have only been real to him in the first place. Eventually, a tape of "lost" work becomes a bargaining chip in a high-stakes exchange for a wonder drug that finds the ultimate high in silence.

Since Delillo doesn't seem capable of writing an uninspired line, this novel is an entertaining read. But it's merely mediocre Delillo, better served as a starting point for the unfamiliar to jump from than a tome that fans will come back to again and again.

All artists have peaks and valleys to their careers but it’s crazy that DeLillo’s first three novels are one big plateau

How important is plot to you on a scale of 1 to 5?
If you answered anything other than 1, don't read this book.

I really dug this book, a dense but really existentially funny tale about a rock star who just bails on a tour to live in a crappy apartment on Great Jones Street in New York. While there he gets caught up in a bizarre drug deal and has many, many philosophical conversations. The ideas in this book are marvelous in their bleak nature. Below is my favorite quote. If you dig it, and think you can make it through 250 pages of stuff like that, I highly recommend it. If you're looking for a fun, easy book, I don't know who lead you to DeLillo. Although the story is pretty good as well.

"'Places are always what you expect,' she said. 'That's both the trouble with places and their redeeming feature. I'm certain it wasn't like that in the past. But it sure is that way now. A few places are still different from each other but nowhere do you find something different from your own expectations. Look at post-card manufacturers. They take a sleazy tourist-trap lake and try to make it into the canoeing grounds of the gods. But they do such a slick glossy job that you glance at that post card and you know at once this is a shit-filled lake and all the tourists here are either war criminals or people who spit when they laugh. Not that there isn't beauty in such places. That's just it. The whole world is turning into Lafayette Street, the most ugly-beautiful street in New York City. In a way it's nice to get what you expect. It's as though places can be passive just like people. They just sprawl out with their cathedrals and deserts. Passivity is beautiful too. You take what they give you these days and if everything's getting ugly the only thing you can do is try to teach yourself it's beautiful. Eventually maybe it is.'"

Dig the troth.

яскравий приклад того, як письменник намагається відтворити мислення рокера, але все одно виходить письменник. відчутно, скільки звідти запозичив ДФВоллес. пошуки продукту+безліч чудернацьких персонажів+лірика. Делілло геніальний імітатор, актор із сотнею облич, за якими відчутна його власна маска.

An early example of DeLillo's signature past tense that reads like a cinematic present tense. Dialogs of non sequitur. Delicious deadpan:

I spoke to someone downtown, a bored municipal voice, downtown in the huddled buildings, the record sectors, death and taxes, requisition forms, police recruits taping every emergency, bored, bored, the facsimile of a voice, all walls green halfway up, agencies, bureaus, extensions, downtown where the records are kept, massive, passive, ever distending, the idea of a voice, no one in control. (p. 92)

Nearly any paragraph of this beautiful work is more compelling than shelves of reading I have done. Delillo sparkles, challenges, satisfies.

I wish I had known how closely the structure of Great Jones Street mirrors (or sets the stage for) Cosmopolis, when I read and re-read the latter over the past decade: the carefully chosen quarters for the bulk of the "action"; the on-site visits from various constituencies and their analytical presentations; the awful spiral toward silence, privacy, inwardness, destruction; the price of fame and the power of power; the streets of New York. Eric Packer and Bucky Wunderlick. Separated by 30 years. Cousins of a sort.

So, I have this funny habit right now, of reading three or four books at once, and finishing a few them at the same time, on the same day. I must be planning it subconsciously. It is making for some interesting juxtapositions, in any case, interesting to me.

I first read this novel about 20 years ago. I re-read it this week out of curiosity about what it might have meant to me back then. I remembered little of it, except that the protagonist, AWOL rock n roll god Bucky Wunderlick, lived a hermetic life in an inner city apartment; I was living a comparably quiet life at the time, in my first solo apartment after years of rooming in shared houses.

Re-reading the book, I was surprised by the impact of the first page, whose language and imagery were so potent to me, I felt it was the best first page of any novel I have read. (Now, as I pause to think about that, to be fair and accurate, I try to recall other comparably forceful openings...The Famished Road comes to mind.)

In the pages and chapters that followed, I came to feel I was reading a relatively trivial novel--surreal, fun, verbose, leaning into creepy--but that feeling would give way to awe at bracing passages of utter writerly virtuousity and taught, thrumming strands of thought. Late in the book, I even compared the rhythmic, intense manual-cerebral crafted language as comparable to Bach played by Glenn Gould. With dialogue of absurdly coloured shades of film noir.

The plot builds slowly beneath the variously nit-grit, becalmed, and trippy-curvy days Wunderlick passes on the lam as he chances and drifts through unique excursions of experience, thought and feeling, turns sharpening and tightening.