Such style, such humor, such mood, such brilliance, DeLillo just never fails to impress. He always seems to be able to provide a brutal, singular look into the collective subconscious of America. And his books always feel so damn fresh too, despite being 50 years old; in this book I could sense impossible allusions to tiktok, social media's hightlight real-ness, vaccines, big data, etc.

And as a rock n' roll fan, what a treat it is to read DeLillo's prose satirizing the dirty world of rock and roll and the commodification of music and art, with its intensive image management and copyrights and contracts and memorandums and addendums to the memorandums. And what a further pleasure it is to know that 14 books exist in DeLillo's bibliography that I still get to read for the first time.

There is a difference between 'favorite' and 'best,' and this book falls somewhere between both categories. The prose is gorgeous, spinning, funny, and too much. It's like sucking a milkshake full of unknown objects through a too small straw--difficult, surprising, and constantly curving through dark and dirty streets of the unknown. Repetitive phrases and long blocks of dialogue pepper the novel, and there is no lack of shock. The characters are created and expounded upon--the ending is beautiful. Opal is startling, and the way she is written is one of the primary reasons I love this novel. Yes--it is a book about rock n roll, about corporations, about drugs. Yes, it is messy. Very. It tangents and isn't always likable. But it has stood up over years as one of the best books I have ever read.

DeLillo's dialogue on point as always.
The final chapter really shines.
This one's a bit muddled at points but overall really enjoyable, would work great as a stage play

"Fame Puts You There Where Things Are Hollow" (1)

This is often regarded as one of DeLillo's lesser novels. However, I can't agree. It continues and anticipates the subject matter for which he has become famous as well as his clipped and precise writing style.

If you're uncertain whether this book might be for you, I urge you to read at least the first chapter (three pages), if not also the last two chapters. The first chapter in particular contains some of the best and most exhilarating writing in DeLillo's career:

"Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic."

Don't you love phrases like "somber renown" and "erotic terror", not to mention "rueful nostalgia" and "convergent destinies"? DeLillo is great at personalising and emotionalising abstraction. Here, he does it within a framework that could well be a Tarantino film. John Travolta could play rock star Bucky Wunderlick, and Uma Thurman his girlfriend Opel Hampson.

There's much speculation that Bucky is derived from Bob Dylan, who dropped out of the mainstream after a motorcycle accident in 1966 and then recorded "The Basement Tapes" (which weren't released officially until 1975).

At times, Bucky reminded me of John Lennon after the breakup of the Beatles (except Bucky's American) and Lou Reed after the breakup of the Velvet Underground. I think of the Velvets, because Bucky's unnamed band's third album is described as noise (as was "White Light/White Heat"). (2)

Ultimately, however, DeLillo's portrait of Bucky is so complete we don't need to worry about his inspiration. Bucky is an archetypal rock musician circa 1973.

To the extent this is a rock 'n' roll novel, and a good one at that, it's broader significance lies in the fact that the music industry at the time was a microcosm of capitalist society at large.

Bucky walks away from his audience, a crowd, the public, his legend, his fame, his celebrity at its peak. Just as David Bowie turned his back on Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and their legion of fans in 1973.

Like his fans, Bucky has lost his sense of identity in the crowd. He and they have become manifestations of "mass man", none of them any longer an individual with authenticity and integrity.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide

On stage, Bucky had already started to rebel against his status. His music had become mere noise and was played at such volume that it alone could almost kill or injure members of the audience. Still they worship him all the more. Their secret wish is that he too will die, preferably onstage and by his own hand, in their presence, a rock 'n' roll suicide.

Remember that this novel was published in 1973, just a few years after the premature deaths (3) of Jimi Hendrix (1970) and Jim Morrison (1971).

The audience expects the performer to take them to a place of greater danger, to the edge of the void, where death is possible, if not probable. Music, experienced in a crowd, confronts us with the experience of our own death or the experience of mass apocalyptic death.

By walking away and breaking the pact with his audience, Bucky seeks out silence, an absence of or escape from language (which is itself the vehicle for social manipulation and control). He escapes, in order to become an individual, a private man, again. His departure is a quest for revolutionary solitude.

Know Your Product

The middle chapters concern two packages and the products within them.

One product is "The Mountain Tapes" (Bucky’s primitive recordings of 23 unaccompanied, almost imbecile songs recorded soon after his escape).

His manager is desperate to release the tapes and get Bucky out on the road again. The tapes are yet more product that will satiate the musical appetite of his audience and the financial appetite of his corporate backers.

The other product is some massively strong drugs that have been stolen from a secret U.S. Government installation, where they have been developed to "brainwash gooks and radicals". They affect the language sector of the brain.

A number of groups are trying to get their hands on the drugs, so that they can distribute them within the so-called counterculture.

At various times, Bucky has the packages with him in Opel’s apartment in Great Jones Street. He receives many visitors looking for one or other package. In the end, they both get stolen, the tapes by his manager, the drugs by a faction of the Happy Valley Farm Commune.

"A Return to Prior Modes"

Bucky’s manager convinces him to go back on the road. However, in the last chapter, in a scene reminiscent of "Infinite Jest", the Happy Valley Farm Commune prepares to kill Bucky or force him to commit suicide, although he actually takes a sample of the drugs and survives, speechless, wordless and wandering the streets of Manhattan, thus missing the chance to tour the Mountain Tapes:

"This was my double defeat, first a chance not taken to reappear in the midst of people and forces made to my design and then a second enterprise denied, alternate to the first, permanent withdrawal to that unimprinted level where all sound is silken and nothing erodes in the mad weather of language. Several weeks of immense serenity. Then ended...It's just a question of what sound to make or fake."

Although Bucky is still alive, he is survived yet again by rumours that circulate amongst his followers. Meanwhile, he reconstructs his own language, starting with the word "mouth":

"Soon, all was normal, a return to prior modes."


NOTES:

Note 1:

From the lyrics of the David Bowie song, "Fame"

Note 2:

The name of Bucky’s management company is Transparanoia Inc. I was never sure whether his unnamed band was also called Transparanoia.

Note 3:

Hendrix and Morrison were both 27 at the time of their deaths. Bucky is 26 during much of the novel.


SOUNDTRACK:

The Doors - "When the Music's Over" (Live in 1968)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7KRV...

John Cale - "Heartbreak Hotel"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6cU9...

The Saints - "Know Your Product"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qatJH...

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxWS1...

PJ Harvey - "Big Exit"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P94y1...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4kTM...

Captain Beefheart - "Abba Zaba"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTo7O...

Allen Willner - "Pee Pee Maw Maw"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfqrh...

Tom Waits - "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkOMi...

Something For Kate - "Transparanoia"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiEVZ...

The Jam - "That's Entertainment"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-H0u...

"Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude"

Luna - "Great Jones Street"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBVi-...

Featuring Sterling Morrison on guitar


October 26, 2016

Great Jones Street - Manhattan - Nova Iorque

Publicado em 1973 “Great Jones Street” é o terceiro romance do escritor norte-americano Don DeLillo (n. 1936).
Bucky Wunderlick, o narrador, é uma estrela do rock, que abandona o seu grupo musical no meio de uma tournée, num conflito existencial, insatisfeito com a sua vida, com a sua fama e que se refugia, incognitamente, num apartamento, sem mobília, em Great Jones Street, uma rua situada em Manhattan, Nova Iorque.
Bucky quer “desaparecer” - “Sou apenas uma velha e cansada figura do mundo do espectáculo… A indústria discográfica deu cabo de mim.” - mas sente-se pressionado a “voltar” pelo seu agente musical Globke, pelos outros membros da sua banda e pelos executivos da sua empresa Transparanoia.
Durante esse retiro emocional Bucky acaba, inesperadamente, por se envolver com uma organização denominada “Comuna Agrícola do Vale Feliz”, detentora de uma nova droga, em fase experimental, com propriedades e com uma intensidade inimagináveis, ultrapotente, e com um conjunto de “figuras” mafiosas, que se movimentam num submundo complexo com dúbios interesses.
É neste relacionamento complexo que Don DeLillo joga habilmente com uma prosa reflexiva, simultaneamente, irónica e sombria, com o silêncio e a obscuridade de Bucky, interligando as diferentes subtramas de um enredo que revela alguma complexidade.
A caracterização que Don DeLillo faz das personagens secundárias é brilhante, destaco duas pela comicidade e pelo excesso: o agente musical Globke, desajeitado, grotesco, engraçado e o falhado escritor Ed Fenning, o vizinho de Bucky do 1º andar, “… Poeta. E romancista. Escrevo livros policiais, escrevo ficção científica. Escrevo pornografia. Escrevo séries para televisão. E peças de um acto.”.
“Great Jones Street” é um livro que revela uma escrita elegante, mas intransigente na sua complexidade, com excessos linguísticos, revelações inesperadas e uma imaginação fascinante.
“Great Jones Street” é recomendável para os fans incondicionais de Don DeLillo e para quem se interessa pela temática das estrelas do rock, entre a lenda e as suas vidas privadas, a euforia do sucesso e da fama, quase sempre efémera, da impossibilidade pessoal das escolhas e da privacidade, e dos rumores persistentes e das relações complexas entre um público que os venera e a indústria discográfica.


Don DeLillo (n. 1936)

3.75

tragically, nobel-worthy

Unfamiliar with his books even though I've sold them in my shop for a few years now.
Really enjoyed his poetic prose - young artists looking for lyrics or a band name will find plenty to choose from in his amazing tale of music industry greed.
Loosely based on Bob Dylan and his 'basement tapes' and rock and roll myth-making.

I can't really figure out whether i liked this book or not. I wasn't really into the plot, but both the dialogue and the poetry included in the book were nice.

I think I’ve picked the wrong Delillo to start with. From reading about him (after completing this book) I see that this is one of his earlier and more experimental novels, and whilst at times interesting this is dated, concerning a 70s rockstar who retreats into a self-imposed existential seclusion. I wasn’t a fan of the writing style either; it’s something opposite to the short sharp sentences that are prosaic in the pens of many of my favourite authors, and more verbose, flabby, even waffling.
If any Delillo fans read this and can recommend me where to go next with him, I would be grateful.

Review coming soon

This book is a living enigma.
I have absolutely no relatable context when it comes to American Rock and Roll music and I don't think I ever will. But DeLillo's writing style was such that I kept reading the words coming out of the paper, even though it did not do a whole lot within me - other than making me slip through the words like butter. I kept reading because I enjoyed the very act of reading, although there was no context to it. I did not know what was happening or where the story was heading, but I kept reading just because. It was like running just for the sake of running - the meaning of the act, absorbed within itself. To showcase as though the point was the point itself. Or perhaps there was no point other than the point of having no point.

Is this is what drugs feel like?