Horizon

A letter to the editor in s'morning's San Francisco Chronicle says "Say it ain't so, Barry..."

And welcome, Bobby.

I love, love, love Don Delillo, but have managed to stumble upon more than one of what I take to be his "lesser" novels. Judging from the quote I think I know the answer: I take it you recommend Underworld?

And hello there Bobby.

You should give Underworld a shot. The first section, on the Dodger/Giant playoff in '51, is fine writing. I don't rate the rest of book as highly. Nothing wrong with the writing but I don't get the same sense of mastery that I find in the Polo Grounds part. But then, I often don't get the larger metaphors right off the bat.

Americana is one of those lesser books, though I still read it every few years. Libra probably isn't as wonderful as I think; still, I like how Oswald and the reader get lost in the conspiracy. Don't know how Mao II was received - the first quarter I don't really enjoy but I get through it because I know the rest will swallow me up.

Funny how I haven't read the last two works.

I think Libra is a fantastic novel. The best of his that I've read. I never managed to get through much of Mao II so maybe I should give it another try. Pretty sure it's lying around here somewhere.

Mao II is art, all right, but it's also claustrophobic and painful.

Martha, do you mean Mao II is claustrophobic and painful because Bill -the writer- has become a victim of his own myth?

Well, yeah, that, and the part at the end where the writer behaves without regard for self-preservation after the car accident, and I don't remember the other characters well but they all seem dominated by something -- the Moonie mass marriage being just another example. My memory of the book just involves this awful feeling of imprisonment. I'd have to reread it to tell you entirely why.

DeLillo does have this thing about damaged people crawling into holes in the ground and other womblike places, doesn't he?

My memory of the book just involves this awful feeling of imprisonment.

The imprisonment metaphor is a good one. The characters seem to find their identities suffocating so they seek a "true" liberation by surrending to non-identity or one that is swallowed by a higher identity. Hence, the mass marriage and suicide bombers. And literally, in prison, doesn't a convict lose his sense of self? Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Nevertheless, Mao II may be DeLillo's most difficult novel. I think it's one you can be drawn to but not one you'll love.

This sort of tangentially brings up something I've been wondering lately. I keep reading assertions from medieval historians to the effect that the "concept of the individual" did not exist in the MAs.

How is this possible? Is it possible? Not literally, I think. Just more academic hyperbole? Can't tell.

Dunno. Would rereading Villon help?

You mean this Villon?

The rain has soaked us and has washed us clean
And the sun dried us up and turned us black.
Magpies and crows have hollowed out our eyes
And plucked away our beards and eyebrows too.
Never at any time are we at rest;
This way and that, as the wind may vary,
It pushes us about just as it likes,
More pecked by birds than any sewing thimble.

Sounds like a subjective, conscious mind at work there.

Yes, he's a good example. What, then, are people trying to get at when they claim that there was no concept of the individual? I guess I'll just have to find someone who tries to explain that.

This is condensed but...Villon kills a priest and is banished from Paris. A few years later he is sentenced to death for brawling. This suggests that the murder of an individual does not pose as much a threat to public welfare as does street fighting. So, in that sense, while there is a concept of the individual in the 15th century, the individual has less value than the community. I may be straying down a dead end here.