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Title: Mao II by Don DeLillo ISBN: 0-14-015274-1 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.74 (38 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Mixed feelings on Mao II
Comment: Mao II is the first book of Don Delillo's I have ever read. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, getting into the minds of 63 year old writer Bill Gray and his live-in assistants, with all their human complexities, flaws, and obsessions. And along comes Brita, who photographs writers, to capture reclusive Bill's face on film and shake things up. Then, in the second half of the book, Bill agrees to go off at his publisher's request in aide of an unknown poet taken hostage. The book gets political from there, away from a world I relate to to scenes in London and Beirut with Bill, plus the here and there of his abandoned assistants, and Brita, without any sense of closure or the tightness of style and dialogue so beautifully painted in the first half of this book. In the final run, after a beginning so well rooted in American soil, I found it ultimately unbelievable that Bill Gray would face potential danger and run off like he does. I guess I feel shortchanged because I really loved these characters and would have like to see the narrative go deeper into their lives, and deal a lot less on the political level. Read it and make your own conclusions.
Rating: 5
Summary: Manifestation of a literary genious
Comment: Don DeLillo is a master craftsman. The volubility of his words which seem to stream off the pages with such cadence and careful consideration is, in my humble opinion, unparalleled. Most books strive to keep the reader's attention by either constructing interesting plot or breathtaking prose, and in Mao II, DeLillo succeeds on both levels flawlessly. The story follows Bill Gray, an elusive writer who has been living in recluse for years, along with his dedicated assistant Scott and a former cult member named Karen, working on his never-ending, long-awaited new novel. Then an opportunity arises for Bill to break through his shell of personal entrapment and head to Beirut to help save a captive poet from terrorists, an excursion which proves as edifying for the reader as it does these bemused and inquisitve characters themselves. DeLillo knows how to paint his situations vividly, and has created here a magnum opus teeming with philosophical dogmas that he is more than entitled to pontificate. Read this and appreciate the sheer beauty and luster of a classic Don DeLillo novel; then go out and read everything else this man has ever written.
Rating: 3
Summary: Mao II
Comment: Mao II is a reasonably short book that is by turns about a reclusive writer struggling with a book he knows that will never be finished and the people around him, and the struggles of terrorism and the middle east, cults and brain-washing. At times, this book written in 1991 is strangely prophetic of the September 11 events, and as in the other Delillo book I have read, New York city is a prominent location, the World Trade Centres ominous characters, prescient in their apparent eternity.
Bill is a writer who has been working on his third novel for decades. It has been finished, years ago, he now obsessively edits and reviews each and every page, never being completely satisfied with the results. In a lot of ways he enjoys being the faded recluse, enjoys being a writer who is not a commodity. Two other people live with him, Karen - a previous cult member - and Scott, once just a fan of Bill's but now a friend who helps tend to his affairs. In addition to this, Karen provides Bill with physical satisfaction, but the reasons for this are never really discussed or some into the story, in fact, I'm not entirely sure why that particularly subplot even existed.
A photographer, Brita, enters the cosy world the three have setup, and Bill allows her the first photos of him since he was a young man. They hit off, but more importantly, Bill's awareness of his place in the world is sparked once more. Soon he is meeting with his old editor and events take an odd and not exactly satisfactory turn, becoming more focused on the middle east and terrorism, and less on the life of a writer who is unhappy with himself.
From here, the novel deteriorates. While remaining technically enjoyable to read, I was much more interested in Bill's life than I was with Middle Eastern politics. The ending was unsatisfactory, and answered no questions - but then, what questions were raised? The plot involving Bill's redemption was dropped, and a subsequent development with a Swiss poet captured by terrorists in a bid to help raise the profile of the newly formed terror group and a literary community was not developed enough. Even Karen's cult background wasn't fully used.
Delillo's strengths are his prologues and his dialogue. The prologue was tight, forceful, and ended with a perfect sentence. It would have made a fantastic short story, and I felt that, once it was finished, I was in for an amazing ride. Dialogue is authentic, flows just like a real conversation, and contains many of the unfinished sentences and stray ramblings that people use when they talk. Both the prologue and the dialogues throughout felt as though they had been worked on, again and again, to get it right, while long stretches of plot or of description felt almost like an after-thought.
To conclude, I greatly enjoyed the first hundred and twenty pages or so. I didn't like the shift of focus, but a premise was built up that look promising, then that, too, was dropped. The result is an unfortunately hollow book. But perhaps I am missing something. It has received a lot of praise, and won awards, and I can't understand why. While written well, it just couldn't live up to the amazing prologue.
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Title: Libra (Contemporary American Fiction) by Don DeLillo ISBN: 0140156046 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993 by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0679434372 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: UNDERWORLD: A NOVEL by Don DeLillo ISBN: 0684848155 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 09 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction) by Don DeLillo ISBN: 0140077022 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth by Bill Roorbach ISBN: 0195135563 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 2001 List Price(USD): $41.95 |
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