Cosmopolis: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, sharp, and among his best
Review: Much like Nietzsche's, Delillo's writing hits hard, blunt truths which may not resonate as you first read them, but seem to subltly speak to something beyond. This is not to say that Delillo is a flagrant cynicist or ironist. I find him way too dry for that. Not that that is a negative statement, in my opinion. Nevertheless, this book promises more than many reviewers gave it credit for. The territory may not be brand-spanking new, but the story is compelling, rather intriguing and has some nice twists in it. Minor characters don't get their due, but the main character provides enough reason to read on and the antagonist (in the looser sense of the word) also serves as a nice tangent from the main vein of the narrative. What continues to compell me about Delillo is his need to depict, as if by camera, what is happening in his novels, through his crisp sentences. His prose is almost geometric, the way it sets up angles and perspective. Almost every sentence is like a cross-section of the culture we live in. Because his novesl are embedded in history, I believe we may be looking back at Delillo in 40, 50, 75 years from now, trying to see "what it was really like" back then. Like a timecapsule in a book.

Rating:
Summary: My first exposure to Don DeLillo
Review: One of my very favorite quotations is from Don DeLillo: "Californians invented the concept of lifestyle. This alone warrants their doom." It's a delicious quote, and until recently reading Cosmopolis, it's been the only thing I know about DeLillo, other than the fact that he's considered a sophisticated writer with a sophisticated following, and that the quotation is from White Noise. So after reading a couple of short reviews of Cosmopolis, I decided to give it a try (which is saying something, since I read science fiction and horror almost exclusively). Cosmopolis follows one day in the life of New York billionaire asset manager Eric Packer. What sort of guy is Eric? Well, if you were ever a fan of the TV series ThirtySomething, think of evil advertising executive Miles Drentell, only immensely more rich and powerful, and maybe not QUITE as nasty. Do people like this actually exist? I shudder to think. There obviously do exist people who live such lives of luxury, protected by swarms of security people, insulated from the grittiness of the real world; experiencing Eric's life vicariously was almost appalling for little old me. DeLillo has an obvious talent for dry, matter-of-fact prose that at times begs to be read aloud. But I have to subtract a star from my review, because the narrative tends to fall apart toward the end (as does Eric's life), and the story's climax is a bit of a letdown. BUT GETTING THERE WAS LOTS OF FUN.

Rating:
Summary: Think outside the box . . . WAY outside
Review: The 'plot' is a limo ride through a major city. But it's a one-day excursion as much as is Joyce's 'Ulysses.' That one day may just as well be a year, a lifetime or an era. Time is distorted; events are surreal; what seems coincidental, isn't. Don't expect everything to make sense in a rational, cognitive way.

A man begins his day with everything, and ends it with nothing. His ideas, beliefs and body slowly lose their integrity. The story is not a puzzle with clearly edged chunks of interlocking pieces, but a constantly spinning web whose strands are spun by employees, lovers, a wife and a barber. As the story evolves, the man devolves. There's dry wit and Monty Pythonesque lunacy. There's the microcosm reflected in the macrocosm and vice versa. Even when inane, the ideas expressed are fascinating.

COSMOPOLIS sometimes enlightened me, and other times confused me. After my mind digests it a bit, I'll read it again.

Rating:
Summary: An American masterpiece
Review: I read this and Michael Moorcock's King of the City in the same
week or so. Moorcock's novel is a storm of anger, an eloquent
British take on the modern world of high finance and low spirituality. DeLillo's is a cool, equally eloquent, spare parable on the same topics. It was interesting to read both these books in tandem since both take hard, beautifully written looks at the modern obsession with money and fame. DeLillo has chosen to take a spare, emblematic approach while Moorcock's voice embraces the widest possible vocabulary. Yet both writers offer us novels at their most engaging and serious, the best that modern writing can offer. I've been recommending
Cosmopolis and King of the City to anyone who'll listen. The
perfect combination. I love DeLillo and this, no matter what some of the reviewers say here, is DeLillo at his very best.

Rating:
Summary: DeLillo at his self-important worst
Review: I wanted desperately to enjoy Cosmopolis. Having read every one of his previous novels, I revered DeLillo, even for his earlier and less accomplished gems. I had been anticipating Cosmopolis with febrile excitement for months. Sadly, I was only to be disappointed. He has, for once, made a mistake. You've probably read enough about Eric Packer's cross-town limousine voyage and his exorbitant wealth to excuse my exclusion of a synopsis. So let me tell you why Cosmopolis is a failure.

A narrative thrust powerful enough to propel the reader forward is lacking. Almost every character, and the protagonist in particular, are unrealistic and fail to engage. His writing is moon-bleached and cold. The pacing of the novel is much like that of a traffic jam, a gridlock of stop-starts. As each implausibility unconvincingly unrolls, as each lobotomised character finishes blabbering in hollow argot, Cosmopolis slowly implodes. There are sparks that remind you that DeLillo is a genius- the denouement is compassionate and satisfying, as is Eric's inevitable haircut at the barber's. However, their impact is muffled by DeLillo's stubborn dedication to a style that wants to flaunt its wealth when it is in fact bankrupt. He drowns his message and intent here in unfocused claptrap.

He has forgotten what makes him such a brilliant writer. Suddenly self-conscious and faux-visionary, he writes like a man who doesn't know when to end his sentences. Potentially beautiful imagery is shattered by futile wordplay. He can't simply write about surfaces and textures. He insists on imbuing everything -from a soiled latex glove to a cluster of chauffeurs- with significance and poetry, obfuscating his meanings and rendering previously crystalline descriptions hazy. This is lazy, injudicious writing.

There are so many false starts that by the time something occurs that we should be affected by, we don't even flinch. DeLillo loses the reader's trust. His realisation of Eric's day is too unreal to be believed. Where is the verisimilitude, the truth? Life isn't a series of elysian crests and apocalyptic troughs, all in a single day. It isn't about epiphany after epiphany provoked by things like someone saying, "Your prostate is asymmetrical." Sure, sometimes the quotidian does transcend the banal, but not at the rate of ten times a page, twice a sentence. One needs to carefully balance the absurd with the believable, the visionary with the mundane, semantic frenzy with repose. The nervously overexcited prose never pauses for reflection or silence. The result of his hyperactive writing style is a book that feels, strangely, very grey and very dull.

Cosmopolis could have been a superb and incisive satire. Unfortunately, DeLillo was unwilling to jettison the sombre gravity of something more serious. Cosmopolis looks like a satire trapped in the body of a gravely existential tome and it ends up succeeding as neither. There are some humorously perceptive comic segments, but they are incongruously slotted between slabs of solemnity. He used to know when to write a parody and when to write a tragedy. Here, he is just confused. Does DeLillo want us to laugh or cry? It seems that even he isn't certain.

Cosmopolis hasn't put me off DeLillo. His status as one of our greatest living writers has already been irreversibly cemented by such works as The Names, White Noise, Libra, Mao II and Underworld- some of the most important novels of the 20th century's latter half. I just hope that he is sensible enough to do himself, his wonderful gifts and intelligence justice next time.

Rating:
Summary: Almost there, but not quite...
Review: Delillo is, undisputedly, one of the great contemporary authors, but this book falls a bit short of the bar set, albeit almost unreachably high, by ¡°White Noise¡±. As usual, his characterization capitalizes on the protagonist¡¯s unusual thought patterns and conclusions that are drawn from seemingly ordinary situations. The true genius of Delillo is that his characters are like philosophical machines, rather than normal people, but we perceive them, in a way, just like ourselves. What is really disappointing about this book is that the idea is so good, but the end result isn¡¯t refined enough. Fast paced Manhattan, stretch limousines, fancy gadgetry, the emptiness, of money¡¦What¡¯s not to love (or love to hate)? It¡¯s all there, but the story doesn¡¯t push the reader like Delillo¡¯s other works. We are given the framework for a great novel, but the conclusions aren¡¯t monumental enough to warrant a work with such a thin plot line. Of course the book still warrants reading for lovers of contemporary fiction.

Rating:
Summary: DeLillo's Masterpiece--Thus Far
Review: I've read all Don DeLillo's novels, enjoyed some more than others, and turned friends and students on to them, for years--and after my second reading of *Cosmopolis* I'll say that, in my opinion, this is a masterpiece. He's never been better. The humor of *Americana*, the poignant profundity of *White Noise*, the treatment of relationships in *Mao II*, the grit of *Underworld*, the soaring lyricism of *The Body Artist*...the BEST of them are all present here, in just over 200 pages.

There was a time when I thought DeLillo had a "niche" and that the Zeitgeist had necessarily passed him by--ah, but he's WAY too good. I don't consider him an "Apocolyptic Postmodernist" anymore, if indeed he ever FIT that label which reviewers too commonly affix to his books--if one MUST put it in a phrase, he's a satirical Spiritual Humanist, concerned with personal identity in a frenetic world, with isolation and with loneliness, and with the absurdity of the world that serves as its own complex character in his work.

This is, at first reading, a difficult book--and it's worth it. Authors like, say, Chuck Palahnuik are doing what DeLillo *used* to do--but DeLillo is truly amazing in his ability to adapt to the "times" and continually out-write the younger writers who are so heavily influenced by him.

It occurs to me that if there's a book to compare this to, it's not DeLillo himself but, in sundry strange yet fitting ways, *Notes from the Underground*, by Dostoyevsky. I've read the other reviews here, and I understand, I believe, both the positives and the negatives of what these readers are saying. It took even *me* a second reading to really begin to "get" it--*Cosmopolis* is condensed, very complex, disquieting and challenging.

I'm glad I took the challenge. In the midst of the times in which we live, we're often left reeling--and this book just made me feel so vital, so validated to live in my own skin.

So...*alive*.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious Commentary on our Culture.
Review: I read this novel immediately after reading [e-mail] by Tom Grimes -- and the similarities are amazing in a way. Both are satires on our insane consumer culture. Both are very darkly funny, yet if I had to choose one book I think I would pick [e-mail] because it seems to take greater narrative risks with enough madcap/slapstick humor to rival any Marx Brothers comedy. There is no doubt that DeLillo is a great author, but there are other novels he's written that I liked more, like WHITE NOISE. Still, check out this intelligent book if you get a chance.

Rating:
Summary: Great blend of language and ideas
Review: A fellow reviewer said Cosmopolis is short enough to read in a day. But this book is asking for more time. Eric Packer buffers himself from the present in order to stay ahead of the future--but his gadgets in home and car only give him a false sense of futuristic living. Antiquities like telephones and ATMs are still in operation, much to his chagrin.

What good is Packer's headlong rush into the future, if the sole purpose of this pursuit is to get the money that puts him out of touch?

Rating:
Summary: Witty and incisive
Review: Don Delillo is the perferct author to try to understand the rise and collapse of the economic bubble as the century flipped into Y2K. He has penetrated a number America's peculiar cultural hysterias: environmental fears (White Noise); conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy (Libra); Moonies and mass marriages (Mao II), and now this latest mass hypnosis masquerading as economics. The objects of Delillo's scrutiny are cultural phenomena rather than human foibles. His characters become icons for certain events, metaphoric translations. They could not endure quotidian existence. They are not human, and this quality may repel some readers. Yet, there is satisfaction in the way Delillo gives articulate form to something the reader will have sensed, something recognized as familiar in recent experience.

Delillo also has a wonderful sensitivity for words. He makes some fun observations here about the argot of the Internet and high tech culture. I had not before recognized what a quaint anachronism "Automated Teller Machine" is. Delillo treats his readers to a number of such observations about our language. I believe that Don Delillo's "Underworld" was without rival the best fictional work about America in the twentieth century. This is a much narrower work, but it displays the wit and penetration that shines in Delillo's best works.