Anyone else read this doorstopper? What did you think about it?

Anyone else read this doorstopper? What did you think about it?

It's great

Sometimes I see something so moving I know I’m not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave desu.

read it when i was 16
easy read good book

I read it when I was 12. That was my impression as well, i.e. an extremely easy read.

Read it at 7, pretty good

My dad read it to me when I was 5. Don DeLillo is a hack writer.

Delillo is shit

It's an entertainment and lengthy criss-crossing of many intersections of post-WWII America. Its scope is arguably its best quality but it brings with it philosophy and pathos, presenting a humane and relevant consideration of all kinds of lives. These range from nuns trying to do a bit of good, to down-and-out minorities hoping for a stroke of luck, through to middle-age, middle-class office stiffs going about their daily, globalised lives. It also has room for optimistic painters of abandoned war planes laid benign in the desert, and talks heavily about people involved on both ends of everyday violence (Texas highway guy).

Of course, it would be remiss not to mention its highly illustrative opening chapter, which exudes a lot of imagery usually ignored in some of DeLillo's denser, prosaic novels.

Read it in the womb, was ok.

Yeah, it had a great first 300 pages but the rest is a slow decline into mediocrity. The main theme and his prose doesn't have enough meat to carry over 800 pages and ends up spreading itself very thin. I actually got mad at the epilogue when he does that cheap allegory with the nuke detonation attraction, it felt like the ideas he was cultivating devolved and dissolved into a disappointingly banal "capitalism is bad, mkay?" message.

Also, there isn't anything he does in this book that Roth didn't do better in American Pastoral.

This. Except the baseball chapter

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE

Should I read this or moby dick or fountainhead first?

Moby Dick. Don't read the others.

read it in a past life and it was like the void and
cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect unto a transparent vacuum without circumference
or centre.

READ THE INTRO GOT BORED
SINATRA AND GLEESON ISNT COOL ANYMORE OLD MAN

Not that much of a doorstopper

I liked it and would discuss it more, but i'm on my phone and don't have time but have my bump OP. Nice to see people actually want to discuss UW every once in a while.
Those nuclear chapters were amazing imo

The first 5 pages were good.

Personally thought the two "main" characters, Nick Shay and Klara Sax, were boring fucking people and had the worst chapters in the book. Most other minor characters were entertaining, especially liked the old grumpy baseball collector and the Beatnik comedian.

bait i know but i am compelled to tell you to stay the fuck away from ayn rand, no matter how worthless you may feel you are, your time is worth too much to be spent reading that shit.

Is DeLillo's The Names any good? The premise sounds cool as fuck but at the same time sounds like one of those stories that could be be a real let down.

Seconded, waiting for this one in the mail.
Delillo people say it's his best often, it seems.

Liam Gleeson was the Lian in Narmia tho